This Year, They Said…
By this stage, I’ve tired of the ubiquitous end of year reviews and am eager to move on to ’07. 2006 was a period of great change musically, as continental producers and performers left their mark everywhere. Although I disagree fundamentally with the notion of polls and hierarchies, this seismic shift is best captured by RA's excellent end of year coverage. Inspired by their look back over the past twelve months, I dug out all the features I wrote in 2006 and picked the best quotes from my favourite articles. Happy new year to one and all, and until that big bell strikes midnight tomorrow, happy reading!
“Timo had played and listened to the tracks I was making and said that they would be suitable for Planet E, so he went onto MySpace and sent Carl Craig a message. Carl got back to Timo almost straight away, but his first question was ‘is this the real Timo Maas?'. Once Timo explained that he wasn’t an impostor, it happened very quickly and Carl chose ‘Full Clip’ - it was a case of the right tune finding its way onto the right label.” – Martin Buttrich explains how MySpace found a home for ‘Full Clip’.
“In most cases your time is numbered, which is why I’m having the best time I can while the offers are there. If it died, I’d have to do something else like dog walking.” - Jesse Rose considers his options before tinnitus and DJ back kick in.
“I once saw James Brown play live and his backing band was like a machine, looping this groove for about 15 minutes. That to me is futuristic, especially if you heard the band doing it in the 60s and 70s!” - Henrik Schwarz makes a connection between techno and the deceased godfather of soul.
“I wish. The closest I have been to India in my life is yoga, meditation and Ravi Shankar. The title just popped into my head after we played it the first time and it seemed like a good name.” - Matthew Jonson says he’s never been to India, but that it’s still ‘in him’.
“The only thing is that some DJs or producers get surprised that I make music by myself, but they are mostly the ones who don't have a clue how to produce dance music themselves.” - Shinedoe gives it right back to the chauvinists.
“First it was about finding records that made me cry or be happy. Then it was: Okay - and now? Start studying or approach a career in the electronic music field? In 1997, I decided to start Bpitch Control.” - Ellen Allien reveals how she built her techno empire.
“I was going to settle down and start a family but Madonna stole the baby my girlfriend and I had chosen, so we decided to adopt Shonky!” - Jennifer Cardini could never be described as conventional.
“Laurent Garnier supported me from day one and when I met him, he said I should enjoy every minute without listening to what people say. It was at a time when nobody took me seriously, making jokes that I was fucking promoters to get gigs, so I shaved my head, wore XXL clothes and played harder. Once, before my first gig in Chicago, someone even gave me condoms - Laurent said there would always be jealousy and I shouldn’t give a shit. I have endless respect for him.” - Kittin expresses gratitude for her most famous supporter during the early years.
“I recently climbed Kiliminjaro for charity and when I got to the top, I thought to myself, ‘what the fuck am I doing, hanging out in record stores with guys and playing in dingy warehouses, maybe I should get a nice, normal job with regular people’, but then I thought I have done so much ground work, I should see it through.” - Electro breathes a sigh of relief as Andrea Parker doesn’t let the altitude go to her head.
“A gigolo doesn’t call himself a gigolo, it’s more to do with how you treat people, how you work with others, it’s a way of life. It’s about taking care of everything, the way you dress, what you eat, what kind of car you are going to drive and how you are treating the ladies is important too. I would never define how I behave, but if you are gonna say it’s gigolo style to stay at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Tokyo, then I’m still a gigolo.” - DJ Hell still walks it like he talks it.
“I remember I was playing and just as Hugh Hefner came down the staircase with three of his girlfriends on each arm, I dropped Patrick Cowley’s edit of Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ and thought to myself, ‘it can’t get any better than this’.” – Especially when he gets to DJ at the Playboy Mansion.
“Some producers say they get inspired by the snow and the beautiful landscape, but that’s all just a load of bullshit!” – Todd Terje debunks the miserable Scandinavian producer stereotype.
“Everyone in the UK was fed with the same mother’s milk, but we didn’t get that acid house boom. It’s more to do with the fact that there’s nothing happening here that gets people into studios than the long winters.” – Boredom rather than snowflakes inspires Prins Thomas.
“There was a time when I was so short on money that I used to collect water and beer bottles that people left lying around. I returned them to a supermarket and collected the small deposit for each one I brought back. You have to fight for what you want to do in life – and I could never do a nine to five job, I’d simply die.” - Trentemoller on his ‘last resort’ to make money before he signed to Poker Flat.
