dreddup1MH18: Your first record is the soundtrack to the movie „Noir“ that was never finished. What is the reason not to be finished? Tell us more about the story behind?

MiKKa: Before that one in 1998, we had a lot of ep’s and diy cassettes and some of our friends heard our cassettes and were very interested in doing a movie with our music. This movie called ‘Noir’ was partly claymation, partly documented theater. It all started good, we got the whole script, talked with animators and director. It all started and we already had the themes and songs for the soundtrack. Unfortunately, during that time in Serbia, there was another war in the air, and one of the animators left the country, leaving the project unfinished. We decided to print this cassette tape anyway. I think I have one copy left somewhere, it was limited to 25 copies.

MH18: Eighteen years history. Much or less are for a group. Are you satisfied from the achievements or you still have way to go?

MiKKa: We always try to move the boundaries of our music and go beyond the last project/concert we had. 18 years is a long journey for this kind of band. We had many concerts, engaged with many different artists and people and also had the opportunity to play really big shows and also to survive the roughest diy small shows. Band was always in the middle – we liked the underground and the aesthetics of dirty noises but on the other hand we loved the fat modern electronics. That’s the way we always do it, and we are not done yet. All of my friends I met through my music and that alone is the biggest achievement of all. It get us together, it called to them. I owe some more ideas to that music, it brought me happiness. It’s all about the energy between us and the people, knowing that over there is someone who corresponds, feels it, that is what keeps us going.

MH18: dreDDup… what it means?

MiKKa: It means ‘confronting the fear within’. It also means ‘You’ll be fucked with what you bring within yourself to our show’.

MH18: Dark Industrial in Serbia. How it works? Who and what are your inspirations?

MiKKa: How it works? It doesn’t. hahahaha… Unfortunately, we are pretty much alone. Sure, there are many home-based projects of industrial and industrial rock sound, but only a few live acts that really do it live. So we do it underground style performing along punk, hardcore, alternative and electronics bands. In 2007. a couple of us gathered and we made Crime:Scene records (Dark:Scene collective), and tried to bring the dark electronics, industrial and noise bands from Balkan together. It worked as a internet record label and scene promoter. We gathered more than 400 projects and bands from Balkans and released a dozen of releases. During 2007-2010, we organized a lot of industrial and dark rock mini-festivals. It all worked well for a couple of years, and then went to sleep. Now, all that it’s left are maybe 3-4 live bands and memories. Gosh, I miss that time of noise…

MH18: I read that after many experiments with the sound you’re started to weave more commercial (whatever that means :)) elements in your music to reach a larger audience. Was it some kind of compromise for you? To what extent one artist should sacrifice his uniqueness at the expense of glory?

MiKKa: Through years I tried different genres, from techno,dnb,punk,to industrial rock to hiphop, dance, noise rock, dark electronics, etc…. Somehow, synthpop and everything synth rock oriented was never my way of music and so I tried that on our last record. A lot of people said that it went commercial, but still, I do not think so. dreDDup was always between commercial and underground, we sometimes go left, sometimes right…. but it was always underground stuff.

MH18: And in this context, do you think you’re famous?

MiKKa: No. I think – therefore I am.

MH18: How you understand the Gothic culture, like music, lifestyle and subculture?

MiKKa: I spent several years listening and researching the oldschool goth bands and went out of it 5 or 6 years ago. I liked the old gothic sound – that bands which sounded like dark punk, because in my youth I was a punk kid and learned about industrial bands later through my older friends and their vinyls, cassettes and CD’s. This new „goth“ music is not my cup of tea, it reminds me of diesel culture of the 90’s and the rave parties. We had street fights with that kind of people back in the day. When I hear it, it reminds me of that. I like the subculture, but not this new soundtrack. I think it went wrong somewhere in mid 90’s where it began to mix with a lot of teenage stuff. I was always more industrial oriented, I liked more anger-driven stuff and I don’t see gothic and industrial scenes together – but damn – they always call us to perform at these gothic festivals, hahahaha 😀

dreddup2MH18: How gothic you think you are?

MiKKa: Not at all. We are industrial/punk driven band. I like to call our music ‘demonic electronics with massacre industrial taste’. A lot of fans try to label us with this and that, through years we got too much labels. We change our sound a lot – we have no boundaries. At the point when our ‘El Conquistadors’ album came out, they all started calling us ‘industrial goth band’, simply because of slow slow and dark feel of the album. Before that we we’re called ‘industrial metal’ band, before that simply – ‘freaks’ and some people still don’t know what to say about our music. I don’t see us as part of any scene in particular, we get along with different subcultures and different opinions, lifestyles etc.. I love different points of views and difference all-in-all. Subcultures are mostly for walled-in music lovers.

MH18: Let’s talk about music and your albums, because there are interesting things to discuss. All your albums are conceptual and tell some story. Do you think in this way the messages you want to give over are stronger, or is easier to create when you have some story to tell?

MiKKa: People change through years, we all have some stories that follow us from this period or that period. The same thing is with music of dreDDup. A lot of people came and went through this band, stories were different every 2-3 years. We all brought our energy together and had something to say. First 3 albums were time based. Past – Future – Present. Than we came to the point we changed the line-up completely and went into some new energy, so the story of the fourth album is ‘the new beginning’ or ‘rebirth’. The fifth one talked about inner self, the silence, the pure, desire, the inner shadows… The sixth one went into imagination, sex and celebration of life. Now we are working on some new stuff, we’ll see. I don’t like the word ‘concept’, because when you have a concept, you mathematically calculate and build something in the first place. I like to go by feeling while making a song, to play with the sounds and melodies, to experiment and see what comes next. It’s always about something within – without that we would be playing ‘radio singles’ for badly-fucked older women.

