Following a captivating gig by (now full band) Sudden Infant a.k.a Joke, Christian and Alex kindly spent some time with Blauerosen to discuss the changes that Sudden Infant has gone through the past three years, their next album, their plans for the future, art, creativity, London and Berlin.
Blauerosen: The name of the band consists of two words that most people would be frightened to pronounce together because they bring to mind a disturbing situation (i.e. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). Was this a way to filter your audience in the sense that, those people who wouldn’t freak out by the name would be the people who would be open to your work and the rest not?
Joke: Yes, you are referring 
to the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. This is actually where the name of the band comes from. I was playing in a hardcore punk band in the 80s and then I became a father, I was 24 years old it was the end of the 80s so I stopped with the hardcore bands and I wanted to spend more time with my family but I didn’t want to stop making music. I was really interested at the time in industrial and experimental music. I love Throbbing Gristle, Suicide etc so I started my own project when my son was born and I was looking for a name, of course I was reading a lot at the time about sudden infant death syndrome but I thought that yes it is, a very hard name, it’s something shocking…I took just the first two words as I didn’t want to name my project Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and then I put them in a different context when I started my solo work but also ‘sudden infant’ can mean something different, like an adult person that becomes an infant suddenly, doing stupid things or whatever and it is not only connected to this negative situation, it can have a lot of positive meanings as well…so the name has stayed all these years and the whole project changed into what you experienced tonight as a band since 3 years now with Christian and Alex…
Blauerosen:So how did you meet? Were you familiar with Joke’s work before?
Christian: No,I was not familiar with his work. We met around the year 2000 as we were both invited to a project in Germany with a famous player bass player, the late Peter Kowald. I am actually a double bass player too so the first time we met was at a train station in Zurich taking the train to Germany in order to participate in this project. I remember Joke later told me that he didn’t expect a double bass player, he was expecting a jazz guy.
Joke: I was waiting at the meeting point and I was looking for a boring jazz guy coming with a double bass and suddenly I saw Christian coming, wearing leather trousers and a metal tshirt and I thought "wow, are you Christian the bass player?" and he said (imitating a deep bass voice) "Yes (and he looks down on me and says), yes that’s me" and we had a wonderful encounter sitting at the train, talking about things and it was a immediately a nice friendship.
Christian:Joke introduced me actually to a lot of music I didn’t know by then so it was also a great experience for me, he was one of the first musicians who did not play traditional instruments, he uses turntables. Today we are still playing together as a duo and soon there will be vinyl record release. Joke invited me 8-10 years ago to participate in some Sudden Infant recordings and we have been in contact ever since.
Alex: I got casted (laughs)…no I wasn’t casted. I live in Berlin so I met Joke there obviously but we were sharing the same bill at a very nice festival in Riga where I was playing solo and Joke was appearing as Sudden Infant.
Joke: Yes I saw him play solo and I was just blown away by his drumming and already I was thinking that I would like a drummer in my project and it could only be Alex. As Christian said before we had already worked together before on Sudden Infant records did a couple of shows together but then I was still doing solo performances.3 or 4 years ago I got a bit tired of solo performances and I thought that I would either stop the project or I am going to make it completely new so I asked the guys and they were completely into it so that’s the story.
There was not a single song, a single verse that I would have liked to see being performed differently.Each song was delivered in a way that, as a listener, I consider to be perfect, in terms of expression, of outwardness, of artistic sincerity, of artistic approach to its subject and to its musical style. There are some videos online, from this gig which I urge you to search for and as you watch them, try to loosen the grip to your heart, that PJ Harvey achieves through her performance and imagine how you would have felt during this show.As for me, I left from O2 Brixton Academy feeling emotionally much richer from this truly beautiful show!
Until next time…
Blaue Rosen 
