**Part One**

FACE CULTURE: What’s the first song you wrote for this album?

SANDRA NASIC: It’s a first single.

FACE CULTURE: First single?

SANDRA NASIC: Yeah.

FACE CULTURE: That’s ‘Fever’?

SANDRA NASIC: No. ‘The Name of My Baby’.

FACE CULTURE: Okay, I thought it was ‘Fever’.

SANDRA NASIC: Oh, it’s a double A single so of course you’re right, it’s hard to decide… But it was ‘The Name of My Baby.

FACE CUTURE: Do you remember when and where you wrote that?

SANDRA NASIC: Yeah, exactly. I wrote it in a little studio in Berlin at 9:45 *laugh* and I was playing chords and I sat there and I said ‘ok now I’m writing’ and I knew that I wanna write a kind of ‘thank you’ song for the rock’n’roll - for this baby that I had always with me or in me. And yeah I wrote ‘The Name of My Baby’ I don’t know, I think one night. But I had like fifteen different versions.

FACE CULTURE: Okay, so it’s really a tribute to music?

SANDRA NASIC: Yeah.

FACE CULTURE: And when was it? Do you remember?

SANDRA NASIC: I guess it was… From now on, I guess it was two years ago.

FACE CULTURE: Okay. So it was after Guano Apes?

SANDRA NASIC: Yeah, I mean not immediately, like after the band, but I guess half a year or something later I wrote that song.

FACE CULTURE: In that half year before you didn’t write any songs but did you know that you wanted to do an album or new songs?

SANDRA NASIC: The first half year I moved to Berlin and I really just wanted to do no music in front of the business thing. I really shut the doors and I locked myself into the studio sometimes. I really wanted to get back to my music and to find my music in the studio but very slow and very sensitive. I didn’t want to push myself, you know. Because I always was pushing myself and we were so over the whole place, everywhere touring, everywhere… that I really needed a little break and time for really finding my own music.

FACE CULTURE: Are you saying maybe you had lost yourself a little bit? Over the year?

SANDRA NASIC: No. I never lost myself but I felt that it was wrong to… it would be a wrong decision if I would stay there like it was. I really wanted to go on with my own search if you can call it like that. The achievement to grow as a person and as a musician I couldn’t do that in that area somehow. I don’t know why but it was like that I felt…

FACE CULTURE: It felt limited to you in a certain way?

SANDRA NASIC: Maybe, maybe somehow stuck just into one case, you know? And I felt it was wrong somehow and I really had to go away first of all of that – leave, leave this basement and ground, and whatever. Even if everybody was saying ‘Oh my God, how can you do that? You’re bla bla bla this is so good’ and I mean, ‘we’re so successful and it’s a lot of fun, why do this lalalala’ and I couldn’t really explain, it what just a feeling…

FACE CULTURE: You never felt any regret that you left the band?

SANDRA NASIC: Never, never and I will never.

FACE CULTURE: And because?

SANDRA NASIC: Because I’m just following my heart like I always did and this has nothing to do with success or with pressure or whatever, it’s just… I follow my own path, you know? And I’m happy with that. Of course it was a very hard decision to make ‘cos it was like… all my life around this circle but I felt unsure and I was also scared in the beginning but I knew I had to do it so I did it. And I was really happy that I did it.

**Part Two**

FACE CULTURE: Wasn’t it scary for, let’s say, the first year without a band? You in a studio, alone?

SANDRA NASIC: No. You know what, in the studio it never feels wrong for me. When I went back to the studio and slowly got the connection to my music, I really felt like now ‘the galaxy’s open’ and now I really can dive everywhere I want to. I really can lose myself in the world of tones and in the world of pictures, and it was wonderful. It really felt so right, and this was my personal success, you know? Being in the studio and being able to open those little worlds.

FACE CULTURE: Obviously, it sounds very different from whatever you did before. Can you name a song that was for you personally a real breakthrough, like ‘wow, there’s something I couldn’t have done before’?

SANDRA NASIC: Oh, a lot of songs. ‘Mecasanova’ for example, is a song which is really raw and dark, also sexy somehow, and I guess this wouldn’t be a song you would find on an Apes album, for example. I mean, we also tried different things, always, in the band. But now I can really show different parts of myself, not only one part. Because I know this hard, ‘male’ part I have in me. I know it very good, very well. And I love also to do it and to live it, but there are some other parts, who really also need to breathe, you know? And to grow, so for example ‘Mecasanova’ is one of those songs.

FACE CULTURE: One thing I thought when I heard it was ‘hey, it sounds much more feminine’. Is it something you couldn’t do with the Guano Apes?

SANDRA NASIC: It’s hard to explain, I mean… I’m not good in those questions, you know, ‘what have been when you do this or that!’, and I don’t know. But I just know that I never felt like this when I was with the band. Because you’re surrounded by very male, dominative, ‘testosteron’ males *mimics*, this is cool and funny for me also and shows a part, and it was a kind of an expression for me and a little revolution for me, but now I’m looking for more things. There are more things to achieve and there are more ‘little revolutions’ to fight for. For example, make every kind of music *laughs*. I don’t know. I really just follow my instinct. Follow your instinct! *laughs*

FACE CULTURE: Okay, that’s always a good advice…

SANDRA NASIC: Yes.

FACE CULTURE: Yes because there are also a lot of electronic sounds on the album, and you also worked with T.Raumschmiere…?

SANDRA NASIC: Yes, yes…

FACE CULTURE: That was also something totally new for you?