MH18: Your album „Future Porn Machine“ tells us for a future world; „In the years to come this civilization will lost its taste. Machines will overcome and pornography will destroy the remains of something once called art. „- Do you think humanity really walk on this direction and how close this machine Apocalypse is?

MiKKa: Future Porn Machine is not a personification of some Terminator-like sex robot future – it is mainly the story of a human being in constant battle with ego, time, money and data. The pornographic reality, where you act naked in front of everyone (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube..) but you lack of love for the partner, nature, your inner self and you just do stuff automatically. Act automatically, – when you go to the bank you act mechanically by it’s rules, when you sit in the cab – you become a passenger automatically, in store you become a consumer….We split our personalities 200 times a day and become someone else for every different situation. We lost something – something that we gain by birth, the look, the imagination, uniqueness… We are in constant hurry, but we’re not running from anyone else than ourselves. That album talks about that mostly, it is a search for that first taste – the first you, the pure one, unchained and hidden from laws, mechanical ways, religion, pornographic art etc…

MH18: On the album cover is painted the goddess Nike. What is the relation between her and the messages in the album? What she symbolizes?

MiKKa: Nike symbolizes the victory, but on the album cover we see her without her head. So, the message is : „In the future – we will all be winners, beheaded – but satisfied“.

MH18: In „El Conquistadors“ you’re turn inwards to the spiritual sensitivity of people in today’s global world. Why in your opinion people increasingly losing their personal identity and who is the biggest Demon of modern man?

MiKKa: People search for themselves in others, that’s the problem. They spend too much time trying to become something they’re not. And who is the biggest demon? They are, themselves. No one can hurt you bad enough as yourself.

MH18: The lost Dreams are bringing more pain or the fact that we often have to be a hypocrite and get „empty inside“ with only reason to survive in society?

MiKKa: The most difficult and truthful art was born in most horrific conditions, in pain, poverty, hunger and war. It is funny that only when he losses everything else, man gains his inner eye and turns to himself as a savior. The more pain – the better art indeed. You can learn a lot from pain, from ceremonies of pain and stories about the pain, you can dream the pain, you can feel the pain. Pain is essential thing in art – the more pain you feel in it, the more your thoughts scream. The more your thoughts scream – the more alive you feel.

MH18: Who El Conquistador(s) is? A man given up his dreams, locked in himself and daily struggling with his emptiness or this one who will show his Demons to the world without care of anything?

MiKKa: It is a personification of ancestral defiance and greed. El Conquistador was a man endangered by other cultures, the man who destroyed in the name of nation and religion. The warrior, the butcher, the rapist… Today, we have a dozen bastards of that same El Conquistador, trying to come back in their mothers womb for comfort. America to Europe. Europe to Asia…. we see it every day.. „Every Night and every Morn, some to Misery are Born. Every Morn and every Night, some are Born to sweet delight. Some are Born to sweet delight, some are Born to Endless Night.“

MH18: Your fourth album presents dreDDup’s world. The symbolically passing „beyond“ is the transition from childhood to maturation (if Im correctly understood) when a person realize that Neverland and unicorns are gone or have degenerated into something that is not wanted. Even that you say: „You will never be alone.“ Where on this road we stay alone? Is it easy to find someone to cry for us when we realize that we have lost his Neverland?

MiKKa: Neverland is lost only if you choose to lose it. You can not see the other worlds with eyes of this one. The ones who see it are lonely, but filled with joy and awareness. ‘dreDDup’ album talks about the new beginning, the new era of something, in your life, your love, your hate, death…. If you want to leave the speeding car, you first have to stop it, otherwise you’ll end up in blood and broken bones if you decide to jump out of it. There is a time in life when the pause is needed, so that the mind is focused and free of haunting past.

MH18: Yet after „Nautilus“ you are announced that this will be your last album. However you got another one record and even planing a new album for the next year. What provoked your will to go on?

MiKKa: I had no muse for a long time. It’s difficult to wait for it, it sometimes comes in a dream, sometimes in a moment. And when you don’t have it for a long time, you think that she went away. I thought it would be nice to close the story with ‘Nautilus’ and announced it. But muse is something you can not predict or control, it came back – big time! – so I decided to try something and it brought me some new songs. As I said, dreDDup is made through feeling, I won’t do it just for the ‘sake of it’, I’ll do it only if I feel a need to.

dreddupMH18: Do you think you still have much more to tell to the world? Will you’re prepared something special to your fans in Bulgaria which awaiting your appearance on Gothic Fest Sofia?

MiKKa: We still have some stories that are left unspoken, yes. We are making our seventh album, It will be the best one yet. I’m sure of it. As for the festival – we are preparing one ‘best of’ show for Bulgarian people on the festival. Since we’re playing there for the first time I think we need to present everything. We will give you every era of dreDDup, a lot of different styles and colors of our music. We hope that you will enjoy this celebration of dark sounds and inner screams with us. Thank you! 😉

MH18: Thank for that interview. Can’t wait to see you live.