In our interview with Uwe Schmidt, the venerable producer noted that Tobias Freund was one of the few producers with whom he’d shared a stage. “It’s perfect musical communication on stage, which most importantly is great fun with him,” he asserted. Together the pair have made several records, all without ever entering a studio. Their latest was likewise recorded live, this time at Berlin’s techno palace, Berghain, and released on Pomelo. This week’s download is an excerpt from that record, nearly 13 minutes of grimy, improvised techno that begins to burn with acidic arpeggios and hi-hat flurries as it progresses. Our thanks to Pomelo, Schmidt and Freund for offering up this inimitable piece.

Atom™ + Pink Elln, “Live At Berghain — Side B”

To many, Ben Klock is techno. Given his lengthy CV, this is hardly surprising. Resident at the largely undisputed Mecca of techno, part of the stacked roster of the epoch-defining Ostgut Ton, and creator of numerous staples found in many techno jocks’ bags, Klock is a producer and DJ who seems equally at home with both professions. It hasn’t been immediate success for Klock, though, as he’s spent much of his career in the trenches both finding his sound and a receptive audience. As the craving for Klock’s brand of techno grows more and more widespread by the day, so do the number of its imitators. LWE sat down with Klock in New York to talk about the ’90s, the warmth of Berghain techno and his dad’s experience at the club.

How did you first get into techno?

Ben Klock: I guess my first experience with electronic, four-to-the-floor music was in the late ’80s with the first acid house parties that came to Berlin; they blew my mind. That was the first time that I saw strobe lights and loud music; like, really loud music. So this was a phase in the late ’80s, and then I got back into other types of music again. I played piano and guitar and had different interests. Somehow I just got back into techno.

In like the mid-90s or something?

Yeah, like the early to mid-’90s. I was talking earlier today about this Josh Wink thing I remember: “I Am Ready.” [low voice] “I am ready.” I remember hearing that when I was on the dance floor and thinking, ‘Wow, that’s what I really want.’

Tell me a little about your musical training.

I took piano lessons from an early age for quite a few years. At one point in my life I wanted to go to university to study jazz piano, but I realized it’s not my thing to practice eight or nine hours a day, going through scales. I was more interested in composing, using all sorts of sounds. So I totally quit playing piano and I taught myself guitar, but I also quit that at some point. I was really more into exploring new sounds and everything that was going on in the ’90s was new for me.

Your first record was on your own label, Clockworks, which seemed to be a precursor to the current Klockworks. From when you first encountered techno, what made you want to make it and then gave you the push to set up your own label and put something out yourself?

That belonged to the label of Jazzanova. Back then I was a resident DJ at Delicious Donut. They played all kinds of stuff from acid jazz to drum n bass, to house and things like that. I was still kind of looking for what I really wanted, so this was the first attempt at making some music. It’s not really related to what I’m doing now, I think, though maybe it is.

It looked like it was only one release though…

I was just trying out something and I realized that Jazzanova at that time was going into a completely different direction than I wanted to go. It didn’t make sense to work together any more.

Was it after that that you hooked up with BPitch Control?

Maybe a few years after that. I knew all those guys like Sascha Funke and Ellen Alien, they were friends. We were like all these Berlin guys.

That label was sort of your home for a while…

I wouldn’t call it a home. My first real home, where I felt that I have a home label or even a home at all in this scene, was when I got involved with Berghain and Ostgut Ton. I really felt that I wanted to be there, and that’s where I feel at home. I didn’t feel at home anywhere else before, at other clubs or other labels.

Once you found that with Ostgut and Berghain, do you think your music changed?

I guess a little bit. There were other influences, and I kind of had the feeling of “I’m finally there.” It was what I was looking for and it just kind of fit together at that point. When I first played at Berghain and felt the vibe, surely it influences you, the whole architecture there and everything.

How do you decide which releases go on Klockworks and which on Ostgut?

It’s actually quite easy. I have a feeling that certain tracks are more Klockworks tracks and others more Berghain things. My recent Compression Session EP; that A-side is a typical Ostgut release. It wouldn’t make sense on Klockworks because Klockworks has more of a draft feeling; the Klockworks releases are more tracky, in a way. So the more musical or epic stuff I do for Ostgut.

What is your reason for wanting to put your records out without promotion?

I think it just comes naturally; just making music and putting it out. Not caring about the promotional side. Most of us, as artists, don’t want to deal with that stuff. When it’s a small label like Klockworks, a one-man show, I don’t want to do promotion. I mean, I don’t care if I sell a couple of hundred more with promotion; I just don’t believe in promotion that much anymore. I got overwhelmed with so many promotional emails and promo stuff. I really don’t know how to deal with it any more. Maybe it’s also the idea that I don’t want to be one more promo mail out of hundreds of mail outs.

Well, the aesthetic of stamped white labels without promotion is sort of coming back.

Yeah, I mean, even five years ago we had some labels like that, but this style is growing more and more, that’s true. Even that, though, can get to the point where it’s kind of ridiculous. Every label with a stamp on it is like, ‘Wow, it has to be something great because they don’t do promotion. They just do stamps, so it has to be good.’ That’s the attitude sometimes. If it goes into this direction, that everyone just wants to do this, it’s the same bullshit.

When did you become a resident at Berghain?

Berghain is now six years old, and it was the time before that, like seven or eight years ago, with all the electroclash around (that stuff was kind of a sellout if you ask me). I didn’t have any resident club at the time and I wasn’t having a lot of fun. In Berlin, the only place where I really wanted to play was Ostgut, or the new Berghain. I got the chance to play there once. It was one of the best sets I’ve ever done. Then they asked me to be a resident. It was a moment in life when you feel like you’re in the right place at the right moment. It just all came together and made sense. Ellen was actually the one who introduced me to the guys and said, ‘Why don’t you just play there?’

Do you think that the legendary aspect of Berghain hurts the club, or do you think it’s part of what Berghain seeks to do?

I think they just do what they want to. Even when I started to play at the new venue, at Berghain when it opened up, a lot of people said the new Berghain wasn’t what the old Ostgut was. I really liked the old Ostgut, but I thought the new club was even better; and back then I thought we were really doing something special, and that sooner or later this will really spread out. I had the feeling that everything was working, from the inside to the outside. The owners, how they treat the people that work there, the vibe. Everything was exactly how I always thought a club should work. You have the feeling that you’re part of a cultural thing and not just throwing parties; parties where, after you play, you have to look for the promoter to get paid. I really felt that the people behind Berghain are interested in more than just making money and throwing parties; interested in not only techno but other cultural aspects as well. I thought that sooner or later more people will realize that it’s something special. Sure, there’s kind of a hype thing, and hype can be negative after a while, but I think the Berghain crew are aware of this hype and we try to just keep at what we’re doing. I think we’re quite successful; to not pay too much attention to the stories or the hype. We just want to do what we do best, and that’s still our goal. I don’t pay to much attention to the stories.

You mentioned “culture” a lot.

It’s both partying like crazy and the cultural aspect. I think it’s really good that there’s a place where you can just walk in and leave your everyday life behind, because it stays open until forever and it’s a universe of its own. There aren’t many places where you can do that anymore; that vibe was there in the 90′s, and in that sense Berghain captures that. On the musical side, I think we strive for timelessness; we don’t want to follow trends that are around for only one or two years. Most of us, as artists, get our inspiration from the old stuff. Basic Channel is really timeless music. You can still listen to it in 20 or 30 years. Some of the stuff today, however, is for now and only now. You won’t listen to it a year from now. This timeless idea is part of Ostgut, Berghain and Hard Wax.

In New York there have been these Berghain/Panorama Bar nights. There were a couple in Japan and there was talk of something at Ibiza…

Yeah there was one night. I wasn’t there.

Do you think these nights properly capture the spirit of Berghain and Panorama Bar, or do you think it’s even the point?

I get it from some people who say, ‘You bring us the Berghain vibe and usually we don’t have that; we don’t hear that kind of music here!’ That’s what I hear from people, ‘It’s almost like Berghain,’ or something like that. I never try to bring the Berghain vibe anywhere, I just play what I play.

Does it make sense to export the club, and can you?

Surely it’s not the same. Berghain is unique; there is no place like it in the world. It doesn’t mean that it’s better, it’s just unique. You can still play the music you play at Berghain elsewhere and it’s works, it’s fun. Maybe the music captures a bit of the vibe.

As a DJ at Berghain you’re usually playing marathon sets, but increasingly a lot of the Ostgut guys are being invited to play big festivals, where you don’t have much time to play. How do you try and present your style of DJing when you only have an hour or an hour and a half?

Yeah, it’s a challenge; I ask myself that sometimes. Two hours is OK; it’s kind of like the international standard in a club. But when it comes to festivals, where you only have like one or one-and-a-half hours, it’s really different and you can’t capture this vibe. When Ricardo plays these long, never ending things, you can’t do that in one hour; it’s just not possible. It’s a different kind of playing. Last time at Berghain I played alone for 11 hours, which is really epic. You’re right, most people know me or relate me to these long, late sets, which I really like. But when I’m playing elsewhere, sometimes I have a two-hour slot and people come for only two hours and party like crazy. Sometimes I like this compressed, short, completely extreme set; like “boom!” and then it’s over. I still don’t feel very comfortable with these really short sets, they are challenging for me.

Would you say that you can’t really show yourself properly as a DJ in such a short space of time?

I know that I have my best moments during long sets. After three or four hours, suddenly I have two really deep hours where I don’t really think any more. I’m completely in the groove, and that’s when I do my best. There’s no chance that this will happen in a one hour set. Though, it can be fun to play a short, banging set and try to be 100 percent.

What did you like about the album process? Is it something that you want to do again?

It’s something that I’ve always wanted to do. Even when I was a child I dreamed of making an album. Back then I thought I would have a band, but I thought that at one point in my life I would make an album, so it was a dream come true. It was clear I wanted to make an album that worked as an album, not only club tracks. When I finished it was kind of a relief; like, ‘Now it’s done and now I’m ready to make a 12″ again.’ But I’m sure there will be another album, maybe I’ll start this year. I think sometimes it takes some time to be inspired again for something like an album. It takes time to build a new basic idea or concept, because it wouldn’t make sense to just collect tracks now and throw out another album and call it Two. I think when the time is right I will feel it; when there is a new idea that wants to come out. I really enjoyed doing something different from what I had done before, to make tracks that don’t have a bass drum or something. I really enjoy that process. Maybe the next album will be even further removed from club music.

Did you feel more satisfaction from the album than from a 12″?

I kind of did. Well, it depends. Everyone works differently. I think Shed said he only worked on his last album for a month or so; that is really different. For me, making an album was like this huge mountain that I didn’t know how to climb. Then it starts forming and developing and you feel like you know which tracks you want to put together, what makes sense. You think about the tracklist and how to combine the songs. In every little process there are so many decisions: how you want to arrange a track, choosing the artwork. I was really satisfied with it; I think I will still like it in ten years. Making a 12″ is not really such a big deal; it’s much faster. Like my last Klockworks, the track on the A-side is like two or three years old.

Your most major recent release was Berghain 04. It sort of goes back to what were saying about having to fit your DJ style into just over an hour, but here obviously you have a lot more control and you can spend a lot of time on it.

Most of the time was spent choosing the tracks, since most of the tracks were exclusive. So, the bulk of the work was talking to people, collecting tracks and choosing the right ones.

Do you think that the CD is a more accurate representation of your DJ sets than your sets at festivals?

I don’t see mix CDs as the way I DJ, it’s just a thing on its own. For this mix CD I wanted people to listen to it at home or in the car. Sometimes if I hear a hard banging techno set then I’m done with it. I don’t want to listen to that stuff every day when I’m sitting in the car. So the idea was to make it softer. Sure, it represents my style in a way, mixing things together, building things, but it’s also something of its own.

There’s a lot of your own tracks on there, as well as all the exclusives. Did you make it more as a producer than as a DJ?

It’s a combination of being a DJ and producer, I think. It’s a perfect combination of the two skills.

Berghain 04 was a very warm CD, where sometimes you guys are described with the words…

“Cold,” “relentless,” “steel.” I never thought these words described us, or myself, accurately. “Cold, relentless, techno.” I think Berghain is really not the place where you only hear this kind of music. There are a lot of productions that are called Berghain techno, and every time I hear that I get bored because that’s not the only thing that I’m interested in. I’m interested in good music, not just dark, monotonous stuff. It can be monotonous and dark and can be great, but it has to be something special. I really like warm stuff. I think the sound at Berghain is that warm bass drum; not this kind of “kxkdk,” but this kind of “boom,” when it has this nice warm belly. This is what I like, that it has some ass and muscles but that it’s also warm. Maybe you could also say there’s a female aspect; it’s not only macho music. Especially with Berghain 04; I made it in the winter and when I finished it I didn’t listen to it anymore. It was only when it came out that I listened to it again. I was driving through the city, the sun was shining, and I realized it’s really a kind of a summer CD. It made perfect sense to release it in the summer. The intro and the first few tracks really have a warm, sunny feeling. I was happy that it had this warm feeling, especially at a time where people always related us to these words “cold, hard, banging techno.” At Berghain we play some house sometimes. It’s not all about the dark stuff.

So you think some of the music that’s called Berghain techno wouldn’t even get played at Berghain?

Yeah, I’m positive about that. I get sent so many promos saying, ‘Here, this is something for you, this is Berghain, you will like it.’ As soon as I read this I know it’s not for me. It just bores me, this so called “Berghain techno.”

What do you have planned next? Where do you see the Berghain sound going?

I’m not sure. Lately Marcel [Dettmann] and I have been talking about that. It’s always challenging to not stay with the same sound forever. Sure, we will never stray too far, but we are always looking for something to open up the concept or new directions to go in. There will definitely be another Dettmann/Klock thing in the future — hopefully 2011. We’re not sure what we’re gonna do yet, we’ll just see what inspires us. For myself, I think I will put some more effort into Klockworks. 2010 had only one release, 2009 had maybe two release. I don’t have a schedule for Klockworks, but there will definitely be another DVS-1 and some other stuff.

Do you want to sort of see Klockworks not only as a vehicle for your own stuff? You put out the one DVS-1 record, but do you want to make Klockwork into its own sort of family?

I’m not planning something like that, but I’m open. It depends on who I meet. Before I met Zak [DVS-1] it was just a platform for my stuff, but when I met him, right away I knew, ‘OK, I need this music, it has to come out.’ So the basic idea changed at that moment. Now I’m open to other artists as well, but I’m really not looking for anything. I’m really, really picky and I really have to like it personally. I’m not looking to build up a big family of artists, I’ll just let it be open.

You said that you guys ignore the hype behind Berghain and keep your eyes down and keep focused on what you’re doing, but I imagine that it’s hard to avoid.

Yeah. Sometimes it’s strange when there are people in front of the DJ booth screaming ‘Berghain!’ and I’m like, ‘Um, yeah, ok, whatever.’ I’m Ben Klock. I’m just doing my thing, and sometimes it’s just a little bit too much with the whole Berghain thing.

Would you say Berghain is a place for purist techno?

