An Interview with Tim Skold
Posted: Monday, July 06, 2009 (Here)
By: Ilker Yücel
Tim Skold has been a polarizing figure in the industrial music scene for over two decades. Love him or hate him, he’s proven to be a key figure in the development of what we now know as the Ultra Heavy Beat, having spent five years as a primary member of KMFDM and contributing to three of their latter day records. Strangely enough, he began his career in the ’80s as a member of Swedish hair metal band Shotgun Messiah, eventually becoming the leader of the group and guiding them towards a more electronically-prevalent sound. This radical shift in direction informed his later work, culminating in his first solo album release in 1996, although the Skold record would receive mixed reviews from audiences and critics alike. Still, it was enough to impress KMFDM ringleader Sascha Konietzko, with whom Skold would work very closely in KMFDM and the post-breakup/pre-reformation offshoot MDFMK. After the release of the Attak album in 2002, Skold went to work on a new solo album, only for it to see the light of day as an unfinished demo leaked on the Internet, now known as the infamous Dead God EP, before going on to tour with ohGr and then accepting an offer to join Marilyn Manson, initially as a bassist and working his way up to become guitarist and producer, guiding the shock rock band’s sound for the last few albums. Now in 2009, having departed the Manson camp, Skold returns to make his mark on the Ultra Heavy Beat, collaborating with KMFDM once again on not one but two albums. The first release, Skold vs. KMFDM , yielded a much more experimental edge, doing away with the heavy guitars and familiar song structures in favor of something more electronically innovative and classically industrial. The second, KMFDM’s Blitz, on which Skold contributed to nine of 11 tracks, was more conventional by comparison, but as with any record in KMFDM’s discography still heralded a fine collection of hard-hitting industrial rock the likes of which only the duo of Konietzko and Skold could produce. With such a resume to his credit, one can’t disregard Tim Skold’s importance to the underground music scene, which he takes the time to discuss as he lets us in on his music-making process and just what he has in store for the future.
You have two new albums out, both with KMFDM: Skold vs. KMFDM, and you were on nine of the 11 tracks on Blitz.
Skold: Both albums are with KMFDM, but they’re entirely different albums, which you know. They’re apples and oranges; it is hard to lump them in. In many ways, they are connected, because Sascha and I are on both of them, but at the same time, they’re both dramatically different entities and concepts.
You’ve been in Marilyn Manson for five years, since you left KMFDM after the Attak record, so what prompted you to come back to Sascha and start working with him on these albums? How did that happen?
Skold: Wow! That sounds so dramatic and romantic. That sounds like some sort of feature film: ‘After five years with Marilyn Manson, Skold returns to the KMFDM fold for another round…’ You know, I think it was six or seven years, but anyway. It is a lot like it started with Columbine, but Columbine is an easy time point to refer to as a milestone of sorts, where things changed, you know? I don’t know if it is particularly that event, but for some reason that is an easy one to use as a milestone. But that’s not what you’re asking. Your question is how, why? Sascha and I hooked up on a whim, stopped working on a whim, and got back together on a whim. It’s not all that fucking premeditated and strategized or evaluated. It’s a weird, deep connection. I am not much of a hippie, so I am having a hard time finding the proper terms for this kind of shit, but that’s essentially what it is. We have our connection, a mutual appreciation of ethics and all those things. It is not a stretch for us to work together, so you can almost pose the opposite question. Why wouldn’t I? Why? Why me? Why not?
Excellent! Now, let’s talk about Skold vs. KMFDM. Obviously, the subject had come up with Sascha that since Lucia wasn’t involved, it couldn’t be called MDFMK. Considering it is a radically different album from KMFDM and what MDFMK was, what were the working conditions like for that? How did the sound of that album evolve? What was the process like for that album?
