If I Think of Germany at Night (2017) - full transcript

IF I THINK OF GERMANY AT NIGHT

Intense.

Wow.

The record is from the seventies.

Intense.

They were into it back then already.

My goodness, what an elaborate sleeve.

At this point in 2016...

At the moment,

there is a lot of very good music.

A lot of good producers
have established themselves.



Everything has become easier,

so there is this huge variety of music.

And that's great for a lot of people,

but for many others it's overwhelming.

Big hits can't develop
the way they did in the past,

when DJs often decided
on two or three things.

That's got very, very hard.

And all I can say is:

the tapestry is huge
and it's endless too.

That's what the music
feels like right now.

It's immense. An enormous variety.

And you can go in any direction.

So you can become very specialized,

and it's virtually impossible to describe
all the different genres and categories.



And for someone who has no clue,
it's really hard to explain it to them.

The tapestry is very, very refined,

the pattern is barely discernible,

and you have to examine it
for a long, long time

to recognize its structure

and see the individual colours.

To get there,
you have to listen to tons of music,

devote a lot of time to the music,

and really delve into old records,

before you can really grasp
the foundation.

And what I really like

is that the house music I'm involved in

reinvents itself every five years or so.

It revolves like a merry-go-round,
always arriving at the same place again.

But the funny thing is,
each time it's arranged differently,

the sounds are a bit different,
and suddenly everyone is on board again.

And it's really nice to watch

how young people then identify
more strongly with the new part,

and that creates this link

to where the old DJs are sitting,
so to speak.

So Ricardo, Roman, me, all the DJs

will always reach
into the old record box,

take out the old records,
and mix them up with the new stuff.

And the kids
come and ask about the old stuff,

thinking that it's new stuff,
but it's not new,

it's 20 years old.

And that's really interesting.

But the evolution goes on and on.

I have no idea where it will end.
I really don't see an end to it.

LONG LIVE CHILE!
LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE!

PRESIDENT ALLENDE'S LAST SPEECH

Before I started collecting music,

buying records,
and later mixing music myself,

long before that,
I was already into the scene.

Because that kind of music
always appealed to me.

And here in Switzerland,

and especially in Geneva,
there were no events whatsoever.

It was very difficult to find parties
where they played electronic music.

That was in the very early nineties.

You had to go over
to the German part of Switzerland.

But the focus there was mainly on trance.

If you wanted something more like house,

you had to go over to Germany.

So we would take
these "weekend expeditions",

to Frankfurt, mostly.

I think that was before the nineties.

The club was Omen in Frankfurt.

After that we started going to Munich.

There was an area in Munich

with 3 club called Ultraschall,
inside what used to be Riem Airport.

I was very young at the time

and I went looking
for that music everywhere.

I didn't find it in France
or in Switzerland.

It was the scene in Germany
that appealed to me.

Ever since then,

I've wanted
to be more than just a spectator.

I wanted
to take the music home with me too.

But you couldn't find it in the stores,
so you had to find other ways to get it.

And through my German network,

I had access to that music,
I bought it,

and started spinning records.

And before long,
I got an offer from a club in Geneva

that was always at the avant-garde
of electronic music,

a club called Weetamix,
which still exists today.

They invited me to play there
as resident DJ.

So I played there
two or three times a month,

often as an opener
for international guests.

So gradually,
we started getting music

that was a bit more refined
than what we'd had before.

Labels like Playhouse, Perlon,
DJs like Zip, Ata,

and Losoul as well,

Heiko MSO and others,
they were here all the time.

And out of this exchange developed

some good ties between us.

Zip invited me to Germany

to DJ at the Panorama Bar in Berlin.

That was in 2003.

From the start, it was always
the music that connected us.

We weren't from the same place,
or from the same generation.

It was just the music that connected us
and you could only find it there.

What did we have here?
We had Bhagwan discos.

Bhagwan discos
were basically our uptight parents

liberating themselves.

It has something to do with rhythm,
something like,

"I'll dress up all in white

so no one can tell who I am,"
and off it goes.

A good sound system, loud music,

and "let it all hang loose!"

Why did they stop organizing them?
They were pretty cool.

But our scene
developed out of that, in a way.

My mom wasn't a Bhagwan,
unfortunately...

My mom was a strict Catholic.
From Spain.

And when I was 14,
I had to be home by 8 p.m.

But through the music,

and what the music gave me...

My neighbour, who was a black G.I.,

gave me a Herbie Hancock record.

I listened to it and then heard
Kraftwerk on the radio.

And that became my tapestry,
which I just wove together.

And I thought,
"Wow, what is this?"

I had this sense of liberation,
a liberation that enabled me

to get out of the house
and get into house music.

Out onto the dance floor.
And I saw what went on there.

You play a record
and the people over there start moving.

All these emotions are released.

It was such a fascinating
and profound experience that I said,

"Okay, I'm going to try to do
what that guy on TV is doing.

He's got those two turntables,
but what's that thing in the middle?"

It was so exciting to me, so fascinating.

And I could see all this technology,

I was interested in it,
and I tried to figure it out.

That's how I was catapulted out,
with this immense force,

out into the night.

