When Tidal met Yage

We’ve chosen an excerpt from Christian Späth's superb ‘This Is My Everything’ book.

It’s about when Tidal recorded their awesome screamo HC ‘Moment’ LP in 2000.

This section mentions another great German band, Yage, whose singer Oliver ‘Krabbe‘ Krebs, who also used to run a label called Earth Water Sky in the 90s, died last year. So this is a small reminder and tribute to him from Chris, EI Books and the HC scene he knew so well.

“At a festival at the legendary Club Kuckucksei in Nürtingen we met a band from Cologne called Yage, who played an intense style of emo/post hardcore and were funny guys too, so we

instantly felt a kinship to them. We loved the sound of their first LP, so we asked them

for the contact of the studio. They put us in touch with Guido Lucas, owner of the

BluBox studio and BluNoise label out of Troisdorf near Bonn. Guido was a cool dude,

a legendary indie musician and producer, who unfortunately died way too early in 2017.

BluBox was a full analog studio, which was exactly what we were looking for in order

to capture the immediacy of our sound. In October of 2000 we packed our stuff into

Boris' parents' VW T4 van and headed up north to record what was to become our LP

Moment. Notoriously strapped for cash, we would record everything in only two days.

Guido Lucas received us at the studio and talked the recording process through with us.

He suggested that we record drums, guitar and bass live at the same time to get a better

feel and then do overdubs and vocals afterwards. That was not how we had recorded

the 10“, but it turned out to be the best choice we could have made. We had practiced a

lot, and basically all we wanted to do was to recreate the live experience. While we were

setting up our instruments and amps, another German noise rock legend dropped by. It

was Kurt Ebelhäuser, who played guitar in bands like Blackmail, Scumbucket or

Harmful. I was preparing my bass and I was a bit worried because on some frets my

strings sounded scratchy, and I remember him telling me 'leave it, that scratching noise

is great, it needs to be noisy!' Guido helped us set everything up but didn't record us

himself, as he had some family business to attend to, or maybe the special rate we agreed

on was too low for him to do it himself. Instead, the record would be engineered and

mixed by Sebi Hack, a friendly and calm long-haired dude who owed Guido money for

the recording of his own band, and worked off his debt by recording other bands at

BluBox. Since the Yage LP had been recorded by Guido, we at first worried whether

Sebi could deliver the same quality, but when we eventually sat in the mixing room and

listened back to the rough mixes, our doubts were blown away by the full analogue

sound and the power of the recordings. Sebi had done a great job capturing Tidal's Sturm

und Drang energy. The recordings sounded dense, thick and dynamic. We felt that with

these songs we had created something very personal and honest, straight from our young

and tender hearts. We decided to send them to our favourite record labels to see if our

feeling was shared by people who knew this kind of music well. The labels we 'chose'

were Per Koro from Bremen, Germany and Ebullition from Goleta, California.”

‘This Is My Everything’ is about Tidal’s travels through the worldwide DIY hardcore scene in the late nineties and early noughties. Packed with great stories and featuring guest appearances by Against Me!, Shelter, Refused, Ink&Dagger, Yaphet Kotto, Snapcase and many more.

@christidal #ChristianSpaeth #Tidal #JigsawJackson #Abermals #Memento #PerKoro #Ebullition #Yage #TIME #ThisIsMyEverything #Hardcore #Screamo #HC