I would say it’s a place where you can really experience techno in a very pure way. When people who are not related to this music at all, who think techno is some commercial bullshit, boom-boom-boom thing, who don’t have an idea what techno culture is really about: go on the Berghain floor, be in the middle on the dance floor and stay there for an hour or so. That’s the place where you can really understand what it’s about and in that way I would say it’s pure experience; a way to really feel what techno is about. Even for my father, he recently came to Berghain for the first time at the age of 75. He stayed there for ten hours, didn’t even want to leave, and after that he said, ‘Now I understand what you are doing.’ Because he really experienced it; the sound and the vibe there, the architecture and the idea of playing the music the way we play it. I wouldn’t say it’s only for music lovers or nerds, but it’s experiencing techno in its most pure form without the showing off, “look at me” aspect of some other clubs. I know some people go there just because you can be yourself there, and do what you do. I know some actresses who just want to be there because nobody looks at them and says, ‘You’re this and that.’ You can just be yourself there. And that’s a good thing.

It almost seems like a certain level of hype sort of goes against what Berghain actually stands for, which is what you just said, the idea of going there not to be seen and yet when something get really hyped…

Yeah, that’s a conflict maybe. But they still have their rules and beliefs, like you’re still not allowed to take pictures there, which is good. Everywhere else is all about is about being Youtubed and having your picture taken, so this is different. It’s just the basic idea of being there for the music and being yourself, doing what you want to do without being caught on camera and stuff like that. [chuckles]

I can only assume that I’m guilty of it, but another sort of truth that the media will stick to is describing Berghain music in terms of the gritty architecture. How do you think the architecture plays into the sound?

There is a relation between the room, the surroundings and the music. I think the reason techno got so big in Berlin makes sense; after the wall came down the city looked a certain way, and maybe certain kinds of music belong to certain surroundings. I wouldn’t expect this type of music to be created in a nice, easygoing, sunny place in the south, like on a island. You kind of need this urban feeling and this concrete around you to create these ideas. This kind of, I always forget the title of the movie, it’s old and from the ’20s…

Metropolis?

Yeah, it always reminds me of Metropolis. It’s like, when you hear Jeff Mills you have certain pictures, or certain ideas associated with it, and it makes perfect sense that he made this Metropolis thing. In a certain way, the architecture of Berghain connects to the music that we make.

You say that techno is as very urban form…

Yeah I would say so. You have these Goa raves in nature, but that certain kind of techno is really related to Berlin and to urban feeling.

Well, you have the Labyrinth festival in Japan.

Yeah I mean, I played at a festival this year in Japan that was also in the mountains, a completely backpackers thing, together with Autechre and others like that. It was great, it was perfect, but people who create this music, they mostly come from the city. Especially in Detroit, there is a connection between the city and this kind of music.

How do you and Marcel approach the collaborative process? With DJs having very busy schedules, collaboration lately seems to be sending parts back and forth. How do you guys approach that?

We decided not to do that. We have similar tastes in music and we always kind of know what the other one likes and that is very inspiring. When we do the next project it will definitely be different than the first project that we did, because back then Marcel had just started producing. So I don’t know exactly how it would look now, but we’ve already said that if we’re going to do it again we’ll definitely sit together and not send files back and forth. We see each other quite a lot, but it can be hard because of our schedules.

So, where do you head from here?

I’m flying to Minneapolis tomorrow with DVS-1. We’ll have a party at a place that he owns and throws parties at. It’s supposed to have a great sound system because he was into renting sound systems. I’m looking forward to playing there; It’s just going to be a dark box with a good sound system.

It’s funny, because Minneapolis is not a city that would really come to your mind if you were thinking of techno capitals in the States and yet…

And I remember last time when I played there, I was in New York before and people were saying, ‘Oh, you’re going to Minneapolis….’ They were kind of snobby, like ‘I didn’t know there was anything there, so don’t expect much.’ It was a small party, small crowd. It’s a small scene, but they’re completely alive and knowledgeable about the music. Some people told me that Zak is responsible for a lot of that. He threw some parties a few years ago with people like Robert Hood and Derrick May and did a lot for the city, for techno culture there.

Is Berlin the techno capital of Germany?

If you’re from Frankfurt you would say that Frankfurt was always the city. But I’m from Berlin, so I would say Berlin. There was always this connection between Detroit and Berlin, especially with Tresor. So maybe that’s why Berlin became the Mecca of techno. So many artists move to Berlin. I spoke today about it with Function, and he said he was getting more inspiration in one year in Berlin than he got in the last ten years in New York. I think this will change again sometime soon; it will be a different city. I hear so many people saying that Berlin is like New York was back then, and that they’re not sure how long it will stay like this. It will get commercialized everywhere. There are areas where they’ve built these business buildings where there used to be alternative bars and stuff like that, so it’s already changing. But still, it’s a great city for living relatively cheaply and for making art. Sometimes when I hear about all these people moving to Berlin, especially in the electronic music scene, sometimes I think, ‘Why don’t some people just stay where they are?’ because I don’t want Berlin to be the only techno city. I dunno, people used to go to Ibiza, and now they all come to Berlin to party. There are still great parties everywhere in the world, so I think it’s not the case that Berlin will be the only techno city, but it’s certainly the main techno city.

Do you think it’s a German thing?

I wouldn’t really say German culture has much to do with it, but the fact that the wall came down created this special situation in the city. In the East we had all the vacant places, all these buildings that didn’t belong to anyone, and you could just throw parties everywhere, and then just open up next week somewhere else. That was a good vibe for this music. The spirit at that time was a perfect match to the idea of techno.

Any last thought you would like to add?

There is one thing I would like to add. I don’t want to sound snobby. When I say we don’t want to pay attention to all the hype, it’s might seem like we don’t care. But we really do care and I really appreciate everything that is happening. A few years back, I always thought this was going to be big, that more and more people will appreciate what is happening around Ostgut and Berghain. I really believed in it, and I think when you really believe in something it will grow. You have an amount of belief and energy that you put into it and at some point it just has to grow, it’s just natural. But, on the other hand, I never would have expected that the music that we’re doing would get so much attention. I’m always surprised when I see young kids dancing in front of me who are 19 and I play the hardest banging techno from the mid-’90s and they say, ‘Yeeeahh!’ I wonder, ‘How do you appreciate this kind of music? You should be listening to some other crap.’

Well, as long as the music’s timeless…

But still I’m surprised sometimes because I think it takes a little bit of education to get into this music. They didn’t have the chance to grow up with this kind of music for years, so sometimes I’m really surprised that young kids are caught by this kind of intense music. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s nice to see that. There are so many other options, so many easier options, like more commercial, pleasant, catchy stuff that you can fall for. I think we kind of have a kind of mature approach to it. It’s fun to see people enjoying it.

That Brooklyn’s Adam Mitchell might actually need this introduction is a reflection of the often fickle and fashionable nature of techno. Now based in Berlin, he ran the legendary Sonic Groove record store in his home city in the nineties before eventually founding a record label bearing the same name, pushing harder and darker techno sounds. At the turn of the millennium, Adam turned his ear towards industrial and EBM music, fashioning a techno-industrial fusion that was all his own. Unfortunately, loud and banging techno quickly went out of style and Mr. X was left with dwindling sales and a floundering record label. But with the prominence of the Berghain and its label outlet Ostgut-Ton, Mitchell found solace in the club’s preference, for, of course, loud and banging techno.

Then he had an idea. Inspired by what he heard at Berghain, Mitchell produced a number of dance floor-friendly tracks, and released them anonymously as Traversable Wormhole in a vinyl-only series, much like his contemporary Shed as EQD and WAX. The tracks were picked up by big-name techno DJs and the fires of hype spread quickly, proving that at least part of what you need to succeed in techno was obscure your identity. Now at the tail-end of a prolific and inspiring reissue campaign on Chris Liebing’s CLR label, and riding an immense wave of positive publicity directed towards the Traversable Wormhole project, Adam X is ready to be just Adam X again. Adam’s is a fascinating story of identity politics, personal reinvention, and career resuscitation, and he sat down with LWE for a revealing and surprisingly relaxed interview to explain the whole thing.

Thanks for taking the time to do this with us.

Adam Mitchell: I was doing a couple of written interviews in the last two weeks and they really get on my nerves because it takes me like seven hours to figure out what the fuck I’m going to say.

I know. They’re bad, they’re not fun.

Yeah, they’re not fun at all. And then you wind up saying the same thing in every one. I’m like, ‘Let me copy that and put that down.’ So yeah, feel free to ask what you wanna ask, and see if I won’t answer it.

So, speaking of saying the same things over and over again, I’m going to ask you a few general questions. First, just for background, how did Traversable Wormhole come about and what is the significance of the actual name?

Well how it really came about — I started to work on some music that I thought would work in the Berghain. I would go to Berghain and hear Marcel Dettman play and Ben Klock and the music I was making at the time, I didn’t really think a lot of it would fit in there. I was going so many times that I really wanted to do something that would play in this club at like seven in the morning, so I went home and I started working on some tracks and I got the first two tracks done. I think one of them is on number three — “Superliminal” was the first one that I did, and then “Tachyon” on volume two. Then I actually went to Function from Sandwell District; I mean he’s a close friend of mine for 15 years — I’m actually a roommate with him now in Berlin — and I was like ‘Check these out, maybe you’d be interested in doing this with the label.’ Now, I really didn’t know, Sandwell District was still building up at that point to, so it wasn’t clear if they were keeping it just to themselves or if they were going to put other artists on the label, but they wound up not really going for it. I had also played those tracks for Dasha Rush, ’cause I was supposed to do something with her for Fullpanda and she wanted to do it, but she didn’t have the money right there and then to put them out, and I was like, ‘Nah, I want to put these out now.’

I didn’t really want to put them put them out as Adam X because I thought people would just stigmatize me as usual. They’d be like, ‘This is hard rhythmic noise, EBM shit,’ you know? I really thought, ‘I gotta come up with another name’ and I think at the same time I was just reading some stuff on quantum physics and I saw the name Traversable Wormhole and was like, ‘Wow, that’s a pretty sick name.’ First thing that came to mind was, ‘Let me look this up on Discogs, because maybe Dopplereffekt used this on a track,’ [chuckles] because his stuff is always on quantum physics titles. But nothing came up anywhere. So then I thought, ‘Wow, this is cool, maybe I should do a white label thing,’ because at the same time I was playing in Scotland a bit. I was in Rubadub, the record shop, and I saw those Seldom Felt records and I was like ‘Wow, this looks cool,’ and I was trying to get the information on who did them and they wouldn’t tell me. I was like, ‘Whoa, this is some old school shit, some old school, white label, UK breakbeat shit from back in ’91 when everybody was doing white labels.’ But you know there were only a few things I saw like that — and maybe the WAX records — and I thought, ‘This could be a cool way to sneak into the scene without people realizing who it is.’

It just felt like the time was right. I don’t know what it was, but I just knew that doing this, the time was right and I had enough material that I could come up with a couple of records quite quick to bam it out in people’s face, so that’s what I did. The first three records came out within four months. I also felt like it was easy to do it this way because the last stuff I was working on in the previous years was all album material, so I would sit down and I’d work on an album for several months at a time, but working on two tracks is easier, it’s just easier. I can do that in the space of a month. And that’s even a long time in today’s standards, I know people who can make tracks in a fucking day. But me, I like to take my time. So yeah, I had it pretty much all planned out. I have to say the whole project was probably the best planning I’ve ever done on anything, it really worked out 100% exactly how I wanted it to.

So you said you made them with tracks in mind instead of albums. Would you say the Traversable Wormhole more dance floor-oriented than Adam X albums, then?

Um, I would say a bit. I think as I was going on with them I had it in mind — though the broken beats tracks I really feel are good stuff to listen to at home as well — it’s a little more like mind fuck shit. I was never doing it with the idea of an album in mind. Then the CLR thing popped up and then I thought, ‘Wow, I could definitely combine all these tracks, there’s a theme to this.’ So, it was definitely different working in the studio compared to when I was working on the albums, which tended to be a little more conceptual. I would work on an album and I would be like, ‘Alright, let me make something a little bit deeper for the intro part of the album.’ There was a lot more thought process, maybe do a little more tracks with vocals – this was a little more liberating. I didn’t have a lot of pressure to really try and squeeze this in on anything. I just was going for a more of a stripped-down sound to what the Adam X sound is. I don’t think it’s far off, like Traversable Wormhole is definitely not far off from my State of Limbo album as far as sound design. It’s just a little bit more stripped – that’s how I would split up the two projects.

Why did you choose to make it vinyl only? Weren’t you worried that it wouldn’t get out there, or were you not concerned with that?

Well, you know what it is? Digital’s a weird market, first of all, because if you do something anonymous digitally it’s really hard for people to pick up on it, like via artwork. You can’t do any special packaging that grabs people’s attention. I do a lot of my shopping on Juno and there’s just so many releases on there. I like Juno because you can search for vinyl and digital at the same time so I like to see what’s digital and what’s vinyl. Even though I sound like a hypocrite and I’m definitely hypocritical ’cause years ago I had a totally different view on the digital vs. vinyl market, but now I feel like the digital market is so flooded that 90% of the good stuff is gonna come out on vinyl. If it’s not on vinyl, you’re probably not going find the same amount of good stuff on digital – it’s just not going to happen.

I think, before, people were struggling to put out good techno records, distribution companies didn’t want to carry proper techno because minimal was the market. I had this problem with Sonic Groove. I would try to put out records by Kim Rapatti from Finland, who’s been around for twenty years, and I can barely get any money to make any copies of it because it just wasn’t the sound at that time. Everybody wanted minimal techno, the distributors, that what’s they wanted to push, that’s what they were comfortable with selling. They didn’t want to sit on any records that they thought wouldn’t sell. So it forced people like me to put out digital only releases. I did some stuff from REALMZ, who’s a guy from Pittsburg, digital-only. I, as a DJ, definitely went digital in 2004 ’cause I really couldn’t find harder-edged techno music [on vinyl]. People were like, ‘How can you play digital when you owned a record shop for 15 years?’ Well, these distributors don’t want to support techno and this is my way of saying, ‘fuck you’ to that. I’m going to play music from the industrial scene in my sets that I think is very techno-oriented, and I’m gonna have an edge that other people don’t have using Serato with this kind of music, and that’s what I had to do. So I kind of stuck to the digital thing for a while.

Then the digital market just got so flooded and I was really having a hard time just sifting through everything, especially on a lot of websites. Everybody putting their digital stuff up that’s not even mastered, I downloaded these tracks I thought sounded good then they’re not even mastered, they sound like shit. I noticed that a shift to techno started to come back, and I was like, ‘Maybe vinyl is the better way now, because it’s less people and the people who are doing this are more passionate about it from an artistic point of view. To see 300, 500, 700 records, that’s not really a lot of money, so the people that are doing this are really doing this out of a passion for this ‘art’ thing. I just thought that Traversable Wormhole would be cool to come out on vinyl-only. I didn’t really have intentions of doing digital, I just kept the door open with it, but I didn’t want to do it right away. It feels a little hypocritical because of my stance and what I went through before, but now I think when I see everything, when I go shopping on Juno and I’m looking at all the vinyl, I’d prefer to see all the vinyl stuff without the digital. And then I listen to everything and I’m like, ‘Wow, there’s just so many better records out now, the market’s not just flooded with a lot of garbage.’ I can go through a lot of techno on Juno and find a lot of good music pretty quickly. It’s something I couldn’t do five years ago.

