Missing Foundation history: En Esch remembers

An early incarnation of Missing Foundation in Hamburg Germany included members that went on to achieve notoriety in the band KMFDM. Below we have another installment of MF recollections compiled by Vincent Dominion. This time En Esch remembers some of the early days...


[Pete Missing- far right- in Hamburg circa 1984 with members of Neubauten and KMFDM]


I was a member of Missing Foundation in late 1984 in Hamburg, Germany. We did one gig and recording in a studio there. I am not sure what happened to the tapes. It was my first musical encounter with my ex-band mate Sascha K. He was playing bass and I was the drummer back then. I saw Peter on a few occasions back then; he used to live there for a while. The show was kind of wild, we rehearsed before but it was to a good extent freestyle. I had no crash or ride cymbals, just a pair of high hats. Pete demanded that........ That means I did a lot of tom-tom work.....tribal-esque... Florian from Hamburg was playing the saxophone and Uwe the guitar. Sascha was doing the bass and Pete was singing.......”World in Chains!!!”....... The rest of the bunch I don’t even remember. We had a few pillow cases we opened up and tons of goose feathers were flying around in the club.....it was a mess....pretty cool. The recordings were done in a proper 24-track studio and we recorded a full length album worth of material. At one point I did a metal percussion overdub and hit my thumb and lost my nail a few days later. VERY PAINFULL......!!!

So why did you split and how did KMFDM start?
Back then, Pete went back to the states and took the tapes with him....that was the end. It was a unique trip and everybody was fine with that I guess.... Sascha and I were hanging out anyway so we continued to hang and start to do stuff ourselves. In the early stage we just used a drum machine and I and Sascha’s former girlfriend became our singer (Sabine Tamsadi, now living in Berlin, I am still in touch with her). You can hear her voice on the KMFDM 84-86 cassette I put together. I already had a background in electronics doing primitive programming with a Pro-One and a Roland TR-808 drum machine in Frankfurt working with the singer of “E=MC2” on a project before I moved to Hamburg. The drum machine was triggering the Pro-One and I had to push the keys while running to get the bass melody right. It was the pre-Midi times, hard to believe.......Later Sascha and I were hanging out with Raymond Watts, who had some electronic gear in Hamburg in a cool studio set up and we started to jam with him. Some of the material ended up on the first record “What Do You Know Deutschland”.

I opened up for Missing Foundation in later years with a side project I had with Guenter Schulz in the late 80’s and early 90’s called “Svetlana Ambrosius Quartet” which was a girls name we got out of a cheesy novel.

Missing Foundation history- Pete Missing interview

Below is the first in a series of interviews done with members of Missing Foundation done by Vincent Dominion, who put together a sort of oral history of MF through the words of people associated with the band. He kindly gave us permission to reprint some of these here on the blog. Missing Foundation has a storied history involving many characters, but why not start with the main character himself, Pete Missing! This interview must have been done around 2001 or 2002, right around the time Pete was in Berlin, and exhibiting his work at the Tacheles. Following this time, Pete came out of his self-imposed exile to return to the United States and ran a gallery out of a storefront in Madison, Wisconsin, if I remember correctly. It is here that we started communicating and planning for the 1933 reissue. Pete then returned to New York City for a time before splitting his time between Berlin and NYC again.

The interview is a bit short on details about Missing Foundation's history, but it's a good insight into communication with Pete. At bottom, he's a visual artist, and is most in his element with his paintings and his art, which are often strewn around him when he works. His writing is a bit like his painting; very busy, very extravagant and colorful, full of slogans and superimposed images. You can really tell how he'd be the mouthpiece of a band like Missing Foundation.


[Pete at the Tacheles in Berlin]

Can you describe your time with MF?
Manic psychotic creative destructive constructive [prophecy of the coming events we have now]

Are you still in contact with w/ex members?
Adam I just saw on tour in New York he has a kid and is working on a new band. Chris Egan is a photojournalist in Boston.

