The (almost true) return of techno pioneers Fraktus is closely bound up with Ibiza. Whilst Dickie Schubert and Bernd Lade stayed at home after the trio split up, Soundfrickler and the wearer of knitted caps, Torsten Bage, were drawn to the island
Islands have always featured in the story of rock and pop music. Songs such as Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita”, Belafonte’s “Island in the sun” or Die Ärzte’s anthem “Westerland” are as much a part of the mindscape as the Isle of Wight festival, the Sziget festival on an island in the Danube near Budapest or the Rock’n Roll Butterfahrt to Helgoland. Then there’s Jimi Hendrix’s last live concert: where else but the Isle of Fehmarn?
“Fraktus” director Lars Jessen (“Dorfpunks”) has done his homework and knows full well the island’s importance as a refuge for chart toppers. For instance, Michel Cretu once lived on the west coast of Ibiza. It’s true that Trio’s Stefan Remmler wasn’t actually there: he headed for Lanzarote. Unlike Stefan Zauner who swapped Munich’s freedom for Ibiza’s. Film producer Klaus Maeck on the choice of location: “Nowadays Ibiza and Mallorca are the islands where German mainstream pop producers can make good money and do so while soaking up the sunshine. This doesn’t only go for DJs supplying their partying pals on holiday with dance music.”
How does the DJ himself see it, what does Torsten Bage have to say? He’s not exactly over the moon to be here. “The island’s a scrapheap of hippies and disco hangers-on. Practically all I do is commute between my finca and the disco. That’s according to the man with the knitted cap and the tramp stamp. Bage forms part of the band Fraktus whose made-up story Jensen’s film tells in such loving detail that you simply wish you could believe them. Congenial like Bage – frustrated at being denied entrance to the history of pop music, disgusted by his contemporary audience – hanging around on the terrace of “Hierro de Puta” as he calls his finca.
One shouldn‘t make the mistake of tarring Germans’ favourite islands with the same brush. Klaus Maeck chuckles when he recalls filming. “It was weird when we wanted Willi Herren to appear at a nightclub in Ibiza considering that what he produces is Mallorca sound. We had to film before the crowds arrived in the disco and needed extras because instead of inspiring them to dance, our song “Geilianer” would have driven the clubbers away,” said Maeck about the subtle differences in the target group.
In the film the island finally comes across as steeped in history, cathartic meaning even. Where better for the band to meet up again after 25 years? They party and drink, dance and argue. In the end they sum up the reunion: “That’s just how I feel. Or how Fraktus so inimitably put it in song: “Oh, oh, oh yeh!”.