And I realized
what was going on out there.

There was no end.

I could dance as long as I wanted.

It's truly an adventure.

There are very few secure channels
between the musicians.

So from the drummer's bass drum,

there's a kind of channel
with a trigger signal

over to Max's bass synthesizer.

That's basically the only channel,

everything else is more or less
played spontaneously on top,

and I click in manually
with my modular system.

So there's a tap button

which I tap twice, depending on the beat.

And that launches my system,
and Max's system too.

And so that can go in any direction.

Luckily nothing went wrong on Sunday,
but that can happen.

That kind of "dis-control", if you will,

that moment of "uncontrol"

is basically a frequency which,

before it can become rhythmic,
is often too free-form.

So in order to turn it
into a rhythmic element, for example,

which only has a short transient,
like a "bing" or "bong? or "boong",

you need an enveloping curve,
something that controls it.

So, as I was saying,

one third of all this equipment
is made up of controllers,

and the rest would just love
to scream out all the time.

or make some noise or other.

But that's kept in check.

Someone tries to control it,
and that, ultimately, is the music.

Other musicians have certain frequencies
available to them,

but in electronic music, we have
all the frequencies available to us.

The others can only make use
of a certain frequency range.

And everyone tries out different things,

little by little, to see what works.

It's kind of like a lively conversation
between different people.

Some people are having a dialogue
and then others interrupt,

and it forms a kind of consensus.

That's pretty much
what happens in music.

You're playing to different worlds,
of course.

A dance floor is a world

where there is a very clear language,

a rhythmic language

with some melodic dabs of colour,
I so to speak.

And here in this jazz or sound concert,

even the musicians
don't know what's happening,

or what will happen.

But for me, it's always the same thing.

No matter if I'm standing on stage,

playing some strange
popping or creaking sounds,

or if I'm playing it in a club,
or listening to it at home.

Or even if I do it with my own mouth
or hear those sounds around me,

I always try to bring it together
under the same roof,

I always try to be the same person.

This place is a big soundscape.

And sounds are ultimately
the inspiration for music.

You have the sounds of insects
alongside the traffic noise.

I used to lie down in the stairwell,
right in front of the door,

listening to the draft
which carried resonant tones,

and to me they were melodies.

It's important to recognize
the difference in volume

at festivals, parties and clubs.

And here,
where you really have to listen.

Your ears get sensitized.

What I do is more
on the quiet side anyway,

so I'm naturally more interested

in what creeps and crawls
beneath the surface.

It's certainly...

a source of inspiration.

In general, but especially here.

On the one side, you have
the open plain towards the west.

Paris and New York are that way.

And over here in the basin,

the acoustics change.

They get trapped between the mountains.

There are other places too.
the Scheffelterrasse by the castle,

where the arches reflect the sounds
of the city like parabolic mirrors.

So whenever I go for a walk here,

my ears take a walk too.

Well, to be an astronaut...

I'm from the generation
that saw the moon landing as a kid,

and the outer space missions as well,
especially Apollo 13.

When was that? 1973?
I was seven and experienced all of that.

"They're up there.
We don't know how to get them back."

That really fascinated me.

Another key experience was my father
taking me to see Stanley Kubrick's 2001

You had to be six to see the film
and I wasn't.

I remember the cashier saying,
"He's not six yet",

and my dad saying,
"But I'm accompanying him."

I must've seen that film at least
30 times in the course of my life.

It left such an impression
on me as a child.

That film really shaped me

for the rest of my life.

The wish or dream
of becoming an astronaut

was shattered early on
because my eyesight wasn't good enough.

And ultimately,
those ascetic preparations,

the total discipline
and the complete isolation

wouldn't be my thing either.

But it was always an idea
that fascinated me.

But to make the link
back to this place...

At least it's a city of science.

You have astrophysics.
the Max Planck Institute, EMBL.

My father was an astrophysicist

and worked at the Max Planck Institute.

So there are those links.
There's the observatory.

Not a planetarium:
an observatory with a telescope

to peer into the heavens,
dating back to the Art Nouveau period.

So there are things here
which tie into the topic.

But ultimately, it's just a metaphor.

Sun Ra, not only of Saturn,
but of music itself.

Music, the bodiless way
of travelling or moving,

in your imagination or however.

To me, it's the most fascinating
form of art that exists,

because it can't be grasped.

It can be measured in space
and it makes atoms move.

So you can see it, in a way.

But ultimately,
it's something that flows through you.

And by conserving it,

by writing it down
in the form of sheet music,

it has become reproducible.

The effect can be reproduced at will,
and doesn't cost a thing.

And that's unique.
food is consumed, you eat it

it gets digested,

then you move on
to pick the next berry.

But music is like a Pandora's box

where you can keep reaching in,
where you can try...

to remain open to it,
to hear new things and to integrate them,

but much of it just remains the same.

Miles Davis' trumpet
for example, or the Beatles,

or Jo?o Gilberto, Jobim...

Bach...

Chopin...

All of these things remain
coordinates in the solar system.

What's funny is that some planets
regain their relevance,

and you want to go back,
while others might drift further apart.

At any rate,
music is a cosmos of its own.