Skold: We have together done several KMFDM records and the MFDMK record, so there is a bit of a concept that evolved from both of those terms. MDFMK involved Lucia, and it also involved guitars. When we started talking about making this album, we wanted it to be a separate, new, different thing, and we put Lucia over with the guitars and said ‘No, some other time!’ One of the things that it comes from… it is easy to spot; it is easy to tell from computers, the brutal horsepower of massive storage and computational resources. We have like two million *.dlls and we have plug-ins that can do anything and everything, and I have 50 of them that can do the same fucking thing! So you have all these resources and possibilities, and the way we’re being taught how to work now, that’s the cool thing about making this and making noise; you have all these options. What I’m trying to get at is that sometimes options are not the way to go. Sometimes options are stifling to productivity and will stop you from actually getting shit done, because you’ll say, ‘All these fucking options!’ I think that kind of ties in with our whole interlude scenario, where there are 11 tracks, proper structured songs, and eleven sibling tracks that are connected in some way or another to the parent song. It is kind of showing off that abomination of having all these options, as fictitious as they are. Well, they are real, but they’re virtual; they’re in a computer. I’m getting way off here. The point is that as far as KMFDM, we were trying to make sure it was something that we did now, that we got it done now. It wasn’t something that we were going to meddle with for three years. One thing we said was, ‘Let’s not use conventional guitars. Let’s not use conventional drum kits or even samples of the drum kits that were recorded in a conventional way. Let’s not do that; let’s just meet and do this, just me and you. Let’s not involve anyone else.’ So we tried to put some parameters on the whole concept, almost to frame it in, to give it a canvas, like this is where the canvas stops. You don’t have to paint any further, because there’s no fucking canvas there. It is getting kind of loose, the way I explain it, hard to define. But for some reason, when Sascha and I talked about it, it made perfect sense.
I’m fairly certain both of you share in the lyrics. What was the approach for that? Was it just on par with the music, just going with the immediacy of the moment, or were there any kind of parameters assigned to the lyrics as well?
Skold: No pre-made road map as far as that goes, as far as setting up parameters. Although we share in the writing, we don’t write together in that way. We have in the past sat down at a table with paper and wrote lyrics together, but this time, if anything, it was done in that back and forth kind of trade off. The ‘Why Me?’ track is actually a funny example, because Sascha has the chorus there singing ‘Why, why me?’ and I wanted to put something else behind there, and I said, ‘Why not?’ and it is almost like I am kidding, but once I put it in the track, it is like, ‘Oh, this makes perfect sense,’ and things go from there. That’s why the title is Skold vs. KMFDM; it’s like we almost didn’t write lyrics together, like we wrote against each other. It also comes down to some of the music. Some of it is done as an ‘anti,’ a juxtaposition instead of a complement, as far as how we’re structuring and building these tracks. It takes tough skin; it is very easy to get offended, and if you have a place like this where we have mutual respect and a good level of communication and snappy rapport, we can do this. But I wouldn’t recommend it to people, because it is really easy to get offended and pissed off.
It probably helps that you to have such a long history together.
Skold: But it isn’t an easy or recommended way of working, but this time it works. I don’t know if it is a foolproof recipe; it very well may be a recipe for disaster, so let’s enjoy it while we can.
A funny thing you mentioned is that you were limited on guitars, but there was the guitar track on ‘Alkohol.’
Skold: There was that one, the little bastard that sneaked by!
And you spent a good portion of your career – Shotgun Messiah, Marilyn Manson, MDFMK, your solo stuff – playing guitar and keyboards at the same time. Now with this one, the guitars are subdued. Is there any particular reason for just looking at the guitar and thinking ‘OK, none of that this time?’ What was it about the guitars that made you guys push that aside?
Skold: Well, there’s a difference. Classicism : it is an architectural term – I’m not an architect and I don’t know much about architecture – but strict classicism plays in well. Put that in the Google, kids. I’ve played a lot of guitar on the last Manson record, almost making a point of playing guitar. It is about going with unbridled enthusiasm at what you want to do at the time. I think that’s how you keep it pure and honest and clean. I could have turned around and tried to reinvent guitars and try to put guitars back in there, but just playing some guitar parts for the sake of it wouldn’t be true, wouldn’t be honest. I’ve done a lot, we have done a lot, and I think the MDFMK record is one of the superb examples of production taken to an extreme, where there are things in those songs that no one will ever hear besides me and Sascha, because in order to hear, you would have to have been there when it was put in. They’re so densely packed, they’re so multi-layered, there’s so much dimension in there that it doesn’t come across. The MFDMK record should not have been a single record. It should have been three fucking records. Any of those tracks could easily be stripped and have enough material to build three songs. That was a three for one, but unfortunately, no one bought it, so I was going to say you got a lot of bang for your buck, but no one bought it, so fuck ‘em. It is a really cool, fun record in strange ways. To me, it is at a time where MP3 became the household standard. It wasn’t just a couple of us, if I dare to include myself; searchers were using all kinds of convoluted ways to cram three, five, seven tracks on a reel to make players. It became everything and everywhere. Not only did we sing about it, we sang about it for people who were doing it. Who the fuck would buy a record like that? It is a download record. That fucking record should have been called P2P, I think.