What did you think of the Spitters?
Heavy load but unlistenable, not grounded and still boring rock music in the end but stage shows were more power. The cd’s are not a good representation of the Spitters sound. A well missed band. Mark dead in New York of cancer in 2000.

I heard about a show you did at the Knitting Factory w/John Zorn and Marc Ribot. Can you tell me about that performance? What do you think of those guys and was it recorded?
Well, John and I lived on the same block and he is a friend/collaborator of improvisational music. I was happy to throw my Berlin recordings of electronic sampling live with vocal overdub. John Zorn of course is a small genius and Marc Ribot is also great noiseician and guitar player. This may be recorded but I do not have a copy.

What music/writers/filmmakers are you into now?
Only electronics but I couldn’t really pinpoint. I think.....Tricky, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Chemical Brothers.......I give everything a listen and there is a lot of drum & bass live instruments with electronic etc.... still coming up.

After MF why did you take off to Berlin?
Basically after the F.B.I. was at my house on a false tip and not finding anything I decided to go back to live in Berlin but this time I went into the former east and found an incredible place far from the anals of America. I was able to record and build massive installations. Check out the photos on the web site www.petemissing.de or www.missingfoundation.com Berlin is my dream city but maybe someone else would get lost there. It has a big underground of active people, artistically and politically. Their energy changed my life my music and my interests.

Why did the F.B.I. raid your house?
The reason the F.B.I. were at my house is because they tried to say that I started the riot in 1988 (at Tompkins Square in NY) but in the end they realized they were dealing with an entire angry neighborhood, which fought gentrification, homelessness and homesteading rights on city owned abandoned property falling into deterioration. And at that time a government that was and is not working for the people. The F.B.I. investigation fell back on the 9th precinct police department which found no real criminal actions against MF.
Basically, they would have to arrest the entire lower eastside and so I moved to Berlin to squat and make new music and leave America behind in search of a better atmosphere.

Can you explain the differences between America and Europe? The lifestyle, the food, the politics and the general awareness of everyday life?
I would say Berlin and Europe as a whole is the complete opposite way of life. America is abrasive and abusive. People haven’t learned not to hit each other over the head. Europe has more history and more information. We are making the same mistakes they made 700 years ago. The only difference is our big party is burning up the resources. Germany banned nuclear, dropped out of the war on Iraq and the green party is in power for 4 more years. Gay marriages are legal, men and women can go nude in the park, drugs are decriminalized, prostitution is legal, free medical, free dental and free education for everyone. 20 million dollars to the culture in Berlin, it’s illegal to go hungry and 67 is 76. America is pop culture, beer culture and full of decadence and violence. For sure the nature will revolt and the world is in a globalization.....global warning.....pharmaceutical nightmare......genetically engineered chicken......end of the food chain......cannot replant the seed......waterwars........MF.........future shock........bombs...war.


[MF logos in Hamburg, Germany]

How would you describe your current musical/artistic direction?
The new “Nature Revolt” cd was released on Maspop records in New York 2002. This is my latest drum & bass message project with artist/musician DJ Hazard. You can order it through my website. Me a Cyril were on European and American tours and the concerts were high energy gigs. In Berlin we connected with one MF drummer, Florian Langmaack from Hamburg and combined our sound. Florian is a set designer for movies but is still recording. Me and Florian recorded “Rotation” and “Low Denominator” with Binar Tobi, electro beat computer wiz from Berlin. Another electronic cd recorded in Berlin is “Cracked Ocean”.

MF was so noisy and primal. It seems that most people who start out doing that kind of music end up on the drum and bass electronic side. What took you in that direction?
After living in former East Berlin for 7 years it becomes a part of you. Berlin is the electronic central for Europe and runs a wide range. Atari Teenage Riot is great digital hardcore but there are many more. Binar was a project I worked with on ambient electro noise with digital vocal scratching that sounds like machines. The door to the future is music technology. Music is medicine.

How would you describe your life today?
Still hectic and on the road, can’t stay in one place for more than 6 months........I have to keep changing the scenario.........always searching for new possibilities to change the present course of the planet.