I don’t think it’s hypocritical. When the times change, you have to change with them.

I guess that’s true, but I’m hypocritical in the sense that I still play with Serato. So if I was a Traversable Wormhole and with Traversable Wormhole I would have to probably buy the vinyl… I mean, I’m not even that good at ripping vinyl that well. I never get it to sound the way I really want it to sound. I usually get my other friends to do it for me. That’s where I’m really hypocritical ’cause I’m not really buying vinyl. I’m not hypocritical, ’cause I have 10,000 records in my collection, I haven’t sold my records off. I think I’ve sold enough vinyl in my life that no one can bitch me out about it. I’m still supporting the vinyl, and I’m still supporting the movement with Sonic Groove and by pushing the label and pushing vinyl records on every release. I feel Serato is actually, using the turntable with the pitch control, keeping the turntables around. I’m not a beat-mapping DJ, it’s not my thing. That’s where I’m at with all that, the digital and the vinyl.

So how did the project build momentum, and were you surprised to the reaction that came about?

Yeah, it’s been really exciting even up until now, it’s still amazingly exciting for me. I kind of predicted a little bit that it would do well. I really felt, especially after the first one, that it would work. Now my friend, Dietrich Schoenemann, who does Protyotpe 909, he presses my label. He presses Sonic Groove and Traversable Wormhole. He was like, ‘Well you’re just going for this industrial ticket.’ I was like, ‘Listen I have this plan with Traversable Wormhole. We gotta do this, I want to do three records, we should start with 200 copies each and we see where they go.’ When the first one sold out straight away he pressed more. Number two was crazy, there was a hype on it by the time it came out, I wasn’t really expecting it to move that fast. Then it was number three, people went back and bought more of number one and number two. I was pretty shocked. I was a little confused about how quickly to reveal it was me. I definitely wanted to reveal it was me. I never had a plan to stay totally anonymous. For me it was more of a joke in a way. I just wanted to catch people off guard, all the people who kind of slept on me over the years.

When I saw this thing on Twitter, I was doing a Traversable Wormhole Google search and I saw Chris Liebing was talking about the records on Twitter, so that’s what made me approach him in Berghain. I know Chris and I haven’t seen Chris and I said, ‘Hey man, I hear you like these Traversable Wormhole records.’ He’s like, ‘Who’s doing these fucking records? They’re amazing. I don’t even play vinyl and I had to buy all four of them from Juno.’ Under my breath I’m laughing and I’m trying to keep a straight face. And then he turns around and says, ‘Why are you asking me this question? You haven’t seen me in years and this is what you’re asking me? Is this you?’ Then I tried to deny it, but he got it out of me and then he was like, ‘These are amazing, why haven’t you put these out on your own name?’ ‘Because people like you wouldn’t play them.’ And he’s like, ‘No, that’s not true. I play your industrial stuff.’ ‘No, you played my industrial stuff, but I don’t think you play that stuff now.’ That’s how it all came about.

It was really trying to remove the stigma around me, and for me it was kind of a running joke as it was getting bigger. All of a sudden places that I wanted to play that I couldn’t get booked in, people were starting to contact me via Myspace to book me and they don’t know it’s me so I’m pushing them off to a booking agent. A few people knew the whole time, like Hard Wax, the guys from Rubadub and Function. People who are very close to me. But everybody kept it very under wraps, nobody ratted me out. I’d say around number four, number five, I started wanted to reveal myself, but even Philipp from Pullproxy, he was telling me, ‘Nah nah, just wait it a little more, just keep ridin’ it, keep going with it.’ Then at number five, I thought the time was right. At that point it was time to come out and reveal myself. And it worked perfectly with the way I did it, ’cause I didn’t want to do a flashy announcement. My friend Finn, who writes for Resident Advisor, wanted to do this Playing Favourites feature on Adam X and I figured I would make a subtle mention in the RA feature that it was me. I swear within an hour of it being posted it was already listed on Discogs. So that’s how that all built up and it’s been a good ride man, it’s been fun.

Do you think it was successful because of the anonymity factor, or because of the timing? Do you think it could have been as successful five or six years ago as it was last year?

Um, no it definitely wouldn’t have been as big five or six years ago. The time wasn’t right, man. I mean Berghain: I’m very vocal about Berghain because I live in Berlin, I’ve spent a lot of time in that club and I really, I haven’t been to many clubs in my life that I feel have changed the sound of music. They open people up to something different. People were going to Berlin in 2007/2008, going to all the minimal parties, and here you have this club where they play house upstairs and when you’re downstairs they never play minimal and the experience of going to this club and hearing techno in there, even if you didn’t like techno so much where you were into minimal, it could easily convert you very, very quickly, just the atmosphere of this room.

For me it wasn’t very far off from my roots of what I grew up with. They were playing industrial sounds in there with techno, and they play a lot of classic techno, a lot of music which used to play back in the ’90s. I think this was a turning point for the techno scene and because of that, and because minimal was dying out, it was just the right time for all of this and people were looking for something new. I believe the overly hyped imagery of these top DJs who are acting like rock stars and not really putting out great music anymore.  These people know who they are, I don’t need to mention names. These artists used to be on top of their game but they gave it up for the big money for their DJing rather than sitting down in the studio and making some proper new shit. I think the techno people got sick of that, and now that they were seeing a lot of these anonymous records coming out and a lot of the people that were buying these records, probably a lot of them were back from the old school and were intrigued by this. Maybe it was the… I can’t really even explain it in words. It was like a renaissance period. That period, when Traversable Wormhole started coming out and all these white labels were coming out, it was like it was in the early ’90s when it was sort of faceless and there wasn’t a lot of information and the music sort of spoke for itself. That’s been lacking in the music for a very long time – there’s too much information about music and now anyone can out information on an artist or a release in a touch of a keystroke.

It seems that techno’s been a little more defined and everybody’s doing their own thing. My label, you have a lot of new guys that come onto the scene. Not new guys, but people that are really getting it like Perc, and Lucy from Stroboscopic. There’s a lot of people, but I like it ’cause everyone’s a family right now, everybody is working with each other – it’s a really community-based thing that’s going on with techno right now. For me, personally, it’s probably the best it’s been in 15 years for the scene, for techno music.

Do you feel like the new market for this dark, booming techno, the old school techno as you call it, is a resurrection, or a necessary re-route?

I don’t really feel it’s a resurrection as much as it’s something new. I think for a lot of people it’s probably new. I mean, there are people who haven’t been into it for 15 years. I think it’s a natural progression to hear harder music in a night club. I never really figured out how minimal got so big, man — that’s not music for peak time in the night. For me that was always after hours music. For me that was music that I wanted to make for my morning sets, I never really understood how the minimal thing came back. And I think this techno thing is coming back because people want to dance together. I dunno, maybe people want a little bit more of a full-on experience when they’re out. Even with something like ketamine, and K is not a big drug anymore, I don’t know. [laughs] I don’t really know how the minimal thing got so huge for so many years and hard techno went into the cracks. It’s 2010 now and I think techno is back and I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon, and I think there’s a lot more passion with the producers that are making this music. It’s going to be here to stay for a while.

Do you feel that the reissue series on CLR adds anything to the Traversable Wormhole story or narrative?

Do I feel they fit? That’s a really good question. If I had to break them down, I would say Function’s remix is the closest to the Wormhole sound, and Surgeon’s remix, ’cause they’re both really deep and they’re mental. But I have to say that I really like what James Ruskin did with “Tachyon.” He really used a lot of the original sounds and he warped it out, it trips me out when I listen to that remix. I dunno, they all are kind of special. Marcel Dettmann’s mix was killer, man. It was ferocious.

It’s great!

Yeah, it’s so intense. That’s more like an Adam X thing, you know. I mean, I like Peter Van Hoesen’s mix of “When 2D Meets 3D.” It’s really kind of spatial. I think everybody came through; Tommy Four Seven definitely kept the original intact. Fixmer’s mix and Brian Sanhaji, I mean I really like all the mixes. The only one that I felt really strayed away from my sound a lot was Kevin Gorman. It doesn’t sound like anything from me, but it’s a really good song, it’s really well done. But if I listen to it, I can’t really tell what he remixed from me. That’d be the one that was furthest away from the project, I would say. The rest, they’re all good.

So why did you end the series with an album? Isn’t that a contradiction to the white label vinyl-only releases?

Well, I’m sort of an album artist, so it was like, I like putting out albums. There’s a different market for that, and also, really, I want to make sure that the industrial people and the EBM people who have supported my last albums are aware of this project. I had my other project, ADMX-71 that’s done very well in the industrial scene. The album called Luminous Vapours on Hands is really like a downtempo album of Traversable Wormhole [tracks]. I did the music before Traversable Wormhole, but if you listen to that album you can definitely hear where the birth of Traversable Wormhole was coming from, along with the album I mentioned before, State of Limbo. I wanted to get this into that scene, and the industrial scene is a very album-oriented market and that was really my main goal with it. Initially I was talking to some friends in the industrial scene about releasing it as a CD in the industrial scene. It was something that I had in mind for the whole time actually.

So it’s safe to say that you’re a believer in the techno album, then.

Yeah, man. I believe in the album format still. I dunno if it’s something that could be really be pulled off these days. I think the only way to only pull a successful album off online is to market it at a cheaper price. If you go on sites like Beatport and Juno, I mean I wouldn’t quote me on the albums because I don’t really look at full-length albums, as of recent. I think if you want to download a 12-track album, you’re paying 13-14 dollars, or 10-11 euros to download an album for just digital files. If you do an album, it might be cool to market an album like 12 tracks, like 6 euros or 7 bucks and make it affordable so that the people buy the album as a package and listen to the album from beginning to end as it’s designed by the artist. We used to buy a CD or vinyl record, you’d listen to it even if you didn’t like one of the tracks, you’d still want to check it out as a conceptual thing. I think when it’s digital-only these days, they’re taking the tracks they like and are missing the whole album, the artistic album point. You know? This is a problem in this day and age if you want to sit down and write an album. It’s tough. You don’t want to write something and have this whole conceptual idea and then people are like, ‘Oh I like track two and track five,’ and they never really give the rest of the tracks a solid listen. I think that if the digital sites made a cheaper package, it would work. I guess I ‘m still a little old school in my way of thinking with all that.

Why end the series on CLR and not your own label Sonic Groove?

Marketing, getting it out to more people. I want my voice to be heard. I’ve been struggling for my voice to be heard for a long time and people were kicking me to the curb, kicking the man down, stigmatizing me. ‘Oh, he’s not into techno anymore, he’s into that industrial stuff. He’s probably wearing black eyeliner or black nail polish or some shit.’ I mean, some of the shit I heard from people! I was going more to industrial parties, I didn’t want to go stand around to minimal techno music, and because of that, people started to stigmatize me. They’d see me around a lot, they’d see me wearing black all the time. ‘Oh, he’s not one of these happy people.’ I guess I felt like when I was with the label and I wanted to put techno records out, no one was listening, so this was my way of making people listen. I had to do what I had to do, doing it anonymously and having Chris put it out I thought was a great move for getting my music out there more. I want some recognition for what I’ve done for 20 years on the music production level. People have always given me respect for having the shop and doing the label but I don’t want to be one of these guys, ‘Oh yeah back in the day, these guys they were the shit.’ Sometimes people come up to me and they’re like, ‘You’re a legend’, and I’m like ‘A legend of what?’

I don’t play around the world, I’m not playing out every night of the week. People aren’t writing about me innovating the techno scene. I’ve been around 20 years, it’s been cool, but ‘legend’ is a little over the top. For me, I just want to get a little more recognition for my music production ’cause I felt I’ve never really had that recognition. A lot of the other people who grew up with me, all the people who I’m friends with, people who just came up after me go and for me, this is why I did this this way and I’m happy with it. If I die tomorrow and go to my grave, at least people finally heard my voice through my music. That’s the plan.

Do you feel like with this last series, that you have a bit more recognition than you do before, with new fans and new narrative surrounding yourself?

Oh yeah, this has been absolutely the pivotal moment of my career on the music production tip. Did I play more gigs in the ’90s? Probably. At that point in the late ’90s, the U.S. rave scene was booming, then I was going to Europe and I was playing multiple times a week. I haven’t gotten back up to that point yet, but to be honest with you, I don’t know if I even want to do that. I don’t really like traveling all that much, I like doing gigs but I like doing really good gigs and you know, I don’t have to travel two times a weekend. It’s just, it’s for me, it’s just getting the music out there and having more people hear my music than ever before, that’s what’s most important to me. It’s not about money, it’s just about getting my art out to more people, I really look at what I do as a really creative artistic thing. Like my painting graffiti for 25 years, I like my graffiti to be seen as well. It is what it is for me when it comes to doing my art. Just getting it out there for people to hear or for people to see.

So are you going to be Adam X solely from here on out?

I’m not going to reveal any information on that, but there was a volume six and seven on Traversable Wormhole right? I’m also focusing back on Adam X as well, it’s time; and then I’m also going to go back and do another ADMX-71 album, because I think for me that was actually one of the most liberating and exciting projects I’d ever recorded. I felt so unconstrained writing that album that I just made what I wanted to make and I want to do that again ’cause that was a lot of fun. Traversable Wormhole gets a little a stressy. If I make the next one, you know, there’s a lot of pressure to make sure that next one is good, right? I also want to do some other stuff where there’s no pressure. But there should be more Traversable Wormhole coming.

Did Traversable Wormhole influence your sound as Adam X at all, because I feel that your release on Prologue is different from the other Adam X stuff, it’s more techno as opposed to the industrial EBM kind of stuff.

I think in general, I’m making a little bit more of a techno comeback. I don’t think with that one, I don’t think it sounds anything like Traversable Wormhole, maybe the B-side a little bit but the A definitely not. The A is very industrial and reminds me of some old EBM stuff, like some of the drums and stuff. I don’t think that the 12″ on Prologue is really that much different from the State of Limbo stuff I was doing. Yeah, I mean it’s a little bit, but that’s also me as a producer getting better with using digital stuff. Just getting a cleaner sound, you know? I’m definitely more about a cleaner type of sound these days, but that’s just part of the natural progression. You look at the Prologue record and then six months prior, I had the record out with Ancient Methods. The Ancient Methods that I did with them is definitely in the industrial rhythmic noise vein that I was doing before.

I wanted to do a record for Prologue, and he asked me about doing something for them and I didn’t want to do a Traversable Wormhole thing, but I didn’t think I could do something as hard as what I did with Ancient Methods. I was actually going to do something deeper than that and then I heard the Dino Sabatini records and I was like, ‘Mmm, this is really industrial. I can make some shit like this, this is cool.’ Clean techno, industrial sounds. Dino Sabatini’s shit is amazing. He’s got a record coming out on my label next, I love his shit. It’s great. So when I did the thing for Prologue, I would definitely say his records were a little bit of an inspiration.