“People always say stuff like that and it’s just not fair. So you’re telling me that people weren’t snorting K at big techno raves in the 90s? When we all play, we sense that people love and react to the music, they scream and shout and have a great time. If they were sitting on the ground, gurning at the walls it would be time to get worried (laughs). In my experience, people are just up for having a good time.” - Magda denies that minimal is just drug music.
“Go to a minimal night and if you’re there for more than one hour without taking any drugs or drinking, you’ll be bored to death. There is absolutely nothing happening in most of these tracks, it’s just music for people who are on drugs, and it sounds like a bad copy of old Dan Bell and Robert Hood records.”- But Kristian from Ame isn’t so sure.
“It’s been a long, strange trip and we feel like between us, we have climbed Mount Everest. We have spent long periods of time in jail, in deserts and in hospitals. It makes us different to most producers and gives us a greater motivation to survive.” - Jay Haze from Fuckpony explains that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.
“Since I started making music, I have found that I could not escape this dark sound. I think that the electro/techno and Goth scenes have a lot in common and maybe now the old Goths who produce music are taking their revenge on techno.” – Hacker gets ready to dust down his leather trousers and old Cure albums.
“It’s great that people like Dave Clarke wear eyeliner, anything that challenges people and confuses them is a good thing. If he fucks people’s brains up doing it, which I suspect is his motive, then great. Just once it doesn’t become a self-parody…” - Ivan Smagghe gives the thumbs up to DC’s make-up.
“It’s about all the dirty money in Switzerland: when I go from my apartment to my studio every day, I walk through the banking district, where all the dodgy business goes on. Whenever there is a scandal abroad or a dictator is deposed, they bring suitcases full of cash here. It’s what makes us so wealthy, but some people react against it and that’s why there are so many junkies in Switzerland.”
- Crowdpleaser explains what inspired ‘Cash On Time’, one of the stand out tracks on his and St Plomb’s ‘2006’ album.
“I played recently in Belgrade and the promoter didn’t pay me. Don’t get me wrong, I love playing in Serbia, the people are great because they have been through so much. Another time I played there, there was a huge fight in the club and there were people running about bleeding and Nazi-style guards running up to the stage, screaming into my face!” – Alden Tyrrel says that some things never change in the Balkans.
“I try to avoid what I call ‘square music’, where everything is logical and obvious because it’s music without feeling. When I make a track, the kick drum is the last element to go in, I’m always working on the atmosphere and trying to reproduce something that is moving and breathing, not something static.” – Luciano puts the boot into plod-plod minimal.
“Look at Ruben Gonzalez. For him, playing music is simplicity itself. When this guy was born, they put him beside a piano so he could learn to play because he had to earn money to eat. He always played without asking, his music comes from deep inside his body. People who hear him think he plays like a god, but for him it’s second nature, he doesn’t think about it, he just feels it.” - And he believes that there is Latin spirit in south American musicians.
“I am fascinated by the Gothic image and find the subject of the occult fascinating: it was an influence on some of the songs, but don’t worry, we’re not practising black magic yet." - Olof from The Knife goes all ‘Wicker Man’ on us.
“You don’t want to put it on a press release and boast about it. If I was real about it, I would live on the barest minimum and give everything away. People don’t realise that we’re so well off because we’re living on on the shoulders of people with nothing. Hopefully this will encourage other produers to do the same.” – Alex Smoke does his bit to fight global poverty by donating part of the profits from ‘Paradolia’ to charity.
“Making some of the darker stuff was hard. It was a mind game and I had all these crazy pictures and images in my mind when I was making it. It would have been great to have worked with an illustrator to give these ideas a visual representation. This city, PsyCity, looks amazing: I have imagined the streets, the people, even the uniforms they wear. Like many big cities, it has a good part and a very violent, brutal downtown part. Music has take n me into different levels of consciousness and I have been in worlds where I have been frightened because I reached a point where it became scary and unpleasant. But surely music should afford the listener such possibilities, this is the richest and most fascinating part of any art.” - Anthony Rother denies that his work is influenced by totalitarianism.
“I remember once playing at a rave in Paris with Basement Jaxx and Daft Punk and dropping ‘Ballbreaker’, which cleared the floor of 20,000 people – you could call me the female John Peel of electro!” - Not unless you decided to make a booty version of Chicago’s ‘More Than A Feeling’, Andrea Parker.
“When I started off, Dan Bell and Richie (Hawtin) were the ones who gave me the encouragement and confidence to keep going. When you start DJing you don’t know if you suck or not, and it was intimidating being a girl. Nowadays, there are a lot of women doing this music, but ten years ago, it was different.” – Magda on her techno mentors.
