I think we saw our reaction coming from Dada, but at the same time, it formed into punk, which was very much a reaction to the social conditions. That was part of it for us as well, and that's why we were kind of swept along with punk.
It was an important period for us, because even though we weren't a "punk band", and what became a model for a punk band, we were able to be dragged along by the spirit of that time.
Crackdown, the video, interpreted and reflected a sense of authority and austerity and a sense of slight, impending doom.
In the 80s, we were still living in a kind of Cold War environment.
In that period, we had the Cold War mentality imbued through us - the Post-war [environment] and the Cold War. I think we were reflecting some of that. This was before the Wall collapsed, etc.
We've always been journalists - and have seen ourselves in that way. But we sort of recontextualized it through music.
We've always been observant of things, and I think Crackdown was very much like that and the film interpretation was that journalistic view of that situation.
Some of it was shot in Berlin, but a lot of it was filmed in Hamburg, along the Reeperbahn in Hamburg in the famous red light district. Kino is obviously German and "film" and "cinema" and we were always cinematic in our thinking.
[Kino] worked really well as a song title, and to build into a lyric, and also how we embraced mulit-media at the time.
I think probably underneath it all, film [Kino] has its own rhythm and its own dynamic, and we were trying to capture the movement of film and cross-reference it with music.
I think that's the fascinating thing that exists now. This contrasts with a celebrity art and celebrity music culture.