So what kind of sound are you going to be pushing with Sonic Groove? Will it be any different than before?

I never like to pigeonhole the label. In the past, I was always doing very different stuff, you never knew what to expect. You’d do an electro record, like a proper electro record — of course not that electro house garbage. You’d do something, maybe I’d put out an old school classic with remixes, or you know, put out a a solid techno record, or an industrial record. Right now I think I’m going to stick a little bit more to what I’m playing and what I’m really into at the moment, which is just really solid, hard industrial techno. What I’m doing now is what I wanted to do four years ago, but I couldn’t. If you ever go online and listen to digital only releases from REALMZ, that’s on Sonic Groove, you could see that I actually wanted to do this stuff before, but I couldn’t get any distributors to take it. This is kind of what the Berghain sound is right now.

Now that people are into this sound I can actually do it now on Sonic Groove and it’s working. I can do it on vinyl now. This is why I put the REALMZ record out this year. That was his first vinyl release after doing three digital things for me. So I’m definitely going to stay in this vein for a while, I’m not really listening to a lot of other stuff right now stylistically. I’m very happy right now. If techno met industrial, it’s where I want to be and it’s where I’ve wanted to be for 10 years. I’m going to stick in this kind of arena right now, that we’re kind of in.

Do you dislike the trend oriented movement of techno, or is it just the way it is for you? Do you accept it?

For me, like I’ve said, I’ve been pushing the rhythmic, noise, industrial techno shit for 10 years. So for me, whatever’s happening now might be a trend for other people, but it ain’t a trend for me. While everyone was playing all the little minimal gigs and making all their little money and running around every weekend, and I was stuck at home because I couldn’t get any bookings because I was sticking by my guns and I was putting out vinyl records, like you know, “Europa Power Electron Industries,” which is straight up techno, the hard shit that’s coming out now and people were not paying attention. Now people pay attention.

I think for some it’s trendiness, but to be honest with you I notice with a lot of people who are making music like Perc and Lucy and people like Surgeon and Regis, a lot of these people have industrial backgrounds already and I mean, they’re into it not as a trend. I feel like a lot of the producers who are making this stuff, Dasha Rush has got an industrial, experimental, noise background. They’re all very passionate about what they’re doing, so I don’t think from an artist’s perspective that a lot of the people who are hot on the scene right now are doing “trendy” yet. I think a lot of people are going to jump in this scene, but I think the people who are doing it right now will know what’s up and won’t really support that, actually.

What role do you think the Internet plays right now, especially in your previous success over the past two years; do you think the Internet played any role in that?

Oh yeah, mnml ssgs was definitely very good for me. They put a Twitter message out asking if anybody knew who I was. The people of Rubadub relayed that message back and I emailed anonymously. When they put that mix up for me on mnml ssgs back in July of 2009, that did huge things for the project. That made a really big dent, that really opened up a lot more people to it. I think all these blogs — such as you guys — and all the stuff, it’s great, it’s been a great movement for techno because again the industry was very controlled not only by the distributors, but by what the magazines said. The printed magazines, they were dictating the scene for so many years and the blogs like you guys and mnml ssgs in Australia, and all these blogs in different regions have really helped the music out immensely. It’s a source of information if you want to find out about new stuff or you want to find out about artists that you like. So it’s a major, major role.

I know you’ve had problems with record sales, just due to not being able to sell music in the first place because it’s not fashionable; how do you feel about file sharing on the Internet? Do you think it impacts the music negatively, or it’s just the way it is?

I’m probably as guilty as the next person [laughs]. I think we’ve all stolen something online, whether it’s watching some movies that you’re not supposed to be, you know, and I mean, I’d be a hypocrite to download a movie and say, or you know, a director made that movie but I just fucking downloaded it, he’s not making his money. I think it’s evil where people that never want to spend money on music at all. You know the worst is the people who download all the music for free that always want to get on a guest list for a party. That’s the worst. If you’re downloading all your music for free, at least pay the promoters to get in so the promoters are making the money so they can continue to book underground artists — especially in the techno scene, where it’s a really small scene and the promoters are really not making a lot of money. If the people would just go out and support the parties by paying to get in, it would really help all the artists get gigs more. It would help more parties. Then maybe the artists wouldn’t be so grumpy about their music being downloaded for free, because I think most of us are more interested the gigs than really worrying about making a shitload of money on the downloads. It’s a really tough debate. It’s a hard debate because I definitely think [purchasing music] helps, which is another reason why I like physical formats. You know there will be always the collectors who really appreciate it. Even if I ever had children, giving my kids like, ‘Hey, here’s my hard drive of all my music from when I was young.’ I don’t see anything special in that. It’s a tough debate on that one.

It’s complicated for sure. I guess my final question for you is just what’s happening in 2011, for Adam X?

2011. I live day-to-day man, I dunno. [laughs] You know, I’m the guy who loves techno in the future, but I think as I’ve gotten older you don’t really want to look into the future as far ’cause you feel like there’s not so much future left. [laughs] So you kind of just enjoy every day like your last, in a sense. I don’t really think too far in the future. I can think a few months at a time, but I don’t really think super far in the future. I think I let the music do that. When I write futuristic music, I’m not thinking about me in the future, I’m thinking about the future of the world, but when it comes to me, I’m more day-to-day. Maybe next month, two months, but not long-term. I’ll definitely be making a lot of music. Under what names, one’s an anonymous project I might be doing. [laughs] I’m definitely going to be doing a lot of music production, I mean I’m always working on stuff. And you know, playing gigs and doing that. The same as I’m doing now, pretty much and hopefully more, you know. We’ll see.

You said you might do more anonymous releases. Do you feel the fact that you might have to do anonymous releases, or that it works in the way it does, are you cynical about that at all, or do you enjoy doing that? Is that just part of the fun?

I think if I was to do another anonymous project, it would probably just be the music I’d want to do, that I don’t want anybody to know… it wouldn’t be the way I did it with Traversable Wormhole. It’d be more like, put some music out that isn’t really relevant to what I actually produce, because I write a lot of different stuff now. I’m always making different types of music. I mean I like so many styles of electronic music from over the years. I’m sitting on a lot of really cool broken beat electro tracks that I’ve never done anything with. And maybe I would actually not even put it out anonymously. I might just make another name up and say it’s me, I don’t really know. It depends, sometimes I go back to some of my stuff from a while ago, and I’m like ‘Shit, I never put this out, this is really good, maybe I should do something with it.’ So you never know.

Nestled along the broadside of Berghain’s hulking mass, Beirhof Rudersdorf is an outdoor restaurant that makes for unusually good people watching. This is where, on a recent Thursday afternoon, we sat at the bar waiting to interview René Pawlowitz. Among tables of old people eating schnitzel and drinking beer, Ricardo Villalobos ordered a mini-tub of Ben & Jerry’s to go with his café latte. A while later, Zip plopped down in an armchair across the patio and cracked open an issue of the Berliner Zeitung. Soon I caught sight of Pawlowitz, sitting at a table while another man talked to him. It was a few weeks before the release of his highly anticipated second album, The Traveller, and he was fielding the surge of media attention that came with it — an interview with FACT had just gone online, his podcast for RA was ready to go, and before our interview was over a photographer from XLR8R appeared for a shoot. Pawlowitz doesn’t have much enthusiasm for this kind of thing, but all the same he seemed generally at ease, stirring his sekt on ice and talking about his new record. As the afternoon turned to evening, he very candidly filled us in on his typical creative process, his misgivings with the general state of techno, and the burden of having a moniker that sticks.

So you’re pretty much working on music full time?

No, it’s only when I’m in the mood for making music. For instance, with the album, it was for maybe a month or two and then I stopped. The computer at home for doing music is turned off for two months now. I only make music when I want to, when I feel there is something. It’s not that I try to do it every day or that I have to explore new sounds. It’s not my thing. I produce music.

So what do you mean you don’t explore new sounds? You mean you don’t sit there experimenting?

When I start, I always have an idea. I don’t want to make music when I have no idea. I know what I want to do. And then, when I have this idea, I start doing it, I start producing it. And it’s not a hobby that I sit down searching for new sounds or new drums. It’s not what I do. I make it, I simply make it.

When you say two months, you mean the album from beginning to end just took you two months once you actually sat down to do it?

Yeah, all the tracks but one were made this year, I think between March and April. Actually it was very easy, because I had an idea. [laughs] And that’s why it was very easy. The one track was made last year — the second track ["Keep Time"] — this is the only one which was made last year. The other 13 tracks were made only for this album. Sometimes I made three tracks per day, and then I took a break for a week.

Did you have the same process for Shedding the Past?

No, that was something different, it was more a collection of tracks. I didn’t produce this album because it was…. How can I say it… I didn’t want to do an album. The offer came from here [gestures toward Berghain] to do an album. It was very quick to do it — only two months, and then it came out. That’s why I had so many tracks that I only collected to do an album. It’s not an album, really. It’s more of a compilation.

I was going to ask about that. I think Shedding the Past feels like it tells a story — there’s kind of a narrative throughout the album. There are little flourishes like the spoken word piece that segues right into the next track.

Very cheap. [laughs]

I liked it, there’s a continuity from track to track like it’s all one piece. And I think The Traveller sounds just the opposite. It’s like each song is very self-contained.

Ah, really? I think it’s more a story in the second album than in the first one. Because it’s always the same sounds. And not just the same kind of music, but the same sounds. All the tracks were only made for this album. And because it was made in a very short time, it sounds very similar.

Is it the same process when you’re doing 12-inches?

No, not at all. When I do 12-inches, the tracks must be a normal tempo, and the tracks must have a function in a club — they have to work. That’s why you need an intro, you need a break, and all that. And on an album you don’t need it.

Do you feel more comfortable with one or the other?

No, both are good. When I’m not in the mood to do something for the club, I do something that’s more dub, electronica, or this kind of chill-out ambient stuff. I dunno. I can do everything [laughs] — and I don’t need to. That makes things easy for me, a very comfortable situation for me.

So with all your different aliases, and different sounds for each one, do you feel like there’s still some part of you that hasn’t been expressed yet? Do you feel like there’s still something you’re waiting to unleash?

I don’t know yet. Maybe. But nothing planned, nothing at all. I will wait and see what happens.

It seems like there are many artists will have a track kicking around for a while, they play it in their DJ sets and their live sets, and then finally, sooner or later, they actually get around to releasing it. Are you that way at all, or do you just sit down to do a track and then you release it?

No, I only play tracks in my DJ set or live sets which are released. I don’t play any unreleased tracks.

For the tour to support this album, you said that the club setting wouldn’t be an ideal place to present this album because of the format. What’s your ideal situation for performing material from The Traveller?

Actually, I thought that it would be very difficult to play these sounds live, but in fact it’s very easy to switch through the styles. I’m sitting at home right now to setup the new live set, and it’s actually very easy. It’s not a problem to change the speed of the track. There are whole tracks with 120 BPM and the last track on the album is 160 I think [smiles] — but it’s no problem. It’s a show, and I play for one hour. And it’s easy, it’s OK.

At Mutek in Montreal they have a whole section of the festival where you sit down in a concert hall to watch the more experimental artists. Would you ever picture yourself in that kind of situation playing live? Or do you think you’d always be a club?

I dunno, hopefully I can play more “shows,” not at the club. Hopefully. But at the moment I only get bookings for clubs. And when I play at a club I have to “push it.” It’s hard, but I can do it [laughs]. But not with the new album. It’s not possible to play, for instance, I dunno, at Berghain. Maybe for the release show, yes, but not on a Saturday evening. It’s impossible. That’s why I have to change it to the older stuff to do four-to-the-floor.

Do you feel like you express yourself well playing live?

It’s okay. It’s hard work because of the traveling — with all the equipment. It’s easier for the DJs who are playing only CDs or MP3s. I always have a bag with me which is over 30kg, and this is hard. And always what’s very, very bad for me is… to do sound check. I hate it, actually. But you have to do it because you need to hear the PA. But playing live, it’s cool. It makes sense.

Why don’t you like the sound check?

Because you have to go to the club before. It’s wasting time, actually. It’s easier for DJs. They can go to the club one hour before or ten minutes before and they can start. It’s very easy, they don’t need to check anything. But I always have to talk to a lot of people — to the sound engineers, who are very, uh… difficult sometimes. That’s the bad side of playing live. The good is that I only need to play one hour [laughs]. But it’s long enough to be very exhausted after that.

I get the impression that you don’t play or DJ as much as the other Ostgut Ton artists. Is that true?

I would love to play more as a DJ, but the problem is that I don’t get any bookings [laughs]. Maybe some. But I don’t play techno music that much, and this is the problem. Because every promoter books DJs from the Ostgut Ton or Berghain to hear techno music or house music, and I’m not a techno or house DJ. Not anymore. So it’s always hard for me to play and to see the promoters eyes going, “Oh god! What a DJ! He’s not the right DJ for today!”

So are you playing more dubstep most of the time now?

Yes, kind of hip-hop, dubstep. House and techno as well. It’s always a big mixture. It’s not easy for the dancers [laughs]. But I need it, I need the mixture.

I just read in FACT that when you buy records, nine of them are dubstep and maybe one…

MAYBE one! [laughs]

…Is techno. How recently did that happen, or how long has your taste been like that?

It’s not my taste. It’s which records are available. There’s no interest in techno. That’s why. It’s not my taste [laughs]. I love techno and I have a lot of techno records. But at the moment I can buy more techno records in a second hand store than in a store for new records. There’s nothing happening right now, nothing interesting.

So why don’t you bill yourself as a dubstep DJ?

No no, I don’t want to be a dubstep DJ! No, no, no… It’s not that I’m into dubstep as well as techno. It’s more that I’m between all of these types. It makes it very difficult to promote myself as a DJ. But…

So what about Disco Shed? I saw that coming up.

[laughs] For instance, as a DJ, I like Diplo. He’s mixing very fast. And all this bam-bam cutting the whole time. This is what I like!

So when you DJ, is it really eclectic like that? You do one song then switch something really different?

Sometimes.

What’s your favorite place to play? Is this (Berghain) still your favorite place, or are there other places that you feel your style works out better?

I think places in Bristol, or at Trouw in Amsterdam. That was surprising to me because it was a house evening, but what I did worked out. So it was OK. But it was more that I was not playing dubstep but more the slower… kind-of-dubstep. And that was good. You can’t play sets like this at the Berghain. It’s impossible. I tried this so many times, I’ve played one dubstep track and it sounds a bit like techno, but it was impossible. You can see on the floor that the people are leaving the floor. It’s impossible.

Have you ever played at Sub:stance?

No!

You think that wouldn’t work either?

Scuba is not… I’m waiting for a offer! He’s not asking me [all laugh]. I have to talk to him. I would love to play there.

Well he recently played as SCB at Panorama Bar, and based on the recording I imagine it’s what you might sound like DJing.

I don’t like it at all. This SCB. Some dubstep guys can’t make techno music. It’s impossible. And here’s an example. It’s not very good. The same way when house producers want to make dubstep, it’s impossible.

Can you describe what it is you’re looking for that’s missing in techno that was there before? What about the techno that’s coming out now is disappointing to you?

