Karl Bartos admits he doesn’t keep up with new music. “I blame Spotify,” he says. “When I taught at the university in Berlin for five years, I was interested in the music my students made. Now, Spotify has turned the meaning of music around. I don’t want to hear music first released by Blue Note on Spotify, or The Beatles.
It doesn’t feel right to me, so I’ll carry on playing Sgt Pepper on my record player.”
Karl admits he might be in the wrong to dismiss streaming, smiling:
“Maybe I’m an old-fashioned idiot. I’m just not into streaming, where the music is just transported across the internet. Music means so much to all of us, but it’s become absorbed by a capitalist system that’s also digitalised. Some of the new technology is good.” Smiling at Classic Pop’s writer over our Zoom call, Karl notes: “Zoom is cool. It’s better to see your face than just to talk on the phone.”
Karl explored then-new technology on Communication, his 2003 album which he described as: “The way images shape our view of the world and how electronic media is going to change the contents of our culture.” At the dawn of reality TV, the sardonic 15 Minutes Of Fame has proved especially prescient.