SANDRA NASIC: Yeah of course, I mean, when you’re in Berlin you’re surrounded by so many electro parties, DJs, whatever, musicians, and there are so many creative people there, so of course a city like that always inspires you. I’m not always in the same surrounding, there’s everything. And it inspired me, but when I was in the studio I had all these instruments there, I had a little KORG keyboard for example, and I had a bass, guitar, whatever… And I used them, I just used them, and when I felt good in these tones, for example when I played the keyboard for ‘The Signal’ or something like that, it felt good. I composed it, and this is it. I really just write songs ‘out of my stomach’, and I’m not scared to use any kind of instrument.

**Part Three**

FACE CULTURE: Can you say this is only the beginning of your new journey?

SANDRA NASIC: This is definitively the beginning of my journey, whatever will happen.

FACE CULTURE: Can you already see in the next direction, where it’s going to?

SANDRA NASIC: Yeah maybe, I don’t know. Everything is possible, I never know what’s gonna be the next step but I guess I’m gonna be a lot more faster than I was with this record. I mean I really needed a lot of time.

FACE CULTURE: Did it really take three years to make it?

SANDRA NASIC: No. If you really just watch the production it was like, a year maybe. And another year for searching, writing, throwing away and whatever. But I guess for the next time I would be faster.

FACE CULTURE: Can you say there’s a certain theme lyrically to this album?

SANDRA NASIC: It’s all about the name of the album, it’s ‘The Signal’, you know? It’s all about this… I have a picture in the inside which shows the feeling I had in the moment I was connected again to my music. *points at the album booklet* I don’t know if it’s in there…

FACE CULTURE: Which one is it?

SANDRA NASIC: There’s a little diamond… This one. You know, and I felt there was this signal in my throat, like when you fall in love again, and your heart is pumping. When I felt it again, the connection to my music, I felt it here *points at her throat* …the love, so this was ‘the signal’ and this is the theme, maybe, of the record. As you want it.

FACE CULTURE: So ‘the signal’ is you falling in love again with your music.

SANDRA NASIC: Yeah.

FACE CULTURE: Okay, also about the cover. What’s with the snakes? Snakes all over.

SANDRA NASIC: Yeah snakes, I love snakes! *laughs* I just wanted to have a kind of a symbol, and for me a snake is a very strong symbol. You think it’s cold and raw and glossy, and oily and whatever, but it’s not. It’s warm, and it’s dry.

FACE CULTURE: Did you ever touch a snake?

SANDRA NASIC: Of course!

FACE CULTURE: Do you have snakes at home?

SANDRA NASIC: No, I think they’re better in the nature than in my home. *laughs* I also like the mystic behind it, so it’s kind of a symbol for me. Also musically.

FACE CULTURE: Okay. If you look at yourself ten years ago, just in the beginning of the Guano Apes, and you compare yourself with now…

SANDRA NASIC: Ten years older! *laughs*

FACE CULTURE: Well there are obviously a lot of differences, but maybe also things that are still ‘very you’? Do you recognize the Sandra from ten years ago?

SANDRA NASIC: I’m the same.

FACE CULTURE: Yeah?

SANDRA NASIC: Yeah. I was ‘me’ when I was five years old, I was like now. I never felt different. I was born and I was me! *laughs*

FACE CULTURE: And can you describe that ‘me’ in a few words?

SANDRA NASIC: Listen to the album, then you’ll know who I am maybe. No, I never felt that I… when I was five, I knew that I’m gonna be like that.

**Part Four**

FACE CULTURE: You talked about this ‘journey’, so do you think you’re changing a lot also?

SANDRA NASIC: I don’t think that I change myself, it’s just the places and the people, and the music maybe, that’s what changes. But for me I can say that I’m always somehow the same person.

FACE CULTURE: You already mentioned ‘Mecasanova’. Is there a song that you’re most proud of? Can you pick one?

SANDRA NASIC: I’m proud of every song I did on that record. ‘Right Lane’ was very important for me, and of course ‘Mecasanova’ also was a really important part, and the moment when we wrote that. Every song is somehow different, and they are all my ‘babies’ so it would be so wrong to say, ‘I love this baby more than the other one’. *laugh*

FACE CULTURE: Okay, but everybody has their own favourite.

SANDRA NASIC: Yeah of course, every [song] has a different taste. Some are more rough, other songs are more like an electronic mixture of things, so… yeah.

FACE CULTURE: What kind of music do you listen most to these days, or you feel influenced by?

SANDRA NASIC: In the morning I listen to jazz *laugh*, and then in the evening it’s getting harder and harder.

FACE CULTURE: And then, what’s the last thing you play in the day?

SANDRA NASIC: My own music! *laugh* When I’m in a car I always listen to my tracks, and… I really listen to every kind of music, I’m so open to everything. It’s hard for me to say, ‘I love this and I love that’, but there are so many good bands I love to listen to, or projects or whatever… It’s all about music, so it can be everything.

FACE CULTURE: Can you name a few bands?

SANDRA NASIC: Now, at the moment?

FACE CULTURE: Yeah, at this moment, bands that you really like?

SANDRA NASIC: Erm… Snuffed By The Yakuza for example, the last one from the Blood Brothers, or Muse, or… what else… Mars Volta, At The Drive-In, I love Frank Black and The Pixies, I love… what else… *undefined sounds:)* T.Raumschmiere for example.

FACE CULTURE: All sorts of stuff.

SANDRA NASIC: Everything.

FACE CULTURE: Thank you. Thank you very much.

SANDRA NASIC: Thank you too.