I dunno. I think the problem right now is that every techno producer wants to do something like [Marcel] Dettmann or Ben [Klock]. When they do new techno music it always sounds like Berghain. And this is the problem. They don’t try to find their own sound. They always do what others do. And this is the bad thing. They don’t try to find something new. And this is disappointing.

Why do you think that is?

It’s the easiest way.

So, you’re pretty unsatisfied with where techno is at right now. Do you think that motivates you more? Does it make you more creative?

Actually, I don’t care what happens to techno right now. When it’s good it’s good, when it’s not, it’s not my thing. I will not “rescue techno” or whatever — I don’t care. I love techno, but I’m not in the position to help or whatever. I don’t care, actually. [laughs]

It seems like there’s a consistent theme in your music (with Shedding the Past, etc.) that you’re very un-distracted by what came before and what else is going on right now. Why do you think that is?

I have to explain that Shedding the Past is not like I wanted to shed something or to do something new or to leave something behind. It’s more to explain where the name Shed came from. That’s all. It’s a bit ridiculous I know, “Shed” the name — I know! [laughs] It was more to explain the name, where it came from. When I started with my label in 2003, this was the first sentence on my web page — “shedding the past” — but in that time, I thought I had to shed something. And actually the album name came in order to explain “Shed” — I’m not a garden shed or whatever! [all laugh] That’s it. There was a big idea behind it, but not on it, not while I made this album.

In general you have kind of an interesting relationship with your own names. I read that you said you’re not crazy about the name Shed. So will you have more releases as Shed, or are you trying to phase that out?

I dunno. There are so many aliases right now and there are more coming [all laugh]. I have to keep the freedom. Actually I wanted to stop this Shed thing, because I thought it’s too ridiculous — the name. But actually it’s okay. It’s my name right now.

Are Wax and EQD specifically used to get away from Shed?

Actually, these things like Wax or EQD — there is no artist behind it. It’s only tracks for the dance floor. That’s all. There is no artist behind. That’s it. That’s all.

But nonetheless it sounds like you. And people definitely consider Wax or EQD to be alternate names.

Actually I don’t care about all these things. When I play, as a DJ or live, I play also EQD or WAX tracks. But it’s always under the Shed name.

In general I feel right now like the EQD and Wax are really a lot of DJs favorite records to play out. Do you go out to clubs a lot — is the club experience still very important to you?

No.

That’s the impression I got. So how do you come up with such effective records for the party if you’re not that into clubs?

Because I love to make tunes like this! Because I like it. I’m not going to clubs anymore because I play so many times the whole year, so I don’t need to go out. But I love to do club tracks because it’s very easy. You only need to push things. It’s very, very, very easy to do tracks like this which are very functional. I’m not doing tracks with a constructed break or whatever. It only must have a very heavy drums and heavy bass — that’s it. And that’s what I love to do. And it’s a good. It makes… It makes me happy. That’s all. And I dunno why it’s still working, because I don’t go out anymore, but it’s working.

So what about Subsolo? When you’re releasing other people, is it people you’re associated with? Do you hear something at random or do you go through a pile of promos?

No, it’s only for people I know and I like. That’s all. But there’s nothing planned right now. There may be something coming sometime — there are some problems with one artist [laughs]. There are remixes coming, Part II of Dub Shed Sessions. Remixes for Wax No.20002, for this piano thing. Pinch and Elemental are doing remixes. The Pinch remix is finished. It’s good, it’s really good. But Elemental, he needs more time. It’s coming… sometime. In October, November, December. But there’s nothing planned. It’s not very easy to release something because it’s coming through an English distributor, and this makes it more complicated for me. It’s very easy for me to release records through Hard Wax. [Subsolo] is more business for me.

So how do you feel about the business part of it? Is it fulfilling?

No, it’s not. Actually it’s very easy, it’s not that much. I know some other label managers who are always saying, “Oh, it’s so much work! Oh god!” But it’s easy. It’s not that much.

So when you say you release something through Hard Wax, that basically just means you have a bunch of records printed and stamped, then you just stock them at Hard Wax, and that’s it? That’s all you have to do?

Mmhmm.

On the new album you have the track “44A (Hard Wax Forever!)”. Could you just talk a little bit about your relationship with Hard Wax — how much has Hard Wax influenced you?

It’s one of the biggest influences. Because I buy records there since 1992. I always buy records at Hard Wax, that’s it. I collect my records at home like it was at Hard Wax — it’s U.S., it’s Euro, it’s U.K, and it’s dubstep. I think 90% of my records at home are from Hard Wax. I found some old invoices from Hard Wax from 1993 I guess. I lived in Frankfurt, the east side of Frankfurt Oder, former GDR, and it’s so funny to see these invoices from Hard Wax 17 years ago. It’s crazy.

Obviously Hard Wax is one of the most famous techno record stores in the world. What do you think makes it so special? The buying technique, the organization? What is it about Hard Wax that makes it such an exceptional record shop?

Um, I think it’s not the point that we have the best dealers or the friendliest dealers. That’s not the point. All the people working there are musicians. All of them make music. And there’s always the same idea behind this. They only want to do music, they only want to live music. That’s all. Nobody thinks about making a lot of money with this. I think this is the point. They are not working there, it’s more like friends working there. They are involved in the store, and that’s the point. Everybody can say something to the assortment, and sometimes …. Ah, we are friends. It’s hard to get in there as an employee, but when you are in, you are part of it. And that’s the point. They always try to find something new. They have very strong connections to the U.S., to Detroit, to Submerge in the early days, or to downtown in New York. That makes it very special for the U.S. back stock. And I think this is one of the last stores that has this big back stock of old records. This is something special. I think that’s it. And it’s still a store, a physical store.

I read that you said before you worked there you weren’t really that into reggae or dub — it was working there that turned you on to that stuff.

I had to leave [working at Hard Wax] before I started to buy reggae records [laughs]. I bought some. Actually I started to listen to dubstep when I started working at Hard Wax. I’m not so into reggae. I don’t like it, actually. It’s okay, some records are good, there are some pop and cheesy records I love, but not that old stuff.

Was it a difficult decision to leave Hard Wax?

Actually, yes. In the beginning. But then, when I felt, “Oh, it’s easy to go back,” then I felt it was easy. It was a good decision. And I’m there every week, so I can still talk with them. And of course I sell my records through Hard Wax. It’s okay for me to work there doing mail orders, to do packaging and send stuff out. But not in the store. It’s not good for me.

So is this a permanent thing, or are you just taking a break for a while?

Uh, no, I think I will not go there (again). I worked at the store, at the counter, and… I’m not a seller [laughs]. It’s not my thing I guess, so it’s hard for me to work at the shop — too many customers. I worked there for three years and I think it was good, but now it’s over. Now I can make what I want. That means music.

So what’s your lifestyle like? How frequently do you make music? What do you do when you’re not making music, day to day?

Hmmm… I waste my time! [laughs]. I dunno. I don’t make that much music. It’s not that big, it’s not the main time of my life. At this time, I have a lot to do with the album, with promotions, interviews, photographs. And it’s hard work to answer all the emails and make email interviews, then I have to start my new setup for playing live, which at this time is my main task.

Is it still fun for you to play with Marcel? A few months ago you did Deuce at Berghain — do you enjoy that? Do you think that goes well?

I think Deuce was only a trial. But it wasn’t that successful. For us.

Really?

The record was okay. It was selling okay. But it was not that fun for us.

So that’s the only collaboration you’ve done, right? You prefer to work alone?

[nods] Maybe in the future.

Why do you think that is?

Because my ego is very big [laughs]. No, I think the reason is that I know what I want, I know how it has to sound and how it must BE in the end. That’s why. I don’t want to have someone behind me saying, ‘Do it like this,” — No.

It’s kind of interesting how Ostgut Ton and Berghain are becoming a cultural exports, with gigs in New York and Ibiza now.

I don’t like that very much. And I always have to say that I don’t want to be called a “resident DJ” of Berghain, because I’m not. There’s always these “Berghain evenings at club blah blah blah….” It’s killing itself. I think next year it’s over. [laughs]

What do you mean?

This export thing. No one will want to listen anymore to any Berghain or Panorama Bar DJs, because they’re playing everywhere at the moment. I think it’s a bit too much.

In general, does being part of the Ostgut Ton crew help you, or is it a distraction?

Oh it helps. A lot. It makes things very easy for me.

Do you feel like having these artists as your peers affects your music?

The Ostgut artists? [Pauses to think.] I think Marcel Dettmann. I think he’s been an influence. He’s doing things very, he’s not very… He’s not thinking very much at all times. He’s cool, he does what he wants to do, and he makes decisions very quickly, he’s not thinking so much about what things can happen when you do this. I think Marcel.

So you like that way of doing things?

I like it, because I can’t do it! Because I’m always thinking about things. And he’s only doing it — he’s just doing it.

I had heard that you guys give each other feedback on each other’s tracks. Is that true?

Actually, I don’t care about feedback. When the record is finished, they get a copy and that’s it. I don’t try to find out how it works or ‘Is it cool? Is it not cool?’ When it’s not cool, it’s my problem. But I don’t do any promotions, it’s wasting time, I think.

So you don’t do promotion, but you don’t really need to. Do you think in general that people worry about it too much?

I think it’s spam. [laughs]

As someone who’s closely connected to Hard Wax, releasing on Ostgut Ton, do you feel like you have a lot of freedom, that you have less things to worry about than other artists?

No. I think that some other artists think they don’t have any freedoms, and they keep themselves inside of some borders, I dunno. They don’t want to have these freedoms, because they feel safe within these strict lines. They can do more, but they don’t. They think too much about it. They can do more than they are doing. They think that anybody out there wants… ah, forget it [stops himself]. They can do more, but they think they are not in the right position to do something free, something new. Because other DJs are doing the same thing, so they have to do things the same as the others.

OK, final question. On Shedding the Past you said that there was a song that was dedicated to your brother. And now the cover photo on The Traveller is by him.

That’s funny. When I did Shedding the Past, I did the track called “Flat Axe.” It’s because my brother tried to work an axe, and he cut his bone [in his leg] — he was lying in his bed for four months because it was a very sharp axe. And that’s why it’s for my brother. And the new picture, he made while we were traveling through Norway, and he tried to do some photos while we were coming out of a tunnel.

Interview by Will Lynch and Sarah-Joy Murray with thanks to Jordan Rothlein for his contributions.

You’ve been DJing for over a decade. What was the music that really got you into electronic music and DJing?

Well I started raving at quite an early age and really got into house and techno — like old Chicago stuff and old Detroit stuff, and at that time I loved going to parties and hearing DJ’s play and I loved to buy the music and that sort of stuff. But for some reason I never really felt like I belonged to that generation because I was quite young at that stage and I felt like I was more of a consumer of the music rather than being of any importance to it. But during the mid nineties I encountered drum & bass through some DJ’s who had come over to Holland and at that time I felt that that was my generation and that music was more for younger people. There was just some feeling that I could do something in this music. Around that time I went to London a couple of times and went to the Blue Note nights and really felt that vibe even more, especially seeing people like Photek and Jonny L and people like that. Because I was already buying music I decided to start throwing my own parties and to play at them myself too. So for me drum & bass was the music that I thought I could really do something constructive in rather than just going out and partying, you know? So that’s how it started for me. I kept buying records across many genres and continued doing my own events for a long time as well, and eventually Detroit techno and Chicago house came back to haunt me when I started making music. Because I thought all of those old influences were gone but they came flooding back when I went in to the studio.

It is interesting that after so many years of DJing you look at your collection and see that there really is almost everything in there.

It is. I remember I did this residency at a student club on a Thursday night and the owner told me he didn’t care what I played as long as it wasn’t drum & bass. This was about 2000-2001 and I was already quite well known as a drum & bass DJ so I thought, oh well I just have to play all my other stuff. So I decided to use the money I got paid from that to only buy records from other styles and that was around the time when broken beat and early two step and garage became big so I’m thanking myself that I did that now because I have a treasure of all of these hard to find records.

So when you started making drum & bass were there certain producers you started listening to around the time when you started changing up the tempos and making stuff that was perceived more as dubstep?

Yeah, as for the drum & bass part, I started making music because I felt I was missing something in what was out there. On one hand you had the really dark stuff that was coming out and then on the other hand was the very melodic, dreamy stuff. I was looking for something that was more in the middle and there were really not many producers doing that at the time. So that’s why I started making music in the first place. Then when I heard the first Burial stuff alongside Kode9 and Digital Mystikz it was a turning point for me. Drum & bass at that time was a bit too loud and forced. It was all so fast that you couldn’t really do too much to it; at 175 bpm it’s hard to get much melody into something. When I heard Digital Mystikz especially, I just thought their music was so spacious and that really inspired me. Obviously Burial had his own take on the music as well, and they were both very inspirational for me. So I decided to do something around the 140 bpm mark and did a tune called “Broken” without really knowing about what was dubstep. Marcus Intalex owned a label that I was recording on and he put it out and that’s where this whole other side of my career started.

I think a lot of people see you as having defected from drum & bass as though it’s some kind of country or a code of ethics which to live by, but I guess in reality it’s just that you’ve found more excitement in exploring these other avenues.

Yeah, I mean honestly I don’t really care about how people see it. I never really felt a part of drum & bass anyway and you just go where the music takes you. This is where the music has taken me and hopefully in a couple of years it will take me somewhere else again. As a producer you just keep working on your music and try and stay inspired without thinking about any scenes of genres. That’s not really what it’s about for me. But you know I haven’t really had anyone be negative toward me for changing the music I make. I’ve had a couple of people come up to me at gigs and ask when I’m going to make more drum & bass because they love those records of mine. All the other people who have talked about this leaving drum & bass thing have been producers who would love to do the same but for some reason they think that they can’t do it.

Let’s move on to Great Lengths. It is such a totally cohesive album from start to finish that really presents a particular view on how you were seeing that music at that time. Since then, listening to singles of yours, they present completely disparate styles from that album. How planned out was Great Lengths as an entire album?

Completely planned because what I did was take about four and half months off from playing gigs. I was writing a lot of music but it was fragmented by playing gigs and it became very hard to go into the studio and try and stay in that zone to make something. So I was able to do singles and able to remixes and stuff like that but I wanted to do the album so I took that time off to concentrate on it. I started from scratch really. I think there are only two tracks on the album that I had done before this break (“Vancouver” and “Natural Selection”) so they were the starting point for the album. I had another track called “Hear Me” about half way finished too.

You’re living in the United States at the moment. How has living there and living in other cities impacted your music?

Well I’m always quite inspired by places that I’ve lived in or places that I have visited, just like most musicians I think. I always use location names in song titles and love to record atmospherics so I always take a little sound recorder wherever I go. I’m living in the suburbs at the moment which is pretty strange for me because I’m very much a city boy and this place is very, very quiet. There are the mountains here and it is just outside of Washington DC so for me it is ideal at the moment because I play so many gigs at the weekends so it is nice to have somewhere peaceful to come back to. I have my studio here too so I can focus on my music too. But I do think that if I listen to my album I can hear that peace in there, whereas when I lived in Eindhoven and Rotterdam, those places are both quite hectic you know? So I’m very interested to see how the second album will sound because now that I am used to this environment it might give me a different perspective as well.

