THE STORY OF ACHTUNG DICHTUNG

This will be one of those "…and then it all started…” or "…the rest is history…" kind of story, but trust me, there is no other way to write it.
Many things have happened in a relatively short time, even though back then it certainly did not feel short to us. Consequently, it is very hard to remember not only all the details, but even some basic information, which I was asked to write in the form of a bio/info, after 25 or more years.
I did not spend all the years that passed since then in a monastery, protected from "unsafe" & "unhealthy" lifestyle to have well preserved brain, lungs, liver and memory. Therefore, this task is a hard one. I have no clue how long or short this text will get and whether I will be able to provide all the facts required for this specific occasion.
It all started back at the end of 80's / beginning of 90's in Zagreb, Croatia. Bojan and I met in elementary school (class pals) and were into art from the early age. Close to the end of that period, we started being increasingly interested (among other things) in music, or better said, in producing/inflicting the same feeling we had when listening to sounds we found very cool to people around us. Bojan and I were heavily influenced by "Gothic Rock" (or whatever it is called this days), and actually started messing in his room with some of our own ideas and an acoustic guitar
I am not sure what would happen if Bojan had not met Nixa in high school (again, they were class pals) and/or if Nixa never brought hard core music influence into our little future commune. Most likely, this story would develop in some other direction. As we started hanging out, along with some of our pals, who are connected to this story and who remained our friends to this day, we knew that we wanted to make music. We did not know what music we wanted to produce, how we wanted to produce it and what tools we needed to produce it. We did not have any equipment but we knew we want to start a band. However, that's exactly what we did - we started a band.
In 1991, following several musical sessions in our rooms, at parties and strange places like balconies or roof tops of Kindergartens, we finally started collecting, little by little, basic music equipment with the idea of setting up a practice room in a rented garage.
Bojan bought or maybe borrowed a cheap guitar, while Nixa build (yes, indeed) his own bass. I think he called it "a tear", as it had a body in the shape of a tear. We also got a big ol', "Čajavec" amp (Rudi Čajavec was a Yugoslav electronics brand made in Banja Luka). I have no clue if it was a bass or a guitar amp, but it did not really matter, as we used it to plug in guitar, bass, voice microphone, and god knows what else.
I am not entirely sure what my role was to be in the band (even though there were plans for me to "sing"), so we decided that for starters I’ll bang on the ""drums"", as we didn't had a drummer and I had a relatively good sense of rhythm. My "drums"" turned out to be a couple of carton boxes, ventilation pipes from the garage, combined with a pan or two. That was the start of our "garage days".
We quickly found out/realized/agreed, that we could allow another band to our garage in order to share the equipment and the cost of rent. This idea was a bit scary at first, considering the loss of independence in our little "home", but at the same time we liked the possibility of having a full (and functional) equipment. At the end, we shared the garage with friendly dudes from the band named "Hell's Bells".
In the meantime, a couple of pals we were hanging out with those days (and who stayed friends for life) joined our band from time to time, trying out different instruments. Hof, now already a legendary (and rightfully so) illustrator, comic book author and visual artist, started playing drums and Mexo, now already legendary (and rightfully so) recording/mixing engineer and musician, became a vocal. At the end, when the line up changes settled, Hof remained on the drums, and I ended up as a screamer on the microphone.
Mexo later played guitar & bass for Peach Pit, Lunar, Mad Cow, Tanker and other bands , while Hof played in bands/projects like: Lijeni Hinko, Projekt=Projekt, Stampedo, Merde Sur La Mer, and Ispričnica za Pionira, among others.
Already heavily influenced by Hard Core (from Nixa's side), we had a bit of a "problem" as we started to fall in love with bands like "Mudhoney", "Fugazi", "No Means No" and such, (and that was just the start of what was to come later). At that time it was not easy to combine those kind of influences but, we had a strong urge to do it, so we did it as much and the best as we could. Style-wise, band went through several phases. We chose or even invented the different genre tags for each phase, for instance "Garbage Core". "Skate Core" was also used at one point, as some of the members were very much (physically & mentally) into it (don‘t forget that back then it was still considered underground & pretty cool).
Our first live performance happened at some festival in a place one would never ever expect for an underground band: "Dom Sportova"- Zagreb’s indoor sporting arena.
Hof gradually moved on, so I returned to drums (the real drum set this time), doing vocals at the same time. We started to get gigs/parties booked, so we played couple of them, again as a trio.
That was 1991, a year that brought us a lot of things, inner peace & outward war, literally.
1992 brought us, amongst other things, new band members, gigs, new garages, and the first studio recordings. The times were changing, slowly but surely, and so did we: band members’ musical style preferences were not 100% aligned anymore. I have become increasingly addicted to "Noise Rock", while Bojan got closer to metal music. To be in line with the metal genre, a band is supposed to have a solo guitar player, so Bojan was determent to find the most suitable guitarist one Zagreb/Croatia has to offer. There enters Miro, more then qualified guitar player coming from the metal scene, but open enough to diverse combinations, (I have used expression “diverse combinations” because we did not like the word "Crossover" as a stamp on our music style).
A new, fourth member, Jihm arrived around that time. He was a good fit; we needed his contribution, and he surely needed a change after being distracted from his day-to-day life for the second time by the military draft). Jihm was recommended to us by Maha from "Alcotest" (also a great guy/musician who welcomed us also in his band's garage at a different location when we got fed up by neighbors & snipers at our original garage).
Along with the concerts, our own material began to accumulate, so we started planning the first studio recordings ("Watch Your Head") for fall of 1992. This is where we met The Muratović Brothers (Gordan & Berko) who owned "Funhouse Studio". At first we all thought the name of the studio was "Studio Zaklan" (Slaughtered Studio) – due to some old scratched out sticker that we saw on the door...)
We clicked with Gordan and Berko right away. Shortly after recording our material, we moved to the studio to have rehearsals on a weekly basis. "Saratoga", a band in which Berko played drums, practiced at the studio as well. At one point Jihm left for work in Germany, so during that period Berko and I sometimes switched on drums for the gigs. When Jihm came back, we started producing completely new material, style-wise very different from the previous work.
At the same time, I started working on some new songs at home, on a borrowed the guitar and the old amp we used back at the beginning. I have tried to bring, as much as possible, the passion I felt in the music I was hooked on back then into the band, but without disturbing the flow. I guess my timing was good, because most of us were ready for a change.
My idea was to incorporate myself playing the third guitar for this material, instead of just singing. We did a couple of rehearsals in that formation, and, if you ask me, it sounded awesome! Unfortunately, it seemed that not everybody felt the same way, or was not wiling to apply it to recording of the current material. Consequently, there were some hiccups in the group (to put it mildly) and I went out for a “looooong smoke".
The rest of the band continued rehearsing for the recordings, with Nixa & Miro taking over the vocal duties. As the recording process was coming to an end (March 1994) I was invited (or maybe dragged in) to do my vocal parts. I went hesitantly to a bar next to the studio for a conversation with the boys, and, with that same hesitation, came back to the studio to check what they've been up to. Although it didn't feel exactly right about how all of this went, I did my vocal parts; placed the headphones on, got into those tunes, and switched off... This is how "Nights with White Satan" was recorded.
Shortly after this recording session, Bojan and Nixa decided to move to Amsterdam/Netherlands, so in essence, the band said goodbye with this material. It was a goodbye to each other as well as to everyone else around them. This included "the (underground) scene" at the time, to which this material was left for dissection - to those amongst them who actually cared to hear it.
We might have lost some of the old' school hard core fans with our "new style" (recently i heard the expression "Desert Rock" as a possible tag for it), but I believe we gained a certain momentum, which soon turned out to be the final move, at least under Achtung Dichtung name.
Just before Bojan & Nixa went away, the original core/trio of the band got together in the Funhouse studio, for sort of farewell rehearsal. We exchanged the instruments, with Bojan on drums, and myself playing guitar. Nixa stayed on bass. He was born with the bass glued to his hands, so you can not tear it away from him, even if you tried. The impact of that farewell rehearsal/gathering left a profound impact on me, all the way to this day. I came home that evening, started playing the guitar and made bunch of songs throughout the night. We went back to the studio the next day and recorded these songs in the fastest and most primitive way possible. Soon after I found my self hitchhiking with Bojan and Nixa to Amsterdam. Gone Bald was born, and the rest is history...
While we were building something from scratch out there in Amsterdam, back in Zagreb Miro & Berislav Sabolic took care that the album. "Nights with White Satan" came out on Berislav's "Ill in The Head Records" as a limited edition cassette mini LP, with the drawing on the cover made by Hof. It has been sold out for a long time, and even I did not own one until recently. After all these years, this is the first time the material has been digitized & available for people did not hear it from the original cassette.