Funny that you mentioned that. Considering how things have changed and CDs have been diminishing and MP3s and digital distribution like iTunes now have become the standard, what are your thoughts on how that’s evolved?
Skold: Well, on one hand, it doesn’t really matter what I think, but since you’re asking, Apple had these giant billboards – you know, it cost them a few thousand dollars to do that. They said ‘Rip, mix, and burn,’ and I’m like, ‘What the fuck?’ OK, but how are we going to make another one if they’re not buying the first one? How are we going to trick someone into putting up the money to actually get it done? People don’t think that far ahead of the game, so to speak, and I don’t either. I download as much crap; well, I didn’t 10 years earlier. Ask Lars Ulrich what he thinks today. I mean, that guy actually spoke about it back then and got crucified for it; he’s still crucified for it.
He’s a pariah because of it.
Skold: It is weird, because there are a lot of people who don’t bother thinking the full thought out, so to speak. I want free shit as much as the next guy. I’d rather save my money if I don’t have to spend it. But at the same time, it costs money to make this stuff. It is getting cheaper, it costs less, but if you think you can make something sound good…if we put Chris Sheppard in a room with a fancy Mac and a ProTools rig to mix the Symbols album, it would sound like a completely different album. He did it on a big fucking console in a big fucking room, and therefore it sounds the way it does. Virtual this, emulation this, it is all cool shit, and I’m enjoying it, but it is still not the real deal. It’s pictures of naked ladies; they’re not real naked ladies. There’s a thing and a place for everything, but it is virtual and emulation. The problem with making the real deal is that it is time consuming. It takes resources, and it costs money. So if you want to hear the same fucking sample bank over and over, done in the same cheesy, simple way because it is the only way to use the sample bank, generators actually making money selling the sample bank…see how vicious capitalism is? I remember when CDs came out. I remember when I first listened to a CD, and I was trying to hear how it sounded. I’m all about seeing formats come and go, changes. The only real problem I have with anything and everything is that I want to make really fucking cool music, and it is hard to do that for free. It is fucking impossible. You need to eat, you need to sleep, and you need fucking gear.
Even today it is still a big issue, and there are all these newer bands coming up that basically do it on a laptop with a copy of Reason and produce whatever albums they want. And they make it look so easy, and everyone says ‘When older bands complain, they just don’t get it.’
Skold: Totally; to a certain extent, that’s completely right. All in the box generated music I think sounds great, and has sounded great, even since it was done before the computers. Those people did a whole fucking record on one sampler. That can have a total cool charm. I’m not saying charm in a belittling way, either; I really like some of that simplistic, stylistically pure music that’s generated a certain way. But you’re comparing a ‘69 Cadillac to a Prius. It’s apples and oranges, sure. If you don’t want one, then you don’t. It might very well be a dinosaur, this fucking old thing. But again, fuck ‘em. I still know I like a big hunk of chrome, I guess I’m going to have to go to Cuba! Jesus, I’m sorry, I’m ranting, man.
Getting to the KMFDM angle, because again you did work on nine of the 11 tracks on Blitz, and from what Sascha says, he had already begun work on that album when the two of you made contact again to work on Skold vs. KMFDM. First of all, is that actually true? Was he already working on it, or did they begin at the same time?
Skold: Well, I think Sascha works pretty much the same way as I do, which means he’s always working. Once he finishes one album, he’s working on the next. It keeps going; it never really stops. We’re not vacation people, so to speak. I know that is the truth, because there are a couple of tracks that we were listening to under the notion that they may become the tracks for the Skold vs. KMFDM record, and then we decided they are probably KMFDM songs and shouldn’t be on this album, so they were left to be what they were originally intended for, which was KMFDM tracks.
Since you did work on Blitz, and you’re on so many of those tracks, what is the process like versus Skold vs. KMFDM?