Your singles that you’ve released since Great Lengths have really showcased a harder side to you. Was this just you exploring other sides of music or was it intentional to let people know that you make different styles to what people had heard on the album?

Well the Efdemin remix I was commissioned to do before the album but I had to put my album out first so they were waiting for a year. But yeah, I guess all of the new stuff is a bit more stripped down and a bit more minimal in a way. Maybe that has a lot to do with playing a lot of gigs because that does always change your perspective on music. Up until recently I had been touring solidly since the album came out so that would definitely play a part in this. Also I think things are changing in electronic music very rapidly just over the last year. Like dubstep now is not what it used to be; it is branching out in so many different directions and that’s without even referencing the whole house music side of it from the UK right now. But you have so much going on right now with Flying Lotus taking on 125 bpm stuff and Dorian Concept making more dance stuff. You know, where is all this leading to I ask myself. So there is so much exciting stuff going on and I suppose I am just finding my own sound in this changed scenery as opposed to how things were about a year ago.

Your Fabric mix seems to have a bit more of a 4/4 influence that you would hear in one of your DJ sets normally. Can we expect more 4/4 based productions from you in the future?

I must say that the mix CD is sort of what I’ve been playing very recently as I have been playing a lot of different parties and more house and techno clubs like Berghain and Panorama Bar and places like that. So I’ve been digging in to my old New York house and Detroit and Chicago stuff, and my own productions as well. But I would say that is the way I have been going lately, at least that tempo anyway, something hovering around 130 bpm.

I find the sound you guys who have been making dubstep come up with when you turn it towards more of a house/techno vibe very interesting.

Yeah, well it’s still bass music you know. A lot of the stuff still revolves around bass lines or bass rhythms rather than a four to the floor kick. But it’s funny because it opens up a lot of possibilities for me as a DJ because I can then play this new London sound, which is quite percussive and then I can look back at my old Kenny Dope remixes or stuff from the Deeply Rooted House label, older Kerri Chandler things. Then there is the whole Berlin thing with people like Ben Klock, Marcel Dettmann and Shed who do the percussive techno thing and keep that soulful even though it’s quite brutal sometimes. So there are lots of things going on and it’s nice as a DJ to look in all these boxes and see what’s there and try to make this coherent sort of set from it all, and also a coherent mix CD.

Ben Klock has just remixed one of your tracks. Will we see you returning the favor?

Hmmm, he just needs to ask me. The thing is he asked me before, but Shed had just asked me to do a remix, and then Ben released his album and he wanted me to remix something from that but because I had just done the Shed one it didn’t really work out. But I’m in touch with him all the time and I hope I can do something for him at one point or another. His music is a big inspiration for me. He actually took one of the leftovers from the Great Lengths. It was another one of those stripped down techno things but even more so than you hear on the album, and he’s going to use that for his Berghain mix CD which is coming out this year. And the exclusive twelve inches that they put out with the mix, my tune is going to be on that with someone else, so I’m very happy with that.

What can we expect from you in the next year?

Well the two remix twelve inches are coming out a week after the CD. They will have remixes by Ben Klock, Redshape, Zomby and a new guy from Manchester called Illum Sphere. Then there should be another artist twelve inch as well and there should be a remix for a Latin band and I’m working on my second album already. I want to get that out for the summer of 2010 so I’m going to have to speed it up a lot if I’m going to get it done by then.

In discussions of his solo and collaborative productions for Ostgut Ton and his own MDR label, his biting remixes for folks as disparate as Modeselektor and Sandwell District, and his infamously expansive DJ sets, club music commentators invariably accuse Marcel Dettmann of being a purist. But purism — as a stance on techno — implies pretension, and you’d be hard pressed to meet a man who puts on fewer airs about this music than Dettmann. At his headlining appearance at New York’s famed Bunker party, he may have threaded the needle from Tan-Ru’s “Assembly” (his fitting tribute to the late Ian Loveday, who passed away in June) to Newworldaquarium’s “Trespassers” and touched on countless rare techno sides in between. But if Dettmann — casually clad in jeans and an MDR t-shirt and handing out high-fives to all who approached him — played professor in any regard that night, it was only delineating how one brings down the house and keep revelers enraptured straight through 6 a.m. A few hours before all this madness commenced, I sat down with the famed Berghain resident for a chat on dubstep, Deuce, and what this whole techno thing means to the man who has lately come to personify it.

I’ve read that ’80′s pop artists like Depeche Mode and Kate Bush were both big for you growing up. Was there a first record or clubbing experience, though, that got you into techno, that made it your passion?

Marcel Dettmann: When I was 12 or something like that, we’d hang around in clubs for kids. There were DJs there who played the Cure or Depeche Mode and Joy Division, stuff like that. We grew up with this kind of music, mostly electronic body music and synth pop and things like that. Then, in 1992 or something like that, we went for techno because we heard something or read something. And then the brother of a good friend of mine, who was six years older, gave us some compilations of techno, or gabba compilations or something like that.

Do you remember some of the first records that really struck you?

Mostly American stuff. Really early Frankfurt stuff. After the EBM thing came mostly techno for me. I’m not really sure. There were so many records at this time. The first record I bought was 3 Phase feat. Dr. Motte’s “Der Klang Der Familie.” It was really famous in 1992, a big hit. We listened all the time to it, so we went to the shop and bought it. Before that I bought some seven inches and stuff like that, from bands like Depeche Mode. I come from East Germany, so we had just a turntable, no CD player. We had a cassette recorder, but mostly we listened to vinyl at home, so that was the reason why I bought seven inches and singles.

Were there techno parties going on in East Germany around this time?

In the area where I grew up, which was about half an hour from Berlin, there were a couple of guys running techno parties. One of the best DJs at this time was Gerard. Nobody knows him now, but it was amazing, such a mindtrip, such great stuff, really good techno. When I think about it, it’s magic. We listened all the time to his tapes. Norman Nodge as well.

[Nodge] has been around for quite a long time.

He’s been DJing for like 20 years. He played all of this cool stuff from the States. So we’d go into the shop in our city and say, “We want this one and this one,” and they’d get some more stuff for us. These guys were a really good inspiration for me and my friends.

Is it wild to have now released some of Norman Nodge’s material on your label?

He’s a good friend of mine. I’ve known him for like 18 years or something like that. We did a couple of parties together in the ’90′s. His hometown was half an hour from my hometown and an hour from Berlin. He’d invite me to play and I’d invite him to play. I’m a really big fan of his. I really like his DJ style, and I really like his music. It’s so pure. It’s like he doesn’t think about it, he just does music. That’s the most important thing: don’t think about it, just do it.

Going off of that… I know that techno means a lot of different things to different people. As one of the foremost guys doing it right now, how do you define it? Is it a style of music, an aesthetic, a philosophy?

Techno for me… I mean, I live techno. I live it all the time. I love it. Techno for me is like a 24-hour job. When I wake up, I think about music; when I go to sleep, I think about music. I think about it all the time. My wife is really jealous! (Laughs) But that’s my life. Since [I've been able to] think, I’ve been thinking about music. I just love good tracks.

So more than anything else, it’s something you feel.

That’s the most important thing. You have to feel it. It’s not just a good club track. It’s mostly like, any kind of music, you just have to feel it. You catch it, and it’s really magic. I need to think of the English words… I don’t know. For me, it’s just very, very important.

You favor a very pure, very classic sound, so we know where you stand on the past. Where do you think techno is going?

The thing is, right now there are so many good artists from the past who are making new tracks. I talked to Robert Hood, and he sent me some new tracks. I’m a really big fan of his; he’s the master, you know? And I’m really pleased, I really appreciate that this guy is making music now, again. It’s the same with Regis from Downwards, who’s now working with Sandwell District. I’m just really pleased these guys are making music again. There are also many good new producers, like Levon Vincent, as well as all the guys who are around me: Norman Nodge, Marcel Fengler, Ben Klock. For me, the most important thing isn’t how new the music is; it must just have personality inside, soul inside. If you feel it, get it. If not, then it’s not your style and that’s okay.

So much of what Hardwax posts on their homepage right now is, to borrow their term, “subs-driven” music: bass music, dubstep. You work there, so I’d imagine you’re surrounded by this music all the time. What do you think of this music? Do you play a lot of it?

I mean, I really like it. It’s a really good inspiration. There are a couple of guys where they like your stuff, you like his stuff. For all of us, it’s a good inspiration. They are looking through the techno guys, and we are looking through the dubstep guys and thinking, “Wow, great, nice.” I think it sounds really futuristic, and that’s where techno comes from. Simple and futuristic: that’s techno for me. It works in the clubs for sure, but it’s a different thing. The beats are changing all the time. In techno or electro, you have a bass drum, a kick happening all the time. Dubstep is more breaking like this, breaking like this. But I really love it. I love sound, the atmosphere, the feeling.

And it must sound pretty incredible in Berghain, on that sound system.

Yeah, really great. I’m a really big fan of Martyn and Scuba and all those guys.

So what about your own music? Tell me about your studio. What are you making music with?

I work with Ableton Live. I have a couple of drum machines, but I just use them for sampling and stuff like that. Mostly I work with Ableton Live.

And you’ve been working with it since you started producing, right?

Yeah, I started in 1997, not because I wanted to be a producer or something like that, but just for fun. Some people play Playstation, I play with sounds, loop stuff.

Do you have any new material on the way?

There are a couple of remixes coming. There’s a remix for the Richie Hawtin project Cybersonik, from 1992 I think. One of my absolute favorites, actually, on Plus 8. There’s also a remix for Fever Ray…

I love that record! Such a wonderful LP.

It’s really, really nice! They played at Berghain. It was amazing. The show was… it blew me away. I saw them at Sonar, too. They’ve become good friends of mine. So I did a remix for them. Also a remix for Junior Boys. I’m also working on a new material for my own label, MDR. The last one was Norman Nodge. Now it’s time to make a new one. I have a couple of tracks. Maybe at the end of this year, I’ll release a new 12″ on MDR.

Photo by Toni Rosado

You’re known for your DJing as well as your productions and remixes. Do you think being a DJ is an important part of being a producer, and that being a producer is an important part of DJing?

Mostly, I’m a DJ, for sure. I started with DJing. I love switching styles and playing my favorite records. That’s what I really love. I’m making music for… I don’t think about it that much. I’m just making stuff. I mean, I’m really pleased that people like my music, but I’m just making [music out of] what’s surrounding me.

You hear about people like Ricardo Villalobos making a lot of music for their own sets, not intending for it to be released. When you’re working in the studio, are you thinking about it for your own use, or are you thinking about it for release?

Not for myself. I’m making music for my friends and for people who want to use it. Sure, I play my tracks, but mostly I play them before it’s coming out just for checking it in the club, seeing how it works. I don’t play so much stuff of my own. It’s for the other DJ’s. There are so many other people [whose music] I like to play.

So you couldn’t really see yourself doing a live performance or something like that.

Yeah. I mean, I think about it sometimes. I have done a project with Shed called Deuce, and I’m a really, really big fan of his! He’s one of the best producers at the moment for me. He catches the old times and brings them into the new, so it’s really fresh, it’s really funky, it’s amazing. I really, really love his music. I’m really pleased that we worked together, so what I’d like to say is that we’re thinking about maybe doing a live set sometime, just a couple of dates, just once or twice a year or something like that.

No tour, just kind of to give it a try?

Right, just a couple of times.

What was it like working with Shed? What was your process?

It was really, really simple. We just brought our music together. We have a couple of sounds, a couple of unfinished products and tracks, and we just made a session. We’d sit there and record for like an hour, and then we’d cut something out. That’s how we made the three tracks. For me, it was just a good inspiration, working with someone else. Sometimes I sit in the studio with Marcel Fengler or somebody else, and it’s really good inspiration to hear what the other guys do. I really like to help them. I say, ‘How is this? How is this?’ And they say, ‘How is this?’ We go back to back all the time. It’s so helpful, it’s really important for us all to be speaking about music, what we’re thinking about.

Any more Deuce material on the way?

No, not now. We will see. Maybe next year.

And what about Dettmann | Klock?

Yeah, for sure. But now it’s really hard to come together because he’s playing every weekend, I’m playing every weekend, and we have to do so many projects, like remixes and our own stuff. He’s my best friend, and ‘m really happy to have him as my best friend. We’d really like to do something again. We spoke about it and it was like, “Yeah, let’s do something together again,” but we have to finish this, this, and this. So we’ll see. But yeah, for sure.

He recently released an album. Do you think you might do one?

I think about it, and I’d like to do it in the next year or something. But it requires thought, for sure, because I need to say to myself that now is the right time to make an album. It’s not like I can just bring a couple of tracks together and say, “That’s my album.” You have to bring a fairy tale to the people, bring your vision. I have to have something to say. For me, it doesn’t depend on how many tracks it is, it could be six or twenty. It’d just have to be a good thing for me.

When you’re getting ready to do a seven or eight hour set, how do you prepare yourself– mentally, physically, and musically?

Mentally, it’s like… mostly, I play until the end [of Klubnacht at Berghain], from 8 in the morning until 3 or 4 in the evening, eight, sometimes nine hours. I sleep before, for sure. I have a couple of tracks I can’t play in other clubs, because I only play there for three hours or something like that. When I play for eight hours, I have like 300 records with me, and I play mostly until the end, I play my favorite, favorite records. I really enjoy it, getting into the music and seeing how people will close their eyes on the dance floor and go into the music. It’s a really special moment.

I’ve read where you’ve said there’s a point in the night (or day, I guess) where you feel like you could pretty much play anything.

Yeah, that’s it. But you have to work for this moment. You have to bring the people to this place.

Is it almost a challenge to play a shorter set after you’ve done longer-form sets?

I like shorter sets as well, because you make a package, you make it compact. When I’ll play a festival for one or two hours, I’ll play straighter, more pumping, harder stuff. When I play for eight hours, I can grow, go up and down, up and down. I like both. But I like compact sets. You can play forward all the time.

You really like this Bunker party. What about it gets you going?

When I play here, it feels like a warehouse, a basement club. Really nice crowd, not so professional-feeling. It’s more pure. Really true, really personal. It feels like techno to me. It’s one of my favorite parties in the world.

Welcome to the latest edition of our series of interviews and mixes affectionately titled Talking Shopcasts. The majority of media and fan attention gets showered on the artists who create the music we love to listen to/DJ with/dance to, and for good reasons. But without the hard work, keen ears and business savvy of label staff, we’d be stuck only streaming tracks on their websites. For our fifth volume, we focus on arguably Berlin’s hottest label, Ostgut Ton. It’s difficult to describe the label’s meteoric rise to the top of the pile without lapsing into hyperbole, as it evolved rapidly from merely Berghain/Panorama Bar’s label wing to a dominant force in underground dance music in fewer than four years. In that short time, Ostgut Ton has helped make stars of Marcel Dettmann, Ben Klock, Cassy, Shed, Prosumer & Murat Tepeli, and almost anyone else who earns one of its coveted catalog numbers. Each must-purchase release pushes house and techno forward in a way few labels can claim without letting the success go their heads. With that in mind, we picked label manager (and LWE podcast alumnus) Nick Höppner’s brain about the label’s sound, its future, and even a tip for getting past Berghain’s bouncers. In case that’s not enough, we’ve also procured an exclusive and incredibly deep mix from Panorama Bar resident, Steffi.

