Get Well Soon Tells Musical Folk Tales
Published 28 months ago
The classically trained German singer has soundtracked Wim Wenders' film and also provided the perfect bleak summer soundtrack with his own album.
Get Well Soon is the moniker for 26 year old German singer Konstantin Gropper. Born into a classically trained family, he spent three years in his bedroom courting his album ‘Rest Now, Weary Head! You Will Get Well Soon’, composing and playing the majority of instruments. It offers sea shanties, electronic epics and folk stories like the long-lost orphan of the Brothers Grimm and is for fans who know their Berlin from their Beirut. Dazed Digital speaks to the troubadour and asks about the soundtrack that was remedy to one of the bleakest summers of this century.
Dazed Digital: You have supported Calexico in London, how did that come about?
Konstantin Gropper: We are on the same label and think they requested us they have heard us I think they like it, they are one of my favourite bands.
DD: You take a full band out on tour.
KG: Yeah it is a seven piece band with violin, banjo and trumpet. Well so far I’ve done the studio stuff on my own but on tour we have the band and they always tour with me. The band is family and friends, my sister and cousin are in the band.
DD: Your videos are quite cinematic, what are the influences?
KG: Umm, well for ‘Witches! Witches! Rest now in the fire’ the music explains the video and the influence for the video was a 1970’s film about witches. It was an obvious choice to do a video like that. With the others it was the theme of the song that went along with it like for ‘If this hat is missing...’ No, I’m not really a fan of silent movies but I was really pleased with the aesthetic.
DD: With your album ‘Rest Now...’ you spent two years writing and recording it. Is there going to be more music sooner rather than later?
KG: Yeah that album now for me is almost two years old I’m really looking forward to doing some new stuff. I’ve been doing some soundtrack work and other stuff but the beginning of next year for me will be writing and going back to the studio. I don’t want to take two years again it’s too long I want to be a bit more focused.
DD: You wrote two songs as the soundtrack for Wim Wenders film ‘Palermo Shooting’, was that flattering?
KG: Definitely, there’s a lot of music in the film and he wanted to ask people to write for it exclusively and he asked other people like Nick Cave and Bonnie Prince Billy to be on the soundtrack too so it’s definitely an honour.
DD: On the album there is a cover of Underworld’s ‘Born Slippy’, what does the song mean to you?
KG: I always thought it was an important song for my musical socialisation, especially in the 1990’s. People normally do electronic versions of acoustic songs so I wanted to do it the other way round. Also, I wanted to express a feeling for me that was in that song, it was always a dark song for me, a maniac song. I wanted to present it another way.
DD: What is left for you in 2008?
KG: There’s a festival in France set up by a newspaper at the La Cigale theatre. We are playing with Franz Ferdinand and Yo! Majesty as well so it is a really diverse line up. I am on tour up until Christmas and again hopefully I will get some time off to write in the studio, then tour. I live in Berlin, I moved there after I finished the album but it’s a creative city there’s a lot of art and there’s a lot of urban music, so I don’t know maybe I will be influenced by that!
