The Obelisk Questionnaire: Johannes Stubenrauch (Helge) from Mindcrawler
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Johannes Stubenrauch (Helge) from Mindcrawler
—
How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I do not consider myself as a musician. Music for me is a relief and a road to escape the tunnel of analytics I face in my regular job that pays the rent, although I really like my profession.
I guess that is kind of true for the whole band.
We all share a true passion for music albeit coming from more or less different musical backgrounds and interests. However, none of us would consider making music for a living, although I am not sure what would happen if that was actually an option.
So in a nutshell, playing music and in a band for me is just another word for spending time with your friends, sharing the good and the bad moments in life with a group of people formed by a common love for a certain kind of sound, lifestyle and maybe mindset.
I have played music for the larger part of my life and a large part of that in turn was playing music together, not necessarily in a „band“. Playing electric guitar at home gets quite boring after a while. Playing in a band has always been a major goal in life for me so looking for one in my new hometown was a natural decision. I am quite lucky to be in a group with the best guys imaginable now.
Describe your first musical memory.
As many others I was prepared to learn the piano when I was at the age of five or six (with a quite fundamental lack of success) and play strange stuff, the kind one has to play when you’re able to perform better than „twinkle twinkle little star“ but too shabby to do some reasonable classical music.
I tortured myself for a while and somehow convinced my parents to get an acoustic guitar. Acoustic obviously, because I thought I was to learn the „basics first“ before I would get a real one.
Again I tortured myself a little more with some classical guitar (which I sucked at). When I got an electric guitar I then quickly realized that this is basically a different instrument.
Finally, I found out that there is a mighty thing called AC/DC (not talking electro-dynamics here) and down the heavy metal road I went.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
This is insanely hard to answer. When I was a teenager and into death metal, I went to my first real concert ever, i.e. not some local bands playing covers in a beer-tent (these kind of things where you would go to party at Oktoberfest). Where I grew up, this was basically the only place where live-music happened. For some reason, they do not play death metal songs at these happenings – haha.
Anyhow, when Eluveitie (a band I hyped a lot at the time) played „Inis Mona“ at this very concert it was a magical moment for me.
Same thing when I was at the Wacken Festival in Northern Germany for the first time: coming from a place with basically no rock music culture and suddenly there’s a full city of metal heads and music nerds sharing the same passion was a crazy scenario (as well as Iron Maiden live).
Seeing Baroness for the first time and after they had this terrible bus accident was crazy, too. They have been my favorite band for a long time now and I love John Dyer Baizley’s artworks with their strong black outlines and the bright colors.
Watching them perform live without any loss of energy, that was quite an inspiring moment.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
When I had just started my studies, I was convinced all problems can be solved by logical reasoning and the proper idea. This seems to not be the case.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
I had a hard time trying to grasp the term „artistic progression“. Art is done by people. People change their attitudes, ideas, feelings and what else over the span of their lifetime. Art — for me — is just a reflection of the artist’s personality in the context of their information about their environment and life. Consequently, I think it is natural that an artist work changes. I never understood why sometimes people demand bands to remain constrained to a certain range of their possible portfolio. I get bored quickly if music sounds too familiar.
Coming back to the question: I think, artistic progression ultimately fully opens the window to the personality of the artist. Whether that is a good or a bad thing is up to the consumer, I guess.
How do you define success?
Enjoying what you do and having good time with your friends.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
People you love having a serious disease or health issue. Maybe the newer Star Wars movies – haha.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
Although it is probably quite „un-true“ to the stoner/doom genre, I’d like to setup a show which is planned and produced like for example a Rammstein show. Something where music and visual effects and this kind of stuff really interacts. Something with fire, laser and these LED spots you can grill a steak with. I’d skip the dancing, though.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
It should not be profit, that is for sure.
For the music I mostly listen to and the music I produce the function is quite simple. It is just a tool to provoke some good emotions like a good movie, a new album from one of your favorite bands or a cool painting from one of the artists from your neighborhood. I think they call that l’art pour l’art.
For me, art is the sugar in life so to say. An art student once told me that this was not art but craftsmanship. Not so sure about it; I think more important and interesting than the artwork itself is the emotion it provokes in the consumer.
Anyhow, I think the most essential function might be provocation and/or un-masking.
When I have read the question, the first things I thought of was this famous Banksy auction where the actual artwork was shredded, Rammstein’s videos or the stuff Brecht did in his „Epic Theater“ (if that is the proper translation, and yes, I am afraid I have mentioned Brecht and Rammstein in the same sentence).
All these things are provoking and unmasking up to a certain point. They depict things in a different way and I like the idea of art forcing people to change their point of view or at least make them start to think and reason. I think that is quite a hard thing to do nowadays and a form of art in its own right.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
The next Band-BBQ.
http://www.facebook.com/Mindcrawler/
https://www.instagram.com/mindcrawler.band/
https://mindcrawler.bandcamp.com/
http://www.motljud.com/
https://www.soundeffect-records.gr/