Please tell me your your job title and what you do on a day-to-day basis for Ostgut Ton.

Nick Höppner: I am Ostgut Ton’s label manager. I take care of all things administrative here at the label, i.e. licensing our compilations, booking mastering dates, setting deadlines for our artists, graphic designers, lay-outers and press sheet writers and trying to make everyone stick to those deadlines, translating press releases from German to English, coordinating schedules with our PR agency Tailored Communications, our distributor Kompakt and our manufacturer Handle With Care, handling third party licensing, accounting sales for all our releases and artists. I am not doing it alone though. I’m supported by Michael, one of Berghain’s co-owners. He’s taking care of most of the artwork together with our layouter Yusuf Etiman and different artists, illustrators and graphic designers. For some of the day to day business, I’m getting support by Nicole and Elif who are taking care of our booking and bills are taken care of by our company’s general financial accountant.

Tell me about the beginning of Ostgut Ton. Why and how did you start out? How did the name Ostgut Tontraeger come about?

First of all, the label’s name is Ostgut Ton. It started as Tonträger, which means carrier of sound in German, but after our first release we changed it to Ton, which is German for sound. Ostgut is the name of the company running Berghain and Panorama Bar and was the name of the club preceding Berghain, which included a smaller version of today’s Panorama Bar, where I have already been a resident DJ. Ostgut had to close at the beginning of 2003 due to a re-development plan of the entire area. There’s a massive O2 arena now where the club once was. As a reminder, especially of the Sunday afterhours at Ostgut’s little garden right next to the tracks coming out of Ostbahnhof, André Galluzzi did a mix called “Im Garten” (in the garden) on his own label Taksi Music after Ostgut finally closed. The idea for a label had been floating around for a while, but everyone was so busy running the club itself and it was never realized; so André and his business partner just did it as they already had the infrastructure.

When it became clear there would be a follow up club, I got in touch with the guys running it and offered my help in case they were still thinking about setting up their own label. They reacted very positively, but needed to spend more time on setting up the club itself. And six or seven months after Berghain and Panorama Bar had opened, I went to work on licensing our first mix, Berghain 01 by André Galluzzi. We didn’t have any big plans then. We wanted to make that compilation, that was it. Kompakt agreed to distribute it. My bosses advanced me with an incredible amount of trust. Although I had worked for a record label before, I wasn’t really experienced as I hadn’t been given any responsibilities at my former job. That’s how it started. A while later Ben Klock and Marcel Dettmann, both residents at Berghain, left a demo with Michael and this demo became our first vinyl release.

What is Ostgut Ton’s mission statement, its modus operandi?

We just wanted to set up a platform for our residents to release music on, and that’s what we did.

How is the label’s roster decided? Is it strictly limited to Berghain/Panoramabar staples?

It is, with the exception of special projects like our ballet cooperation, where we asked artists like nsi., Luciano, Sleeparchive, The 7th Plain and Âme to write music for choregraphy staged by the Staatsballett inside Berghain, which we then released as Shut Up And Dance! Updated (Ostgutcd 03). Other special projects include the exclusive tracks we’ve released on vinyl for our mixes Berghain 02 & 03, although none of the artists involved have been complete strangers to the club. On the contrary: Norman Nodge is a resident, Radio Slave runs a label night at Panorama Bar, tobias. and Shed have had quite a strong affiliation through Cassy and Marcel Dettmann already.

An example of Berghain/Panorama Bar flyer artwork

Ostgut/Berghain stands out both as an insular, tight-knit music community and, as has been said, a “world capitol of techno.” Do you still see Ostgut Ton as a local label?

Mostly, yes — at least when you look at it from the production side of things. The core of the label is completely Berlin based, although we have just started to release material by one of our international residents, Luke Slater as Planetary Assault Systems, as well. He plays Berghain four times a year. In terms of how the label is perceived and where our music is bought, it totally is an international label, though.

How much freedom do Ostgut’s artists have in what they release? How much control do they have over the final product?

They have 100% control and freedom. It is not a rare thing for me to hear the music after it already has been mastered and the manufacturing process is already in full swing. We have declined to release music by one of our close artists only once. When it comes to artwork and packaging the label gets more involved, though. Michael is a very visual person and usually has quite an influence on how our releases end up looking.

What is one of your favorite releases on your own label? Why?

It has to be our first vinyl one, “Dawning” by Dettmann/Klock as its success came as a complete surprise. We have just put it out, no press or DJ promo. Marcel hadn’t released anything before and Ben only rarely before that, I think/ “Dawning” was such a fresh track at that time. It has this kind of dark seriousness about it and at the same time has a very playful edge. It combined straight banger qualities with an afterhours sensitivity making for quite a unique combination. It was a very satisfying experience.

Ostgut has risen quickly to the top of the pile in tandem with Berghain/Panoramabar. Is there a lot of pressure to maintain Ostgut’s top rated reputation? How does it impact your label decisions?

I would be lying if I said I’m not feeling any pressure at all. At the same time, we are trying to stick to what we believe in and what has worked for us in the past: Give the artists as much freedom as possible, do nice packaging, pay bills on time

In the last couple years the Berghain sound has crystallized and used to describe a generally dark and banging sort of techno. By contrast, Panorama Bar doesn’t seem as clearly defined. Do you think there is Panorama Bar sound, and if so, what is it?

First of all, I’d like to say that, for me, Berghain hasn’t such a defined sound as is always attributed from the outside. Of course, there are certain congruities between Marcel Fengler, Marcel Dettmann, Norman Nodge and Ben Klock especially. At the same time, they are very different from each other. Len Faki is something else completely already and all our other residents like Luke Slater, Rolando, Tama Sumo, Boris, ND_Baumecker and myself who are frequently playing downstairs as well are all adding different flavours to the Berghain pie. But you’re right in assuming that Berghain musically is a much more defined space as compared to Panorama Bar, where the music policy is much more open yet generally house-oriented. Up there anything might work. The stylistic range is very broad. Thus, it is a lot harder to pinpoint a certain sound, although I’d say that all of the residents have a very good understanding of where house is coming from in general.

Some have likened Ostgut’s signing of Luke Slater’s Planetary Assault Systems to the missing link between early-to-mid 90′s “hard” techno and contemporary sounds. Do you find that to be the case as well? Do you see Ostgut as something of an ambassador of that style?

Not really, to be honest. The way we have released the music as we did, has been more a matter of who had what available at what time. If some of the more house-y DJs and producers had been more prolific, it could have been the other way around completely. There has never been a master plan behind what we did. We just went along with it. Of course Luke Slater and our label are a good match. But again, the relationship with him goes back to a time when the thought of a label didn’t even exist. The guys behind Berghain have been promoting parties in Berlin since the mid 90s and started booking Luke at a very early stage. It is nice that it’s all falling into place, but it does so because of long term, quite personal relationships and not because of business plans.

Along those lines, is there a particular era of electronic music you feel is ripe for rediscovery?

Can’t think of one at the moment. Maybe, because in the environment of Berghain/Panorama Bar, it all has been always kind of present. We have so many residents, and Michael and Norbert have chosen DJs very well. Anything from Hi-NRG, deep house and loop-y, banging techno has always been represented, independent of current trends. This might sound a bit pompous, but it is how it is.

An example of Berghain/Panorama Bar flyer artwork

After hearing the Shut Up and Dance! Updated compilation and seeing artists like Animal Collective, who aren’t necessarily dance-oriented, on the Berghain schedule, is Ostgut Ton open to releasing more than dance music? Are there any plans on this front?

Yes, we are open for something like that, but there aren’t definitive plans at all.

Going back to Panorama Bar, are there plans for a second Panorama Bar mix CD?

Yes, indeed. I’ve almost completed licensing our second Panorama Bar CD which is compiled and mixed by Tama Sumo. It’s going to be released on October 19th and there will be exclusive tracks by Levon Vincent, Basic Soul Unit, Lerosa and our resident Steffi on a two part vinyl set.

How have the exclusive tracks for the Berghain mixes come about? Do the DJs propose the selections or do the producers approach Ostgut Ton with the tracks? Or is the label that’s making the suggestions?

It’s all in the DJs’ hands. They all are very well connected, some are even close friends with the contributors. As soon as they’ve decided which tracks to use, I get involved for the paperwork.

How do you think the proliferation of podcasts and live sets over the Internet impact the viability of mix CDs? Is there something that can be captured in a mix CD that’s missing from podcasts and downloaded live sets?

Economically speaking, in order to sell mix CDs these days there has to be an added value compared to podcasts and live mixes off the Internet. We are trying to achieve this by featuring exclusive material and I think we will even focus more on that in the future. So far it is working out for us, only meaning we are not losing money with the mixes

Although Ostgut Ton is by no means the first label affiliated with a club, it’s quite possibly the most popular in recent memory. Perhaps seeing your success, a number of other clubs have opted to release records and mix CDs as well. Do you think clubs make for good record labels? Why or why not?

Well, I think our success is very relative. Of course, we have fortunately been getting a lot of attention, but anyone who thinks we are making a lot of money with the label is clearly mistaken. Bookings are where the money’s coming in. I still think it is not a bad idea for a club to set up their own label, even today. A club already brings an office infrastructure, there is a network of DJs and artists to be tapped into, and there’s a great chance for cross-pollination between club and label, as long as both jobs are done well.

What are a few other labels, past and present, you respect/revere the most? Why?

Quite obvious, but Factory, because they really treated music as a piece of art to an extent where they actually lost money with mega hits (“Blue Monday”) without diverting an iota from the original idea. I really like how Innervisons are tackling the new challenges of running a record label today, plus they’re releasing good music. And although it’s probably really about time now to rethink their stance, I love Perlon’s stubbornness not to go digital.

The Berghain/Ostgut crowd seems to have a cozy relationship with Hard Wax. What is Ostgut’s relationship with some of the labels it releases/distributes?

Well, a lot of artists we are working with are distributing their labels through Hard Wax: Shed, Marcel Dettmann, Ben Klock, and Cassy. We’re all shopping for records there frequently. Prosumer, Marcel Dettmann and Shed work there, and Cassy used to until last year.

What can we expect from Ostgut Ton in the next year or so?

For the rest of 2009 there will be the new Panorama Bar mix, Ben Klock remixes by Sandwell District, Kenny Larkin and Robert Hood, a new Marcel Fengler 12″ as well as a new one by Prosumer & Murat Tepeli. At the end of 2010 it’s our five year anniversary and I hope we will come up with something nice to mark the occasion. I hope to release both a new Panorama Bar and a Berghain mix next year, as well as one or two artist albums and a string of 12″s including one by Steffi who provided the podcast for this feature. She’s very busy in the studio at the moment. There will also be a new Shed 12″ and maybe even a dubstep mix CD in cooperation with Scuba, who’s running the Sub:stance parties at Berghain four times a year.

And finally: Berghain’s bouncers are notorious for their seemingly random enforcement of door policy. Do you have any tips for getting in?

Don’t give up

Talking Shopcast 05: Steffi (76:14)

Tracklist:

01. Sven Weisemann, “Winter Tale” [Essay]
02. Linkwood Family, “Miles Away” (Intrusion Sunrise Dub) [Firecracker]
03. Tevo Howard, “Everyday House Music” (Album edit)
[Beautiful Granville Records]
04. Kerri Chandler, “Time Is Destiny” [Large Records]
05. Franck Roger, “Klubhead” [Real Tone Records]
06. Leonid, “Sadim” [Sistrum Recordings]
07. Neville Watson, “Up Yours” [Clone Jack For Daze Series]
08. House to House, “Taste My Love” (Tasty Club Mix) [Police]
09. Boddhi Satva, “Warriors Of Africa” (Seedadan Inst.) [Offering Recordings]
10. Scott Ferguson, “Any Day Now” (ElectroVox Remix)
[Deep Vibes Recordings]
11. DJ Boom “Kinda Kickin” [Phonography]
12. Parallel 9, “Domunis” [Music Man Records]
13. Mike Dehnert, “One O Eight” [Fachwerk]
14. OBX, “It’s All We Know (Trippin’ On Air)” [Ascension Records]
15. Shed, “Well Done – 033472 Edit” [Soloaction Records]

[Ostgut Ton]

The first extracts from Len Faki’s curate’s egg of a mix CD showcases an established figure, and a relative newcomer. Radio Slave falls into the former category (if you haven’t heard one of his pounding remixes in the last couple of years, you haven’t been near a nightclub), while Tony Lionni is the fresh face in the Berghain finishing school.

Lionni has released a spate of excellent Detroit influenced tracks in the last year on Versatile, Wave Music, and more recently Aesthetic Audio and Mule Musiq, and “Found A Place” is his finest moment so far. An ecstatic piano vamp accompanied by a wordless diva is nicely offset by crisp high-hats and a rocksteady bass drum. It’s certainly not what The Shangri-Las had in mind when they sang “Sophisticated Boom Boom,” but that label fits here. “Neverending…,” in the words of the Ronseal advert, does exactly what is says on the tin. Matt Edwards’ work has always been about joy in repetition, and there are no surprises here. In Len Faki’s hands on Berghain 03, it expertly marks the transition from bare-chested techno thumpers to mid-90s styled house, with a Dennis Ferrer a cappella layered over the top. Clanging dub chords echo into infinity, providing the dictionary definition of “DJ tool.”

The churlish could probably build a strawman argument with these tracks, positing that they represent the worst tropes of today’s techno retro-fetishism. Sure, “Found A Place” wouldn’t exist without those Mark Kinchen remixes of Chez Damier, and “Neverending…” is essentially “Phylyps Trak” redux, but the execution of these tributes is so masterful that the rest of us will be happily dancing to these for quite some time this summer.

[Marcel Dettmann Records]

As the dark prince of the Berlin club scene, Marcel Dettmann has quite a buzz about him these days. Though he’s been a resident DJ at hotspot Berghain since it opened the first time, he’s a relative newcomer to recorded work, releasing his first tracks in 2006. Now, hot on the heels of his Berghain 02 mix CD comes the latest limited-edition four-tracker on his own imprint, and from the sounds of it, that buzz could soon become a deafening roar.

Kicking off with the beatless “Clime,” Dettmann sets the stage for a dark, rattling trip through on a runaway train car. “Clime” pulses along with industrial noises, deep aquatic tones, and throbbing low frequency waves, full of menace and restrained fury. That fury, however, is fully unleashed seconds later as “Lattice” comes roaring out of the speakers. With a relentless kick drum leading the way, “Lattice” takes you screaming through the stormy Berlin night, heavy rain pelting the train car until finally reaching a deafening climax, jumping the tracks, and finally righting itself on the straight and narrow. Breathtaking and intense, “Lattice” goes toe-to-toe with the black helicopters of Audion’s mighty “Mouth to Mouth” and comes back with a sneer, asking, “Is that all you’ve got?”

