Stefan Scheers (LD50) interviewed by David Joly (Eclipse Zounds Magazine, October 1999)

EZ: LD50 stands for LETHAL DOSE 50, the concentration of a deadly poison needed to kill 50% of the population to which it is added. Does this mean that you are a misanthrope?
LD50: No, the name LD50 is just a name (it is actually a chemical engineering-unit to describe the effectiveness of a poison), as kind of a joke, we thought to name our experimental project LD50, so as if it would kill 50% of the listeners of our music. But as you hear the music or read the track-titles, there aren't any connections with the technical meaning of LD50. By the way, in the mean time we've found out that we're not the only band/project who uses the name LD50, there is some american industrial band who also uses that name and a rockband from holland; I hope this won't give any troubles in future.

EZ: Presume that you were forced to change the name... How would the new name sound like? Some examples?
LD50:    I've never really been thinking about that and I can't come up to any name at the moment either. Or maybe... , Quiescent Shadows was the name of the first LD50-tape, it could be a good name for the project itself too. I think you have a good name for a band when it is original and when the band brings the kind of music you would expect by hearing the name of the band.

EZ: LD50 was born out of the womb of ART OF DECAY, your electro project. Why was that? What happened? What is the obvious difference between both projects?
LD50: It was for the very simple reason that we were developping two really different kinds of music with a totally different concept, which really couldn't be put together under one project-name, therefore we decided to start-up a second project (LD50) to release our experimental stuff, while Art of Decay brings the more usual electro-EBM sound, ment for a bigger audience; which doesn't mean that Art of Decay is commercial, we just try to make good music, the way we like it.

EZ: When do you call music "commercial"?
LD50:  I think you can't put a line to divide commercial from non-commercial music, but when there is a lot of money involved or when the music is simply created with the aim of making money, I think you definitely can call it commercial, whatever it sounds like.

EZ: You also appeared as the opener for EE TAPES' experimental festival. How was that? Did you do some kind of special perfomance?
LD50: Well I think we did a good job there, there were a lot of people (over 300), so it was a nice oppurtunity for us to introduce LD50, as many people didn't know us. Our performance went well, although we sometimes made little mistakes in turning knobs and pushing buttons (it was very dark on stage), but it never went really out of control. We used a background video which we had made up with images and sequences of some experimental video's I had compiled over the years (never thought they would have been of any use).

EZ: Would consider making such videos for others?
LD50:    We are actually looking out for people who could do this for us too. We do not have any plans to make video's again, unless we desperately need them for a performance or something.

EZ: Your latest release is the "Out Of Dimensions" CD-R. Why did you decide to release on CD-R? And what is or are the themes behind this album?
LD50: I never really liked tapes, they are cheap; that's the only thing I like about tapes; but that is just a personal opinion ofcourse; I know some people do like tape-releases, but I prefer CD, it's comfortable to use and offers a better soundquality. And because nowadays CD-R's are getting cheaper we thought it would be good to use this medium to spread our deadly poison. Thus, "Out of Dimension" was our first release on CD (CD-recordable to be precisely). The themes behind it? LD50 mainly makes soundworks which could be used as a guide to explore the darker side of the human mind and the connectivity/interactivity of the human psyche with our time & space-dimensional world (the universe). Some works are more concentrated on the mind itself others more to physical themes. The title "Out of Dimension" was inspired from some scientific article which described the possibility of worlds made up out of more than one time dimension and a lot of space dimensions. Although calculations turned out that these worlds would be unstable, there were some combinations of time/space dimensions which would be stable. This actually is a good example of the kind of speculative scientific & philosophic themes that form an influence for the music we create with LD50.

EZ: What's your dark side?
LD50: Every mind has its dark side, some people just ignore their "dark side", although it is their deepest self, their true being, their soul. Artificially created intelligence, for example, does not have a dark side, and it will never have. So when you ask what is my dark side, then the answer is very simple: my soul.