The techno legend talks Senso Sounds, Off Week at Sonar, and working with Solomun and Dubfire.
How was Off Week in Barcelona at Sonar?
We had a great event on the Wednesday, which was my Senso Sounds Label Showcase at the Upload Club, and the response was brilliant, we had a great line up: Dubspeeka, Drumcode, Truesoul, Andre Winter, Florian Gasperini, Borja Gomila and KAPI plus myself, it was a great event. The Terrace Party in Barcelona at Hotel SB Diagonal Zero (with Karotte, Gregor Tresher and Jens Bond) had been looking forward to for a long time, its always an excellent week when the festival (Sonar) is on in Barcelona so as long as the people are there and enjoying the music nothing can really go wrong.
You recently played at Solomun’s Diynamic parties in Ibiza: how did the sets and come about?
Last year (2014) I played at Pharm at Privilege, and I joined Solomun at his party at Pacha – when we left there, we ended up playing a six hour B2B set at an afterparty from 6am-12am! I’ve known Solomun for a long time but I never thought we were that close musically, as usually his sound is a bit slower, more melodic, and I’m more techno focused, but in the past 2-3 years we have got closer in terms of sound and so it just worked really well, so this year he invited me to play at Pacha for one of his opening nights (Solomun + 1) on Sunday, which went really well.
I’ve known HOSH for about 10-15 years as we live in Hamburg, so I usually play at his party at Villa Nova, and an open air night he does annually called ‘Grunanlage’ in Hamburg which I really enjoy playing at each year, and so following that we aimed to do a B2B set on his boat party in Ibiza in July/August.
How is everything going with your label, Senso Sounds?
I’ve been really happy and satisfied with the new label that we’ve run for about a year now: after stopping Ideal Audio, this was a really good concept that we have got moving – there has been a great reaction to the releases: and there has been so much output, I’ve had to release records every three weeks until late May! I couldn’t believe how when I started Senso that there have been so many good demos that have found our way to us but I’m passionate about getting the music to the people so its been refreshing to see the reactions to the releases. It’s so difficult to find good music and can take time, but we have had such a good start, I hope it continues.
I set goals for the label that we hope to achieve: after the summer I hope to start on a new album – I haven’t released one since 2011, and I think that an album is a good option to really show the whole breadth of my output and the talents on the label.
You have a new EP out on your label? And another new track with Dubfire later this year?
Yes it’s a two-tracker called ‘Schwarzlicht & Filmriss’ (I like to keep my track names German!): from around January I was really wanting to bring out a new single and I tried to build an EP that had two different kinds of techno sounds – with Schwarzlicht I tried to make a track that is quite sedate to start with airy and has a piercing bass, that is made for the bigger systems. Filmriss has a dark, edgier sound and vibe, which is really pitched up, and supported by a really heavy bass over the top.
‘Schwarzlicht & Filmriss’
Myself and Dubfire have released quite a few tracks (Agua, Aire, Dios, Diablo for example) we have just finished making a new track called ‘Humano’ and we are planning to do some remixes of some of the older tracks and then we are planning to do a tour together at the end of the year. We were hoping to release this for ADE but I’m not sure this will happen, fingers crossed: the schedules we have are crazy, but hopefully we will get it done.
The ‘Schwarzlicht & Filmriss’ EP is released on 29th June.
https://readymag.com/57226
