What were the most important things you brought with you when you moved to New York?

I guess records and sneakers. I brought a bunch of 45s, obviously I have a record collection back in Germany, I left it cause it was too big to transfer over and I didn’t know how long I would stay in New York. My record collection is somewhere around 8,000 records, so in order to ship that it’s very expensive or you have to know someone that can do that for you. It’s funny because actually the first set that I played in New York was last year. It was a vinyl set at Mobile Mondays and I brought the 45s cause you’re only allowed to play 45s at that party. It’s great because the true heads of hip hop were there and I brought some rare east German funk and they were looking like, “let me see the cover”.

I saw that you were using Serato at the session - how do you feel about people using technology when playing?

I always said that I don’t want technology to dictate how to play. Obviously years ago when I started we were almost like vinyl fascists, so everyone that came with a computer or with Serato we were like, “ah that’s not the real shit, you have to play vinyl”, but obviously that’s not the case anymore. I’m completely cool with anything as long as it rocks. I mean, I love the vinyl culture. I love the fact that you dig for something in a store in a basement and you find music. There’s still a lot of records that are not online or not digital and it’s just nice to have that experience, but at a party where people care about what format you play, how you play - that’s something for the nerds. That’s cool too - I can nerd out and can be like “oh yeah vinyl and rare records”. For example I was at a soul weekender in Germany last year and one guy played a soul record - and it’s sung by an American guy called John Harris but it was recorded in Germany - and there’s maybe I don’t know how many copies, it got reissued - but he played the original and it’s like a 1,000 euro record because it’s so rare. There are maybe ten people worldwide that are known to have that record. I walked up to him like, “wow, you play that record?” and he’s like “yeah - got it.” That’s cool, but it doesn’t make the party better.

What’s your process if you’re trying to find digital music?

Basically everything - I’m constantly soaking up music, there’s no ending. I go on soundcloud to search for new stuff, I go through blogs, I get a lot of promos, I just listen to people or friends that tell me “hey listen to this, listen to that” and it’s a constant grabbing of stuff and sorting it and channelling it. It’s because I like so many kinds of music, it’s kind of hard to keep up.

Do you feel like you have a specific type of music that you’re known for playing now?

I guess everything that I play has to have some sort of funk, I think funk is the base of everything that I do - it has to be funky. Even when I play - I rarely play hard techno, but if I do and if I really want to do it - it still has to be kind of groovy and funky. I guess that sums it up. You could call my style eclectic, that might be a bad term - some people don’t like it but I’m not known to play only one style of music. I can do that, I love to do a rap set or like a house set but what I mostly love is just to branch out and play a bunch of different styles.

I know that you play in a lot of different clubs in New York, do you sometimes have to compromise on your taste?

No, I wouldn’t call it compromising - I have no problem with playing more popular tunes that I really like. But I only play what I like. Obviously there’s always going to be - in certain venues - someone that comes up and says, “Hey can you play Beyonce?” - the classic standard, the McDonaldization of music. I’m just polite and say, “I don’t have Beyonce for you right now, just go back to your friends and enjoy your night”. I mean we all get requests - it’s just how you handle them. I don’t want to be a snob and be like, “No, I don’t take requests”. I always take them and if I like the song or if I have it then I’ll play it. In most venues here, people appreciate music though. As a DJ, at the end of the day if you don’t play your own music, you’re always going to play other people’s music. Your ego shouldn’t be that big that you’re like “I’m the best - go away I’ll play for myself”.

Do you think that there is a particular kind of music you listen to that might be surprising to us?

German schlager. That is cheesy music from the 70s like “la la”. Ten years ago, fifteen years ago, my friends Marc Hype and Katmando in Germany started to dig for rare German records that were funky because there was no real funk movement like in the US. There were certain artists that had one or two tracks that were groovy and funky cause someone who made the music understood or heard American funk. So maybe that’s what someone would not expect or very well expect of me - that I still dig for this weird trippy schlager stuff.

People love music, people want to dance. It doesn’t matter where you’re from. It’s just - if you perceive music as a language - do you speak the language?

Does being German influence your taste?