Anything else you want to add?
Only that America’s big party is coming to an end and the world has just cause to hate our guts but every big industrial nation makes war games and oil games. When we switch to hydrogen power, solar power and wind energy then we may be able to slow down the destruction of the planet. We are in a global warning and a war with Iraq will open the gates of hell. It is all crashing but 50 years of light might be silently good and stop trusting your government. Open your eyes and understand what’s wrong with pop beer culture, pill popping slow death, and genetically fried brain food. America the land that shits on it’s own people with pesticides, chemicals in every waterway and no medical, no dental and no education for everyone. We end the food chain for our acceptance of it and we radiate radiation kill kill kill aggressive abusive America. Fuck all your SUV’s as the environment goes up in smoke!

Work on Missing Foundation 1933 reissue completed!!

So it's March of 2009, and I'm pleased to announce that one of the reissues we've been working on for years is finally coming to a head and will be going to press soon. When the idea for Hungry Eye started in late 2002 and early 2003, one of the things that popped in mind as something we wanted to do was reissue the Missing Foundation 1933 album. It had long been a favorite for a long while and was definitely a treat and honor to be able to work on...

It's funny to think back to those days and remember how the internet figured into all of this; I did a little google search, found something that looked like the email address of Pete Missing, and we started corresponding while he was running his gallery in Wisconsin called Recycling the Future. Eventually we ironed out a deal to reissue this thing, and started compiling all the material. While back then it was such a surprise to find folks like this on the internet, nowadays you'd be hard pressed NOT to find someone through some sort of web sources. On the other hand, looking back at the time that's past, one can't but note that the release is very overdue; 6 years wait?!?!

If we recreated the whole sequence of events, I would definitely change a bunch here and there about how the whole thing was approached. Compiling everything was a job suited to a serious production manager, and the many hours of tracking down tapes and videos, digitizing and transferring, learning as one went along, and going through some serious false starts now and again definitely took its toll on everyone. But we had committed to putting together something larger than just a straight reissue of the old 1933 package, and wanted it to include bonus tracks, a DVD and a good amount of photos and liner notes. A few people really pulled through in terms of helping get this thing done finally along the way, who we can't thank enough, and who deserve some serious recognition. Among them are: Ray Parada of the Mad Parade who stepped up and did a masterful job on editing the Cult of Rage footage along with Pete Missing's response to the whole affair, Rob of Rec'd Productions who not only shot some of the footage for the DVD, but also authored the DVD with the sole aid of my disjointed notes and dodgy sketches, and finally Dez of CROSSOVER, who promised to deliver on putting together a killer layout at a time when it came down to starting on it for the third time.

Also, many thanks to the folks who lent a hand in contributing material and answered questions along the way: Maurice Narcis, Vincent Dominion, Chris Iconocide, Seth Tobocman, Eric Blitz, Jim Waters, and many more.... and of course Chris Egan, Pete Missing, and Adam Nodelman.

Sadly, Adam Nodelman passed away at the end of the summer 2008. His help, encouragement, and enthusiasm for the project at an important time was crucial to seeing it through, and it with a very heavy heart that we won't be able to present to him the finished product. May he rest in peace.

In the meantime, we will start updating the Missing Foundation page on the Hungry Eye website, so check back there from time to time. Pete Missing has started uploading some material from the Missing Foundation archive onto youtube and the internet so as we are made aware of stuff, we will share the news with you. Also, in honor of getting this thing done, I'd like to share a series of interviews from Missing Foundation members and collaborators over the years given to us by one Vincent Dominion in his effort to chronicle MF in a sort of oral history. These interviews with start to pop up on this very blog in the coming days and weeks.

Below you will find some of the final mock ups for the artwork along with a trailer for the DVD. The end of March will see the project go off to press, so we will announce a release date once we approve the proofs and the ball gets rolling on manufacturing, but you can expect to see this out by early summer 2009. Pre-orders will appear on the website in due time.