On the flip, the glitchy bounce of “Shatter Proof” soon gives way to a thudding off-center lope that echoes around in circles before finally dropping the bottom out and revealing its sticky, dirty underbelly. “Corebox” is the most straightforward groove here, with a simple four-to-the-floor beat and clunking acid-warped riff — punctuated midway by what sounds like duct tape being torn from flesh — working themselves into a lather over the course of six-plus minutes. Strange and strong, “MDR 04″ delivers some seriously powerful gut punches. While he is still more known for his DJ sets than his productions, with a few more releases under his belt, Dettmann will surely find it difficult to keep more and more labels from knocking at his door.

In part two of our conversation, Achim and Murat talk about their influences, the future of vinyl, and that geil gay crowd.

“What Makes You Go For It” was one of my favorite songs of last year. Can you tell me a little bit about how it came about?

Murat: That was the first time I played at Panoramabar — that was 2005, I won’t forget that. I made the EP on the Playhouse label and they invited us to play there live. I was so flashed by the place, by the crowd. And when I got back home I was like, “OK, I have to fix this moment somehow,” and I recorded the instrumental track and I introduced it to Achim.

Achim: It’s a Berghain track. You haven’t been there?

No, not yet.

Achim: It’s a very intense place, it’s very sexual place, it’s a very free place, which can be great, but can be totally intimidating. There are days when I go there and it’s the perfect place to be and there are days when I go there and I have to leave after half an hour. It happens rarely, but I think “I’m not really happy with myself tonight,” so this place can be very intimidating and show the dark side.

Murat: For me, this track has so many parts. It has some roughness, some hard parts, some romantic parts with the melodies and the backgrounds. That was Panoramabar for me.

Achim: For me it really reflects some nights in Berlin. You go out and you enjoy the attention you get. Sometimes you think, “I’m the hot guy, all the guys go for me,” but sometimes it leaves this shallow feeling. I’ve had dates with guys where I felt really empty afterwards. They just project something onto me, it’s not about me, and that’s what I tried to capture in the vocals.

Murat: It wouldn’t have been the same without the vocals for me. I was so happy when Michael from Ostgut said, “Let’s do it.” The track was already existing for one year.

Achim: We had a rough mix of it, but I did the vocals and didn’t record them right away, so I tried to record them in a very theoretical mood and it wasn’t right. It took a while for me to recapture the same emotion. It felt like giving back something to [Panoramabar/Berghain]. Personally, I’ve had so many great nights there. DJing there has given me so much confidence. I cry a lot while DJing there ‘cuz it’s so great.

So I gather that you, Achim, are gay. Are you gay as well, Murat?

Murat: Yes, I am.

OK, that makes this next question a little easier to ask. In America, my experience is that techno and house really have no role in the gay club scene. I was curious how you felt they fit into the gay scene in Germany, or maybe Berlin’s in particular.

Murat: Well I live in Cologne, so that’s totally different. I’m only here once every few months or so, but I used to be here every month.

Achim: I’m sick of the gays always being the ones who have the “good taste in music, ha ha.” Most gays [here] spend their days listening to the ABBA music or stuff like that. The same goes for Berlin in most parts of the gay district you have Madonna or ABBA playing constantly or you have this porn dance stuff, this pumping dance sound with no soul which goes perfectly as a background for a porn movie. It’s not that the gay scene in Berlin is one big, great influence on music, but if you take Berghain, Berghain started through gay sex parties. They still have the basement where they do sex parties four nights a week, they have the Snakes party where only men can enter and it’s all about sex. I think it effects the kind of audience goes there, the people who are very tight and stiff with themselves won’t go – a straight audience.

Murat: Besides the sex parties… on normal days.

Achim: You have an audience which is more open minded. At Berghain, most people running the club and working there and most DJs are gay. It’s not planned like that, these people just come together and being like a family.

Murat: I’d say it’s more 50/50.

Achim: Mmm, for Panoramabar upstairs the percentage of gay DJs is bigger. Downstairs at the techno floor it’s more straight. It has to do with the music, because the people running it, especially Michael, they’re really music lovers. They could have just made stupid gay parties and not care about the music at all. But they’re music lovers, so they mixed it. Berghain could do safer booking with bigger names, but they don’t.

Murat: Music comes first at this place and that what I love about it. It doesn’t matter what they play, the sound is so great there.

Achim: You enter the place and right away you know where the focus is. It’s
definitely not standing at the bar and being fabulous, it’s being on the dance floor.

So let’s switch gears for a bit. Who are some of your musical heroes?

Achim: For me it’s Prescription: Ron Trent, Abacus and releases on Balance. Prescription and Balance were the first two labels where I bought everything. I was really thirsty for new releases like that. Also, Relief from about the same time. Producers like Boo Williams and then discovering the earlier stuff, definitely like Mr. Fingers, Marshall Jefferson. His track with Kym Mazelle, “Taste My Love,” the first time I heard that I was really amazed. I really like Blake Baxter. Some Detroit guys I really go for.

Murat: For me, I don’t have specific producers because I listen to a lot of stuff, both hip-hop and house, there’s a lot to mention. There’s not one superhero. I always discover new old stuff, it’s always afterwards that it’s influencing me. A lot of hip-hop and new jack swing stuff meant a lot to me, in the late 80′s a lot of Soul 2 Soul and Diva. That was really my time, I listened to a lot of A Tribe Called Quest. That were my big influences, very funky, groovy stuff. Of course I also love the guys that Achim mentioned, but that was later and not really a part of my influences – not the roots. I also listen to a lot of Turkish stuff you wouldn’t know *laughs* so I won’t start talking about that, but it was also a big influence.

What contemporary artists do you admire?

Achim: To talk about Cassy now would be really obvious. We really love her. It’s hard to separate [the music] from the person. If you ever see her performing live, you will never be able to separate her music from the way she moves. It’s really worth it. She has this really subtle back and forth, very slow movements, very sexy, very groovy – I love it. I’m busy dancing when she DJs, but I could as well stand there and enjoy watching her. I really like this producer called Stephan Laubner, he’s releasing the name STL on his label called Something, I really like that. There’s this Italian guy called Lerosa in Dublin, I guess, he released on Real Soon and Enclave Recordings.

Murat: For me I only know Cassy well. I don’t know a lot of producers personally, a lot of producers don’t know me because I don’t have many releases. I’m not really into the scene because I have another job [as a surgeon], so making music is my part time job. But I know Cassy and I really love her.

Achim Brandenburg, the main Prosumer, belts it out live.

Based on Achim’s charts and your music in general, American dance music seems quite important to you two. And yet it seems like a lot of America is “over” dance music, especially in Chicago where being into house and techno is surprisingly rare. Why do you think this style still holds so much appeal in Europe/Germany while it dies out in its homeland?

Murat: A lot of people tell us this, especially about Chicago. They say, “You’re interested in Chicago music but you’ve never been there. There’s nothing there.” Of course I still want to come over and see that all. Of course it’s not ’85-86, it’s 2008, that’s also what counts. In Europe, electronic music has been huge for the last 15 years, it’s grown so much. My influences are of course the 80′s, those were the years that I grew up, especially the late 80′s.

Achim: For a lot of people electronic/dance music goes hand in hand with a party scene. I think it has a lot to do with that. If you look at Europe, Berlin is usually considered the party capitol nowadays. The reason is, in Berlin you can get away with so much stuff you can’t do in other cities. Berlin is really cheap in a lot of aspects, rents are low, to afford your basic stuff every day is easily done, so it’s easy to run a club.

I was doing an illegal club with some friends for some months. The first time the police came by we were so scared, we said, “Ahh! We’re going to jail,” it was obvious we were doing an illegal club there. They just said, “We had some complaints from a neighbor saying his pictures were falling from the walls, but now we hear what’s going on here so he must be exaggerating. We just have to show up here.” One of them gave us his business card with his contact and said, “If you have any problem with drug dealing here, let us know.” That was some years ago, but it’s still about the same vibe. You have authorities respecting and leaving alone a subculture. So we have a broad basis of things going on and it’s easy to get a license to open a club.

If you compare Berlin to New York, for many people for so many years New York has been the city, and now so many people move to Berlin from New York. If you look at what’s going on in New York, people are not allowed to dance, you have to have a license for people to dance – that’s killing a lot. I don’t know about cities like Chicago, but that’s one approach to explain why it’s like that. It’s very difficult for party organizers to just do something and here it’s very easy.

Murat: You have to have the opportunity to have a subculture, and if you don’t let people party, you don’t have a subculture.

As technology grows more advanced, the requirements for producing electronic music have shrunken dramatically. Some artists and critics have bemoaned this “over-democratization” of producing. How do you feel about these advancements?

Murat: We all have to try harder now!

Achim: Democratization is never something bad. I’m definitely not complaining about everyone having access to the production tools which are becoming the standard nowadays. New techniques, new devices, new programs, in the beginning when they come out a lot of people tend to use them blindly. A program like Ableton Live offers you so many possibilities and you can make a track from scratch and it all sounds very professional and impressive, but it offers you too much. You lose yourself in the options the program gives you, that’s more the problem, in my opinion. People tend to use it blindly and tend not to do something that has to do with themselves [and instead] tend to copy current production styles. It’s great when everybody can have access to stuff. It would be great if everyone would have 808s, it’s so much fun to play with it.

Murat: There’s a lot of fault in the music industry. People do have a lot of output nowadays, everybody can do music, everybody has this output, everyone makes releases and labels. You don’t know what anybody is doing. The music industry pushes the artist, saying, “You have to do a release because nobody will remember you, talk about you half a year later if you don’t do a release.” The artists are very pushed by the music industry. That’s what I like when we do music. Michael of Ostgut asked us if we wanted to do an album and of course we wanted to do that. We collected our ideas from all the years and we put it together and we did this album. I don’t know what’s coming next, but I’m not thinking about the next months to having this and this output.

Achim: The original contracts we were given from Playhouse included having to deliver them new tracks within a period of six months so they could have a follow up release. Both of never signed this contract because it’s…. Hello, I’m making music, what do you want from me? The problem that the music industry, especially the vinyl industry has at the moment, I don’t think it’s based in the people making the music, it’s based in the music industry. They’re all complaining about how bad everything is going. I mean, it is very bad and it makes me very sad that so little vinyl is sold nowadays and that so many tracks are just downloaded illegally. But they were over-professionalizing a lot, “We can do more, we can do more,” there’s so many labels… it’s just too much output. Nobody can follow that, so the market must collapse.

Murat: I never treated music when I was young like I do nowadays, and that’s what I really worry about. When I used to buy a CD, I remember my first CD was a De La Soul album and I listened to that record every day – every day for a fucking half a year. I wouldn’t do that nowadays. I treated music different in those days. It’s like everyone downloads it, listens to 10 seconds and then throws it away.

Achim: I think nowadays you are just trained more and more just to consume music. The aspect of valuing music definitely is fading. If you have a file you download from Beatport or something similar, you just have a name and an artist. It’s something very virtual somewhere on your computer. It doesn’t come with a package, it doesn’t come with any information; with a lot of tracks people have no idea who the actual producers were. So many techno artists don’t do shit, they have people producing it [for them] and the people buying it don’t even know about it because they read the small print on the record anymore. It’s just for blindly consuming, that’s what it’s made for. That’s why it’s so important for us to include – like with “What Makes You Go For It,” we were so happy when we found the artwork of Gaia [Zebellin] which became the artwork for the single because it fit perfectly. It’s important for us to find something we can link to our music.

Murat Tepeli’s smile lights up the room.

What do you think the industry can do to keep vinyl relevant for the mp3 generation? Is there anything it can do?

Achim: I don’t know if you heard about it in the States, about the Pro Vinyl Alliance?

Hmm, no.

Achim: All the German distributors got together and said, we don’t want to turn back the hands of time and mp3 is a reality, so we’re earning money from that. But vinyl comes with a package, usually you buy it at a record shop, you get a musical education and a social background, that’s why they really want to save vinyl, because it comes with all of that. They tried to figure out solutions to save the vinyl and they decided that all stuff from labels which joined this alliance the vinyl release is always two weeks before the digital release so it’s equal chances for a record shop and the mp3 websites. It’s really putting money and love in the artwork again. If I see a record with artwork that I love and I can feel the paint, smell the paint, I love that. I go for that immediately. Putting the focus on making something unique again and not just a mass product.

When it comes to DJing, what’s more important: the quality of the set or the set-up itself? That is, does the way a person DJs (laptop v. vinyl v. Serato et al.) impact how you feel about their set?

Achim: If I see somebody setting up Final Scratch, Serato, whatever, to be honest, I’m always suspicious. That reputation is definitely earned by people like Troy Pierce or somebody like that. It doesn’t do the job to me. I’ve heard people play with mp3 and it was a great set [even though] I was very anti-it. People who say they want to fully express themselves and it works better that way, if that’s how they feel that and I can hear it in the sound, I’m totally fine with it. There are DJs who do a good job and I can see they’re busy putting effects on it and stuff like that, I can see the point. I saw Claude Young DJ years and years ago and he was magic with vinyl. He was playing with three decks and it was amazing. I heard him not too long ago when he was doing a digital set and all the magic was gone. If the only reason you to do the mp3 set up is to save luggage, to be more healthy to your back then I have a hard time accepting it. If people put more into the set then I’m totally pro.

Murat: In my opinion it’s actually bullshit. I don’t mind what anybody is playing as long as it’s a really good set which pushes me. I am suspicious because of the way we treat mp3s nowadays. If I see someone is worrying about and collecting vinyl, he treats his music in a different way and that’s what counts.

Achim: You often get mp3 DJs who play really disposable, exchangeable music.

Murat: It’s very subjective to say someone has to push me and make me feel like dancing, but the DJ has to have a personality.

Achim: I have heard people expressing personality through mp3 set ups. If that comes across I like it. DJing with vinyl is always a challenge because something can go wrong.

The reason I ask is because I DJ with Traktor. Not because I don’t want to DJ with vinyl, but because it’s incredibly expensive for me to buy singles at $10-12 a pop, and I’m not willing to drop a couple grand just to have the opportunity. It’s also increasingly difficult to find stuff. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Murat: I can understand that.

Achim: You’re definitely right. If you go to places like Mexico, they have a luxury tax of I think 60% on top of vinyl, so you have to pay for shipping it plus the tax. If they all go for digital, I can totally understand it. Living here where they have the access to a lot of music for a decent price on vinyl I don’t see the point that much.

What can we expect from you two in 2008 and beyond?

Murat: We’re definitely going to tour and we’re going to release a 12″ with some remixes from the album. We don’t have a deadline now.

Achim: We do.

Murat: We did! *laughs*

Achim: We had one, we have a new one which is months later which feels much more relaxing. Now we’re going to play some live shows. My DJ schedule is busy. I hope we will make it to the States this year, it looks good, but it looked several times before. Till I have a signed contract I’m not going to be too excited about it. Going to Chicago would be… wow.

Well, don’t get your expectations too high. The audiences here…

Murat: Yeah, everyone is telling us this.

Achim: But I heard there’s still shops where you can find records you would never have a chance to get here.

Definitely a lot of dusty Chicago house records here, that much is true.

Achim: We’re coming to dust them all off!