I mean music took me around the world. I DJed in Russia, I was DJing in Africa - also been to Brazil and when you travel the world with music, you see that the dynamics are the same everywhere. People love music, people want to dance. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, It’s just - if you perceive music as a language - do you speak the language. Gentleman for example, his real name is Tillman Otto and he’s a German guy from Cologne but he speaks Patois. He speaks it very well because he understands the music. It is in a way fake patois, but he has so much respect for Jamaican culture and he’s been to Jamaica many times. He was one of the first white people to ever perform there so his stuff gets played on the radio in Jamaica because he’s genuine. So I mean obviously i’m influenced by being German, but I don’t neccessarily have a German sound, especially what people consider „German“ techno or house these days. I play the world.

What about your parents?

I mean that’s where I got the love for music from. I think one of my earliest childhood memories is actually putting the needle on a record and it was AC/DC - “Highway to Hell”.
My parents were listening to a lot of stuff - Earth, Wind and Fire - there was always a good vibe in the house. It was mostly soulful music and they were huge Pink Floyd fans so that kind of shaped me. What I [played] in the set - Manfred Krug the German guy, that was always something that my parents would play and he kind of falls into that category of funky schlager music.

Gilberto Gil - Toda Menina Baiana (Tahira Re-Edit)

Do you feel like you have the same experience playing music to people all over the world?

I mean obviously there are differences but at the end of the day - it sounds so clichéd - but if you get the girls dancing then the guys are dancing and everybody’s having a good time. That is kind of a universal law for dancefloors all around the world but people here react much differently to current hip hop for example, they’re much more into it than in Germany. Cause here it’s the birthplace of hip hop so everybody’s just somehow related to it.

I guess it depends on what you play, where you play. A friend of mine played samba schools in Rio and he was very picky about what he played and he didn’t play much stuff from Rio de Janeiro cause he couldn’t understand Portuguese, so he didn’t know what they were singing about. When he played in the favela he didn’t know if the songs were actually good to play in that part of the town cause you can easily offend someone if you play a song that reps another drug lord from another favela and you can get into problems.

So you mentioned playing in Africa, what was your experience?

I was invited by the German government to play in Uganda at an arts exhibition with local Ugandan artists and also to play some club gigs. Just that experience of being in Africa for the first time and traveling with music and being sort of this music cultural ambassador got me into places that normally tourists will not see. I lived with the guy that founded the Breakdance Project Uganda (BPU) where he teaches breakdancing as a therapy for traumatized children and the first day I arrived he took me to the place where he grew up - Kisenji - which is a ghetto in Kampala - it’s a slum, it was a pretty heavy experience. I asked him after this, “Ok how many foreigners have been in there without either a police escort or a camera team?” and he said, “I don’t know, probably no one. You’re probably the first that I know of.” That hit me pretty hard, it just made me realize I just got there because of music and what I love and that also helped me to just be there and they accepted it. I wasn’t there as a tourist, I was playing music and having a cultural exchange with the people and it also sparked my love for African music even more. Interestingly enough, the guy gave me a bunch of music from - it’s east Africa - but he gave me music from west Africa. It’s funny to see how African music is perceived in Africa cause there’s such a rich diversity of styles of music that even the guys in the east when they listen to a song from Nigeria they don’t understand what they’re talking about - why would they? - but still they feel the vibe. Just to have that was very inspirational. It also was a huge influence on my current project „GLUE“ („Girls Love Uncanny Edits“), where I’m making edits of mostly African tracks with various engineers and producers in New York.

What would you change about the current DJ scene?

The number one problem is that there’s too many DJs. I guess it’s the same as in every creative field. Everybody and their mom nowadays is a designer or a photographer. Everyone can be a DJ so easily and now with the new equipment, the cost of getting into it is so low, it never has been lower. Twenty years ago you really needed a good vinyl collection to do all this, now it’s just ok, “gimme that hard drive and the controller and I’ll be your DJ”, but that’s also a challenge and it forces you to really work and standout. Sometimes I have a problem with the personality of DJs - either it’s too serious or they’re too gimmicky. There’s not much middle ground. I get it, you put yourself out there and you kind of become vulnerable if you’re just too open, so as an artist you just have to have that wall. You can either say it’s a job like a bartender, you just create an aura for the room, or you just say “well I’m truly an artist” so it kind of depends on where you see yourself. I’m happy with where we are right now - I’m not one of these folks that is like “the past was better”, I’m just happy that this can even exist.

I’m happy with where we are right now. I’m not one of these folks that is like, “the past was better”, I’m just happy that this can even exist.

What’s your everyday routine as a DJ like?