Skold: They tie together, both of the concepts, but the question has double answers with one meaning. KMFDM at this point has a solid lineup and has had a solid lineup for many years. The last thing I would want to do is to fuck with that. I would like to be involved, and I would like to contribute, but I have no desire to alter lineups. As you know, I have been around at the time of upheaval before and have been associated with changes in lineups in several different bands. In all reality, as much as I would like to claim that I am the one who changes bands, it is not true. Things happen, and things happen for a reason. Things happen to be in a certain place at a certain time. So no, I didn’t kill the Symbols-era KMFDM, and no, I didn’t really kill whatever…There are many stories and it is a very multi-faceted scenario. If I could claim that I was the one who got En Esch and Günter ousted out of KMFDM, then that would be pretty hilarious. I mean, they were in even how many years prior to me coming around, building on history there that precedes me by many, many years, you know? One of the things I listened to when I got my first sampler was KMFDM, and that was that lineup you’re talking about, and this is…god, how many years earlier? When we first decided to make a Skold vs. KMFDM record and make it a unique, separate record that can stand on its own, be connected to us – obviously connected to us, and still be separate and a new division or faction if you will – the concept of me being involved with KMFDM also came up, and we chose together after talking about it to make it also defined in a certain way. And it was simple things, like I’m not going to do any vocals, I don’t want to play any guitar, because you’ve got a fantastic guitar player as it is. Actually, two of them, come to think of it. And that’s one of the things I didn’t meddle with, either, and I wanted to make sure that was really Sascha’s ball or how he decided to manage his lineup. I give you feedback and I do audio production programming, additional tracking work, arranging work, you know? Stuff like that. But I’m not going to get in the band and meddle with the band, so to speak. I’m going to try to keep really pure ears and do it this way. I think that’s very cool.
They’re planning a U.S. tour, their first in two years. From what Sascha says, you’re not going to be involved in that? Or are there no plans for that yet?
Skold: No, we haven’t really talked about that. You know, as I said, KMFDM has a fully functional, solid lineup and has for years. That, combined with me not being all that excited to jump in a fucking tour bus…I have toured so fucking much. I am not excited about touring. I don’t want to go on tour right now. It could change overnight; it goes in cycles, comes and goes. I’m not going to say I’m never going to tour again. But would I be excited about jumping on a tour bus tomorrow? Fuck no. I’ve toured the highs and I’ve toured the lows, I’ve toured the whole fucking gamut, I’ve toured for weeks on end, motherfucker, fuck! How much can you tour? I’m not going to say never, never, never. I think KMFDM has a great new album. I think Skold vs. KMFDM is a separate and unique thing. We have actually pondered the concept of some form of performances under that moniker, so to speak. It just hasn’t come to the proper shape yet. I shouldn’t really talk about it. It is completely undefined. I mean, who knows? I know that these days, you’re supposed to be touring, since no one wants to pay for albums, so you’re supposed to be out there pimping your fucking T-shirts and making a living that way.
And even that costs money, just to go on the road.
Skold: Yeah, it’s tricky stuff. At the end of the day, I keep pondering the whole concept. Will it be fun, will there be good times? For sure. Will it be a blast to jump on stage, think I still have rock shows in me? Fuck yeah. But do I want to tour right now? No.
Related to the earlier subject of file sharing, between KMFDM, your tour with ohGr, and when you joined Manson, you had done a few songs that are now being shared on the Internet called the Dead God EP. From what I understand, these are unfinished demos that had been leaked.
Skold: But you wouldn’t say to that to Tom Petty, would you? [Laughs.]
But to get back to your question, I’ve answered that question over and over, it feels like. Again, here’s the story, here’s what happened. I was working on material, what I consider to be demos, which they are until someone says they’re not. The reason someone can say they’re not is because they’re going to put it out. It takes money to change my mind; now it’s not demo, now it’s actually product. These are demos. Fuck, I can’t keep a goddamn thread. That’s why I can’t go on tour; I’d get lost. I would wander off, I’d never been seen again, fuck! [Laughs.]
