Mental Obsessions are Dirk Rockendorf and Diemo Schwarz , both of age 25 and studying, who have been playing music together for a couple of years now. Due to Diemo's stay in Britain, they were forced to take a one year's creative pause, during which both of them independently came to the conclusion that real artistic freedom can only be obtained by breaking free from tonality. They started the project Mental Obsessions in fall 1994.
Using non-tonal sounds opens an vast, infinite field yet to discover. Only there, real innovation is possible, only there, paths never treaded before can be found.
Mental Obsessions can't be pressed into performing one special style. Rather, they experiment with all different ways of expression. That's why no single song can represent their entire music. One can only try to describe it:
Mental Obsessions deliberately keep specific properties of music to develop their typical tension between well known elements and ones you never heard before.
Using noise introduces the entirely new concept of interactive listening: Contrary to sound with a definite pitch, noise encompasses many frequencies more or less equally. This allows the listener to hear the song in many different ways, because he can - depending on his mood - perceive certain frequencies more dominantly than others. Thus, he can create his own melody from the noise.
The lyrics play an important part in the work of Mental Obsessions. They are meant to amplify the effect of a song by interpreting its atmosphere, thereby condensing it. Note that the lyrics are merely one possible interpretation of the music. The listener can open himself to his own associations, like when looking at an abstract painting.
The ideal method of active listening is first to listen to the music, ignoring the words, and then to compare one's own associations with the printed lyrics.
Moreover, Mental Obsessions want to put forward a point against the prevailing notion of normality and ideal of beauty in media, society, and the music industry. That's why their main topic are people who are in some sense obsessed or abnormal, which suggested the name of the project. Often, the position of a first-person narrator is taken to confront the listener most directly with the abnormality of the main character's thoughts. The lyrics are not meant to be a statement against beauty and normality, but a plea for the understanding of the abnormal, which is often only the victim of seeming normality.