Obviously if you do that work you mostly work at night so you have to catch up with sleep. You wake up and you have normal office hours - you have to get gigs, work with agents and managers, you have to follow up on people, you have to talk music, do mixes and produce your own stuff. Part of it is also just to go out and meet other DJs and check out other people playing and get inspiration from that and channel it into your own stuff.

Do you have specific DJs that inspire you?

Well someone I was happy to play with in Germany and who’s a huge inspiration cause he’s kind of in the same vein as me - he brings together many different styles - is a guy called DJ Day from Palm Springs. He produced a couple of albums which are really great, his last album is one of my favorites from last year and I had the pleasure of playing with him. Then seeing someone like Nicky Siano still doing his thing…Also even a guy like A-trak to see where he came from. I mean I’m not on that level but it’s kind of the same, he did the DMC scratch competition and I was in competitions back in Europe and seeing that transition from hip hop to more electronic and dance music, that’s also inspiring.

Are there things outside of music that inform your craft?

I caught the first wave of hip hop in Europe when hip hop came to Europe in late ’83, early ’84 when I was a little kid and that always was the main inspiration. I also was a graffiti writer and I did breakdance, b-boying and that still to this day is hugely influential, although I do think nowadays that I’m a bit more chilled about the whole thing. I used to be like “that’s hip hop, this is this, this is that” and now it’s just like “have fun with it” basically, but that’s my main inspiration and I still love painted trains very much. Definitely art, paintings, even street art - I don’t like the term “street art” - but everything that’s out in the streets, I’m inspired by the streets. I love tagged up walls so you know there’s life and people just create their names, it just gives me a sense of “well this is not dead” - there’s still some energy here.

Are there any specific painters or specific graffiti artists or breakdancers?

I’m most influenced by the late 70s, early 80s subway graffiti in New York, guys like Lee Quiñones - he was also in the movie Wild Style - that movie is also very inspirational to me. Interestingly enough, I was digging at The Thing in Greenpoint with a friend of mine and he found a record that was tagged by Lee and we looked inside and it was a full color drawing from him from 1979. I guess his mom must have kicked out the records and probably forgot that he drew on this record, it’s a huge find in the art world.

Wild Style (1983)

If you had to write an autobiography of yourself using three tracks from your childhood, your teenage years and right now - what would you choose?

Wow. Wow. It has to be quick - childhood: Pink Floyd - “Money”. Teenage years, it would be something by 2 Live Crew ... “Me So Horny” and right now is difficult because you don’t know if that thing will last. There’s so many… oh it would be Gilberto Gil, because I had the pleasure of being in Brazil two years ago and it kind of still resonates - that trip. Interestingly enough, when I was interviewing Just Blaze for a German magazine I asked him the same question like, “What’s your favorite or what’s your main hip hop producer?” and he became kind of angry with me. He was like, “Man, why you asking me all this stuff? This can change every minute”.

Which track would you play at your funeral?

That’s a tough one, I always didn’t want to answer that question. I would play something happy, people are sad already - should be something happy maybe “Love Is in the Air”?

The opening and closing of a set can make or break it - is there a formula to decide what to open with and what to end with?

When I open up a night and it’s not that busy, I tend to start with a slow bpm and then just move up throughout the night. When you play different kinds of music it really helps you to branch out but then to create the mood and then at 1 or 2 o’clock, when it’s prime time, it should be the hardest and then after that it allows you to break it down again. That’s kind of how I start and finish my sets. It can happen if you have a shitty night, especially when you play various kinds of music, you need to have a crowd that really can go with you and sometimes it can happen that you can lose them because you just went too far into a music territory where they will not follow you. That’s more a problem that I have because I play that way, I don’t think you necessarily have that when you play one style of music. I think at the end of the day, playing one style of music is much easier. What I also don’t really like is when you have opening djs and they don’t understand what it means to be an opener, so they play all the hits, they play super energetic at 11 and it’s disrespectful to the guy that comes after you. It’s an art to being an opening dj. The creation of a set can be something really really beautiful - the way you tell a story almost - and sometimes it’s really fun to surprise people.

If you suddenly realized that you could time travel, when and where would you play your next set?

Probably Studio 54 or Paradise Garage in the late seventies. That’s something that New York still lives from I think, that whole era of debauchery and just wild crazy club nights in the 70s and early 80s. That is the era that everyone still wants to get back - that feeling. If you speak to people that have been there they’re just like, “Man today is nothing compared to what was going on then”. That’s where I would go - In a heartbeat.