The songs I had, I think there were 10 of them at that point. In order for myself to get some sort of overview of this, I’m going to burn a couple of discs, I made up a mock cover, nice little logo treatment, this bleed thing from a fucking inkjet printer and stuff. Disrupting the Orderly Routine of the Institution was the name of it, actually, I think. It is funny, the sleeve never leaked. I don’t think even all the songs properly leaked. I made less than a dozen. I think there were 10 copies made. I’m going to make a couple copies and I’m going to give them to a handful of people I consider trustworthy individuals to see if I can get some feedback. And that’s what I did. And the next thing I know, the shit is on the Internet and being downloaded partially in connection with my affiliation with Marilyn Manson. It is not how I said I’d put it out. Put it in the Google, kids! Goddamn it. So yeah, that thing has been getting some good traffic. If I could get a couple of cents off each download, that would be nice. So maybe I’m bitter there, too, because people are seeing downloading take a chunk out of their sales; I’ve seen downloading replace my sales. Once things start flying around as a download, there’s not a label in the world that says ‘Yeah, we’ll put that out!’ What are you, retarded? So they were pretty much abandoned and left as demos, and someone suggested to me that I should go back to them and finish it off and release it. And maybe I will one day, who knows?
That’s sort of like the story of Nine Inch Nails and the Broken movie, and how certain parts of the movie were blacked out. He made a 20 minute short movie for Broken back in 1992, and there were certain segments that were blacked out for two minutes at a time or something or another, and when it got leaked, Trent was able to figure out who leaked it, because every person’s copies had a different segment blacked out. So on the next album, there’s actually a note in the liner that said ‘Thanks, Gibby’ because he knew it was Gibby Haynes who leaked it.
Skold: Even back then, I had in place a very non-scientific way of serializing the material, just using really low frequencies in combination with really high frequencies, which are past what your speakers can reproduce. It was essentially like an invisible barcode, so once you import it into your favorite digital audio station work unit, you’ll actually see this audio display that your speakers wouldn’t reproduce. They might try to move if you made something really low and really high; really, it’s an invisible barcode, essentially. I had actually intended to do this later on, if I had to give the music to people I consider it questionable that I was going to employ my concept, and I never got around to it. The cat beat me to the bag.
On that note, what is the potential for new Skold music, now that you’ve done these two albums with KMFDM?
Skold: You see, I have about 10 songs I’m burning on disc. I’m going to give them to some of my best friends to listen to. Well, I have material; I just don’t have an excuse. I’m trying to figure out if I need an excuse or not, if I can just make records for my own amusement. I like to make music, period. I don’t need some big concept, some big excuse, some name, logo, business plan. I just like to make noise. I like to put compact mics on the power lines outside my house and beat the lines with a hammer, like dumb shit that is related to making music somehow, and becomes music. I’m just at the point where I’m like, is that a profession? I’ve made a living doing it, but I don’t know how. I don’t know how the hell it is going to continue, either.
Some people say now is the worst time to be a musician, and some say it is the best time. It depends on many different factors.
Skold: Music never changes, there is always going to be shit to do. On one hand, I can say that everything decent was written in previous centuries, that there’s no real point to write any more music. Well, that’s never really true. If you put enough variables in the math, you’re essentially ending up with chaos, and there’s so much to be done, so it will never really run out. If you’ve heard a lot of music, as you get older, you’ve acquired this bank of familiarized stuff in your brain. I have a hard time watching commercials without hearing the originals. Like, that’s supposed to be a new song? It’s advertised on iTunes, but I’m like, ‘That’s a Queen song and a Thin Lizzy song mashed together, and someone just put their fucking name on it. What the fuck is going on?’
Sometimes it isn’t even mashed together. It’s just someone covering it and saying ‘We did our cover of Thin Lizzy’s “Jail Break,”‘ so it’s ours now.’
Skold: Yeah. It is crazy! One of the networks did a whole season of reruns. They did it because they didn’t have money to make new programs. And then they came up with a marketing slogan and they said, ‘If you haven’t seen it before, it is new to you!’ And it is true, if you haven’t heard it before, it is new to you. And there we have it. Every six months, there’s a new band who becomes – it is actually funny, because that proves everything wrong: the fact that I remember Good Charlotte now, a year later or two or three years later, proves everybody wrong. Indeed, they should have been devoured, chewed up, and spit out a long time ago like those other bands. And people are like, who are you talking about? Fucking My Chemical Romance, those guys. The Darkness, fuck! If you go back and actually think about it, these bands were huge for a fucking month or two. And then people are like, ‘I’ve never heard of that band before, what are you talking about?’ Drives me crazy.
What are you working on now that you’d like people to know about? What haven’t we talked about that you’d like to talk about?
