Beatmag Interviews… Senor Coconut

Andrew Laughlin dusts off his mambo shoes for some Japanese-flavoured laptop merengue with Senor Coconut

What do you get if you cross a German, a bag of electronic tricks, a hat full of pop covers and the magic of the mambo? The answer is the mysterious Senor Coconut. As Batman has the smooth talking billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne as his alter-ego, so the Senor has his. Uwe Schmidt AKA Atom Heart, Lassigue Benthaus, Flanger, etc, has been the architect of the elusive Senor ever since he emerged out of the shadows;
“For me, Coconut is an experiment,” explains Uwe, “It has always been an experiment. The music, the design, the image, they all combine intuitively to make the Senor. I really enjoy creating the world of the Coconut!”

Beatmag caught up with Uwe at his hotel room on a whistle-stop visit to the UK;
“I haven’t really slept much,” he states wearily.
Is this due to the Senor’s glossy lifestyle with excesses of girls, drink, parties?
“No, not really,” he plainly sets the record straight, “I’ve been travelling lots recently from one country to another staying in hotels – interviews, promotion, the tour starts tomorrow so I’m in my hotel now just trying to relax a bit.”

His new album ‘Yellow Fever!’ continues in the Senor’s field of expertise, laptop mambo cover versions. The last album, ‘Fiesta Songs’, contained his takes on Sade and Michael Jackson, then before that there was his album of Kraftwerk covers.
On ‘Yellow Fever!’ Uwe has chosen rather to focus the Senor’s magical gaze on the work of the ‘Eastern Kraftwerk’. The Yellow Magic Orchestra were active in the late 1970s and early 1980s where they crafted intelligent techno pop that bears similarities yet is distinctive from the electro kings of the autobahn. So how did Uwe decide to focus the Senor on such a group?

“A lot of people suggested ideas but the YMO idea sounded most interesting – they were much more important to me than Kraftwerk were,” he asserts. “They were present at a certain moment and in fact, I got into Kraftwerk much later. They were important when I started to really listen to music back in the middle of the ‘80s. YMO came to me in an important moment and showed me a very different of way of seeing and making music. I had never really deeply analysed the music when I first heard it but when I came to take the songs apart for the project, I realised how intricate they were. It’s a totally different, very Japanese way of thinking.“

Which bodes the question as to what inspired Senor Coconut’s existence in the first place.
“I guess it came about in the first album, ‘El Gran Baile‘,” Uwe ponders, “The one before Kraftwerk (‘El Baille Aleman’). I had been living in Cost Rica for six months and I wanted to unite what I had experienced in terms of the music like the merengue, salsa and the culture with more track-oriented electronic experimental music. I had the feeling that it would work so I put together a few songs for an album. I played around with it and eventually that became Senor Coconut. At that stage I was not thinking about a follow up, but then it just developed its own identity. People reacted to it, which hadn’t happened to other projects I had done. It was that feedback which provoked me to think about taking the Senor further.”

There is a secret depth behind the glistening smile and colourful attire of the Senor, plus an energy of his very own. This depth even Uwe did not quite grasp at first;
“When the Kraftwerk album came out I wasn’t really aware of the complexity of the Senor,“ Uwe asserts plainly, “He’s also about unconscious cultural stereotypes within us. The thing is that when I invented the character this was largely due to the fact that I couldn’t find in real life an artist, which combined Latin styles with electronic production. You can get very traditional musicians from Latin America or you can get the electronic music producers who are far away from that and don’t know anything about Latin music. So I decided when I invented Senor Coconut, that if I couldn’t find that person then I would have to be that person!”

The Senor’s new album ‘Yellow Fever!’ certainly continues the Coconut legacy of sharp and quirkily produced Latin takes on pop classics, but this record also exhibits a more polished, dare we say organic aspect.

“From record to record I try to improve the working methods,” Uwe enthuses, “I try to look at it from different angles and change the methods. On this album I wanted to have much better pre-arrangements. I think if you listen to this album compared to the Kraftwerk album or Sade or Deep Purple songs, then there is a quite a big difference in terms of complexity. I wanted to reflect the complexity of the music through new Latin style arrangement. This didn’t happen on the previous albums as the recording was much more spontaneous.”

Another facet to ‘Yellow Fever!’ is that Uwe secured the participation of the original YMO members (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi) on various tracks;
“It was not essential to get them on board, but I really wanted to try to get them on the album,” he reveals, “Musically, my idea was to make a good album with or without them, but of course, I was very happy when they agreed to join in.”
The new album also has various musical interludes that literally ask the question, “What is Coconut?”

“The idea to have interludes came because YMO also had interludes on their albums,” he explains, “It gave me the chance to put on a different type of song and artist in between the YMO tracks and so add something to the album in terms of a contrast. Most of the artists I worked with, I know from contacts. Obviously Mouse on Mars and I’ve worked with Towa Tei. It’s good to have people that you get along with and can work with.”
Do the ideas for Coconut cover versions arrive in the dead of night or are they handed to him by mystery associates on dusty parchment?

”Well, actually, they all start in my head,” corrects Uwe, “I listen to the original over and over until I start to develop an idea of which style that song can go in. I get the structure in my head, then I get the technical arrangement sorted out with the score and instrumentation. Finally, I get the musicians in and record it.”

And there are misty-eyed Coconut devotees in unexpectedly high places.
“A year ago we played for the German Government,” recalls Schmidt, “It was this big summer party for the German delegates in Berlin to celebrate the end of season. That gig was quite bizarre. We played right after the big marching band and all the politicians stayed seated. It felt like a real corporate thing, there wasn’t really an atmosphere at all.”
One wonders, with Uwe’s many other ongoing identities, if the latest album might be the end of the line for Senor Coconut?

“I didn’t do anything with Senor Coconut for two years before this,” he declares, “However, the Senor is something which I very much enjoy doing, especially as it is not something which I am working on all the time. That would be very tiring to do, although very inspiring!”

Senor Coconut’s ‘Yellow Fever!’ is released is our now and his band will be playing London and Bristol in August. See www.senor-coconut.com for more

Filed under: Interviews, Music by Flexmaster Nylon
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