Skizzo Franick

Article by Severine

You are relaxing in your arm chair, drinking your lemonade and enjoying the sun (lucky you) but something's missing, a nice and quiet sound of Electro, something between Massive Attack and DJ Shadow. Here is your saviour: Skizzo Franick, a German musician with a great talent in mixing a classical piano background to clever electronic samples. The result is a creative and ambient sound, chilled out and perfect for sunbathing, just check out the cover if you don't believe me!

Being both a scientist and a musician, Skiz' (his nickname) is a bit of a paradoxical character: rational but creative, Skiz' likes explaining his schizophrenic (Skizzo Franick) personality with his way of living, he hates jogging but he does it 5 times a week and everytime he orders something in a restaurant he knows that he will regret his order 1 minute later. Skiz' says 'making music is one way or my way to ask the big questions like "where do we come from?", "where do we go?" and "what is life all about?"'

More seriously, his influences are also quite opposite: from Chopin to Massive Attack and from Tchaikovsky to Radiohead, Skiz's musical influences are more than eclectic. He therefore declares that genres don't bother him: "I just do what I want to, no matter where it comes from and if it fits into a style".

The interview

What is Skiz' best moment since "My Definition"?

The best moments are when I get emails from around the world, countries like Japan, New Zealand or the US where people heard about my music mostly via internet or satellite radio, then they searched for my name on the web and purchased my CDs, wrote me an email or donated something for my "pay what you want program". I love a story one guy told me: he heard my song "The Trip" on the radio and afterwards he was repeating my artist name loudly on his entire way back home because he was afraid to forget it.

If you had to choose between Science and Music, what would you do?

I would choose Music because even Science isn't so far away from music in the sense that it has to do with curiosity, seeking for knowledge and creating ideas you have to follow a lot of rules, formalities and in science there is no space for mistakes. But I like the unexpected power of mistakes...

Abroad, German musicians are either from Hip Hop, or from Techno-Trance. How do you feel about this image and how did you manage to promote your music against this cliché?

Really? I think we have a well-known electronic, nujazz, lounge music scene around Germany and Vienna/ Austria where I live now. Kruder and Dorfmeister formed almost an entirely new genre in the 90s which is internationally known as the Vienna Electronica. Some great established labels like Compost Records, G-Stone or the Jazzanova Collective come from Germany. I think these artists and labels have a very good reputation and draw the attention to some areas in Europe. Sometimes I get emails from people who tell me that they love the Vienna Sound like Sofa Surfers, Tosca, Peace Orchestra and after they recognised that I am from Vienna they were even more interested in my sound. But to be honest I think people are much more open to different musical genres than marketing experts may think. I have fans even from a Gothic musical background as well as Hip Hop guys, World Music fans and any other genre.

What is your first music memory?

To be slightly shamefully honest... I fell in love with music by listening secretly to the old kitschy love ballads from the 80s. The Pet Shop Boys, A-Ha and - actually I am afraid to say that but - "The Neverending Story" by Limahl. My father comes from a classical involved family background and so we also listened to a lot of classical music and to some stuff I still love very much like J. J. Cale, Haindling, Pink Floyd and The Beatles of course. My first self bought record was the Rocky Soundtrack. The Rocky Theme is so uplifting (smile).

I've seen that you have a lot of favourite bands, such as Dj Shadow, Massive Attack, Air and Radiohead. If you could meet one of them, who would it be?

Hard question... All of them made records which were very important for me and I could listen to them almost every day. Artistically I would like to talk with Thom Yorke from Radiohead. He's kind of mystical; I don't know much about him, just that he makes songs which go very deep under my skin. Production wise I would like to speak with the Massive Attacks guys, I love their style and their blend of different genres and sounds - Mezzanine is one of my all time favourite records. But the same counts for Air's Moon Safari. I don't like everything of DJ Shadow but some tracks are fantastic as well.