Skold: Kosher Coca Cola? High fructose corn syrup? I’m full of hot topics, man, and I’m not talking about the stores. I’m working on music. I’m not a hype machine. We actually did hire publicists, as you know, which is really confusing for both of us. What the fuck is this? Someone asked me what it is about industrial music that has me coming back to it every now and then. I keep returning to it, and I thought the question was kind of bizarre. But I think my answer was even better. I was like, ‘There’s something about the way things sound when you beat them with a vacuum.’
That’s probably why Neubauten has been around for 27 years, 29 years, however long. They’re still finding new objects to smash with a hammer on stage.
Skold: It’s funny, too, because things that you beat 10 years ago sound better today with new microphones and converters, and you have to smash everything again. All those old rocks go back in the studio, that rebar shit, there’s a surprising amount of that sort of stuff on the Skold vs. KMFDM record, usually very subtly and not in a showcase-y kind of way. I’m really happy how the merger of electro and organic sounds is being done. And it’s being done in such a sly way that I’m very proud of it.
Considering what we talked about with bands coming up today, what music is coming out now that you’re aware of that does interest you now?
Skold: It ties in with what I was yapping about earlier about being a dinosaur, and I mentioned Lars Ulrich and how downloading has changed everything. You know, the distribution model of music and for the end consumer, it is almost…it is existent, but it is really weird, because I find myself skipping around 200 MySpace pages before I find something I like, and I don’t have time to do this. How the fuck do normal people find time to do this? You know, where do you turn then for input? Your magazine is good, because it’s a bona fide outlet for that! But there’s a lot of blogs to go through and Web sites to go through until I find you, so it is really tricky. It can prove really time consuming. And you bump into shit and you go, ‘What the fuck, how come you’ve never heard of this before?!’ It has been a year or so since I heard the IAMX shit, and I went, ‘Holy fuck, that is very delightful stuff!’
He used to be in Sneaker Pimps.
Skold: Yeah, which I was never into, but you know, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I know I’m not perfectly normal, and I’m fine with that. I came to that realization many, many years ago, and I’m comfortable being weird, and I understand that everything you do will have an edge or something to it. That’s fine, and I don’t mind having an opinion. Fuck, it is just an opinion, and if someone finds that offensive, fuck! That’s a really funny part of the Internet, being in KMFDM, there was music, the Internet, the P2P thing…it started with a certain genre, if you know what I mean. IT people aren’t listening to fucking…you know what I’m talking about. So, electronic music and the Internet go hand in hand with the P2P thing. One of the funny things is that we started on the MDFMK thing, and we had a message board, and we were quite naïvely intending to have an exchange of communication going on, and it proved so futile instantly. And I got a little flak for being insensitive and pissy. The funny part of it is that I would meet these really loudmouthed, opinionated people in person and they wouldn’t say a fucking peep, but when they got back to their basement in front of their keyboard, it was ‘Blah, blah, blah,’ and I was like, ‘Fuck off, come on!’
It is really tricky stuff, because Nina Hagen once told me to be quiet because I was talking shit about something, and she said, ‘No no, Tim. There is no such thing as bad music, because all music is inherently good, because it is music,’ and I’m like, ‘Huh? I guess there’s some truth to that, but this shit sucks!’ It is an interesting angle, and the problem is that yes, you and I might hear something and think, ‘What the fuck is that shit?’ but some fucking guy was, in this totally hypothetical scenario, sweating and bleeding over this, laboring for many years, pouring every ounce of his heart into it, and it just isn’t any good. But it is still a valid effort.
But the most inspirational feeling of all feelings is spite. The secret to my success, for sure, is spite. I don’t do this because I love it. I do this because I hate other shit so much. I’m not ready to make an announcement as far as new music goes, but I’m making music. And another reason not to have a lot of guitars on the Skold vs. KMFDM stuff is because the new Skold has plenty of guitars on it. Not having any pre-knowledge, that it is not necessarily time to go blabbing about it. Now you understand that there is another dimension to it, another angle. The Skold vs. KMFDM record was very nice record to make because it was pure and honest, and it was quite spur of the moment. We reconnected and said, ‘Let’s fucking make a record,’ and started hammering away at it, literally, exchanging shit, not setting foot in the same room. It was all done transferring files, and the time difference worked out so we were actually working in shifts. I would be working when Sascha was sleeping, so he would wake up to fresh stuff, and the same thing for me; by the time I woke up Sascha was working at it. So, it was snowballing that way and kind of got out of control.
