A friend of ours called ACHIM SZEPANSKI, who created both BLACK OUT RECORDS and certainly GERMANY’S best TECHNO label FORCE INC, lived in FRANKFURT, and we would spend each weekend in FRANKFURT, where GERMAN TECHNO was just getting started. Ilona and I had of course done M.E.L.T.’s RADIOACTIVITY in the late 80’s, so the people on the ‘FRANKFURT SCENE’ knew the track and it was seen as one of the first big ‘TECHNO/TRANCE ANTHEM’ tracks. SVEN VÄTH, who became a hugely successful and very famous DJ, was running a record store then, and between ACHIM and SVEN, and the guys who created SNAP (‘YOU’VE GOT THE POWER’) was a lot of good (well mostly good) natured competition, as to who was the ‘coolest’ etc. It was a nice scene in Frankfurt in those days, and very refreshing after the claustrophobic cocaine paranoia of NEW YORK CITY.

We recorded s tracks for Achim’s label BLACKOUT (later to metamorphosis into FORCE INC) including a rather successful cover version of the SERGE GANSBOROUGH/JANE BIRKIN TRACK JE T'AIME, with me doing the French ‘Gainsborough’ vocals (which today sound to me terribly camp and cheesy) although it was a ‘hot heavy breathing sexy’ track, the girl doing the ‘Birkin’ vocals and I never actually met, as the vocals were recorded at different times in separate studios. Because the track was so ‘hot’ a story did the rounds that we were making wild love while recording, which was of course a better story than the truth! As the FRANKFURT TECHNO SCENE, really started to take off, and Frankfurt really was where it all began (whatever the ‘Berliners ‘ now claim), The ‘GODFATHERS’ of TECHNO were of course KRAFTWERK, and indeed the whole original DÜSSELDORF ELECTRONIC SCENE, and of course both the KRAFTWERK ORIGINAL of RADIOACTIVITY and M.E.L.T’S cover version were recorded in DÜSSELDORF, in fact within a kilometer of each other (KLING KLANG and RHIENKLANG not being so far away from each other).

At the time Achim began to create FORCE INC, there was a great scene of highly creative people around us. THOMAS HECKMAN, who created the brilliant track LIQUID under the name of EXIT 100, IAN POOLEY and his school friend from just up the road in MAINZ, who were creating tracks after school in their bedroom which were released as TNI/SPACE CUBE and various other names, Ian went on to become a hugely successful DJ. Also evolving out of this was the wild wonderful and inspired ATARI TEENAGE RIOT! All this was wonderful moment in time, and an incredible melting pot of ideas, Ilona and I worked on all kinds of tracks but have little or no memory of them now. Slowly as people followed their ‘Karma’ the scene imploded, but for a while it was wonderful. Achim went on to create ‘MIILE PLATAUX’ an excellent and very intellectually based concept label, I recall that Achim and I would sit around late into the night arguing philosophy, he was also, I recall obsessed at the time, with VANNESSA PARADISE, and tried to persuade me to go to PARIS with him and persuade her to come to Frankfurt and record with Thomas Heckman, needless to say, this came to nothing!