(Original on www.kaizers.no)
The English version of the article can be found here on kaizers.no. The content is almost identical to the Norwegian article, but the part about how the deal actually came about is missing:- This was really a mixture of connections, hard work and promising new material. Daniel Lieberberg, who is "our man", is the director of the rock department of Universal Germany. We got to know him through his brother André Lieberberg, who does the booking in Germany for us through their father's booking office, Marek Lieberberg Konzertagentur, which is the leading booking office for the region of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and among others does big festivals like Rock Im Park and Rock Am Ring.
- Daniel was told by André to come and see us in the club Knaack in Berlin in fall last year, he skipped the Chemical Brothers' concert that he was supposed to go to and came to see the Kaizers gig, and that's actually where the first seeds were planted for the following cooperation. Daniel has sinced checked out our albums, saw several concerts, checked the attitude of Universal in Europe, and thought about how to fit a niche product such as Kaizers Orchestra into a major company, and now he wanted to sign us. What is most important in our eyes, and what made it even more interesting, is that it's first of all the new material they love down there. We have never made better songs and were more "on the point" than now, so that's why everybody is curious how it will suit the taste of the European market.
- You go from an indie label to a major label, do you have any pains about doing that, as in a lot of ways you have been a symbol that one can go without major labels?
- Actually no. It's so easy to see only one side, and dream about how "real" it is to work with indie-labels, and how cynic and business-oriented major labels are, but the thing is that we have a very good impression of those people and the apparatus we're gonna work with, those are extremely committed and music-interested guys, and we feel convinced that it's the best for Kaizers Orchestra. Time will show whether we were right, but we have had success before with following our intuition, and we haven't planned to stop trusting it.
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- What about Norway?
- Norway is outside of this contract. We're working to set up a Norway contract as we speak, but it's not fixed yet.