THE AFTERMATH

Here is what happened after the end of the “Actung Dichtung” story…
Gone Bald recorded and released three albums in the original line up ( "Kekere Aquarium" & "100% recordings" record labels). One album was released under name "Bite" (the project Bojan & I did when Nixa unfortunately could not go on tour with us). There were also a couple of "off studio recordings" that were never released, as well as the last album we did together, "22", recorded by Bojan and Nixa in our rehearsal hole (also never released). Shortly after that material was recorded, Bojan & Nixa decided to move back to Zagreb/Croatia.
Back in Zagreb they got together with Mexo. He was now knees deep into his new (excellent) band "Peach Pit", and was starting to mess around with recording. They have put together a studio named “Kozmo" in Mexo's grandpa's house, and started a new band called "Lunar". Lunar’s first line up consisted of Bojan, Nixa, Mexo, and Franjo (also from Peach Pit). They have recorded and released critically acclaimed album “There Is No 1” in 2000. It was followed by a single and another album four years later.
Miro was involved with couple of bands after A.D., but I am not really sure which.
Jihm played drums in a band called "Kamaradi" 20+ years after A.D.
Muratovic brothers formed a ultra-successful band "Jinx.
I stayed in Amsterdam, continued with Gone Bald, as well as other bands & projects like "Pink Noise Quartet", "Blisters", "De Reizende Verkoper", Heroface, and my solo project.
While Achtung Dichtung still existed, we also played in /shared members with many other bands/projects.
Jihm, was the oldest and the most experienced of us. He played drums in several bands before A.D.: "Freddie Krueger" (which later became "Anesthesia"), "Blef", "Patareni", "Alcotest". During his time with A.D. he also had adventures with: "5 Fingers" and "Ha Det Bra".
Bojan played guitar with "5 Fingers", Nixa played bass in "Prsten" and "Bark".
I played with: "Ha Det Bra" (vocals), "Prsten" (drums), "Tornado Devastated Texas" (guitar), "Boris Minor" (drums), "Bark" (drums).
I might have forgotten some of the facts, characters and exact years, or guessed them wrongly, for which I apologize. I also want to thank Bojan & Jihm for memory refreshment of some details.

Check out some of our post Achtung Dichtung music at:
gonebald.bandcamp.com/music
lunarkozmo.bandcamp.com

Razorblade Jr. (Ico)