That's the larger parallel
that can be drawn.

And the borders
between physics, mathematics

and music and philosophy
are absolutely fluid.

Seen from a broader perspective,

it even extends to the theological
and spiritual realm.

For something that is essentially
without a value and a body,

It's incredible

and has fascinated me my whole life.

Like perhaps nothing else.
Apart from animals maybe.

And all of the wonders of nature.

And the parallels that can be drawn:
octaves as...

dual frequencies, frequency ratios,

which make so much sense
in nature and in physics.

All of this
can be transferred and applied.

For as long as anyone can remember,
NASA's website...

has shown phenomena from space.
those jets, for example,

those waves of material
shooting forth from supernovas.

You can hear those things,
but you hear nothing in outer space

because sound doesn't carry,

so these inaudible processes
are made audible.

But it's funny
that the other way around,

you can take these phenomena
that are so hard to grasp

and understand them better
by making them audible.

Yes. And I am

a fan of music
that's been composed and conceived,

but what I meant
with the sound of the wind under a door

is that music in chaos
or in nature is also fascinating.

When I was in my early twenties,
I met a fringe scientist,

who approached music from the perspective
of physics and biology.

He started to take yeast cultures

and to make their reproduction audible.

And to some extent...

these functions result in incredibly
interesting and audible algorithms.

So it's pretty fascinating...

how the information
contained in the universe,

at visible and invisible levels,
visible light, invisible waves,

how they always interlink
and interlace with each other.

How mind and body, and everything...

It's the ultimate psychedelic experience

to understand that everything is one,
so to speak.

And conversely, to understand
that one thing also contains everything.

So, there's an apple hanging next to you.

- Can you make a connection?
- Apples, Apple computer. Newton, gravity.

When I was younger,
me and my stepfather

used to build those spaceships as well,

and eventually that transitioned
seamlessly into building instruments.

My stepfather,
who helped me a lot with that stuff,

took me to the orchards and we fed apples
to the horses for the first time.

I'll never forget it.
It was a meadow just like this one.

So that's immediately what came to mind.

"You know that apple tree."

But the apple as such...
Adam and Eve and all that,

we could make an entire movie about that.

In Paris, we were doing some filming,

a few days after the attacks in Brussels,

a couple of months
after the Paris attacks,

maybe a few weeks
before the next attack.

What effect does that have on you,
on your job

and on the places where you work?

What was interesting is that
on the evening of the first Paris attack,

the Charlie Hebdo attack,
I was playing in Paris at the Rex Club.

And I feared the worst,

and it was all very shocking, of course,

and the whole thing
didn't feel good at all.

You didn't know if the event
should take place or not.

The streets were deserted.
and there were police everywhere.

The trip from the airport
into the city

felt really different.

with flashing lights
and roadblocks and all of that.

And then, strangely enough,

the evening was extremely...
ecstatic, almost.

The vibe was great
and there were loads of people.

But it's a very ambivalent thing.

When the most recent attack
in Paris happened,

I was playing at Fabric in London.

At dinner, I looked down at my phone
and realized it was happening again.

And it doesn't feel good or right at all.

Ultimately, I never really know
how to justify a party.

That evening, you could tell
that people were more occupied

with trying to get the latest news
on their smartphones,

especially at the beginning of the event,

than focusing on the party.

At any rate, what's going on
right now is really distressing.

You can't see exactly where it will lead,
or whether it will ever end.

When I played in Tel Aviv
for the first time many years ago,

I had to go through a checkpoint
like everyone else.

A security check,
like the checks at airports.

And at that time,
it all seemed very far away to me.

And now I'd say
that it's moved very close to all of us.

A club is very vulnerable as it is.

It exists to allow you
to break out of your normal life,

to let go of all the rules
that you're otherwise subject to.

And if such a situation
becomes normalcy, so to speak,

if you can't be safe
in a place like that,

it changes something,
at least temporarily.

At some point,
it probably becomes kind of routine.

But we're not at that point yet.

We're still at the point
where people feel extremely unsettled.

And you can only hope

that it doesn't become a target.

It would be asking too much,
because I could never do justice to it

by striking the right chord.

Instead, I do what I do,

I do what I'm good at,

but I'm not the master of ceremonies

who finds the right chord
whenever disaster strikes somewhere.

That's asking too much.
No one can do that.

I think it's much more important,
in fact, to say,

"What we're doing here is important."

And the current situation
is making this even clearer.

That it's a very vulnerable situation.

but that it's essential
for a lot of people.

It's a legitimate thing

to live your life in this way.

So I just hope we'll soon be able
to do that again without feeling scared.

I think that music

had a different significance back then.

Also with regard to religion.

During Calvin's time in Geneva,

music and entertainment

were prohibited and neglected.

During that period,

people were living
with a certain degree of anxiety.

Everyone wants to enjoy themselves,
it's part of human nature.

So this prohibition

was like forbidding people from living.

They were rejecting
the idea of living a full life.

And I think that this had

certain consequences.

If you assign a function to music,
and say it's a negative function,

you turn it into a pejorative,
negative element.

And that's a dangerous thing to do.

There is music in religion.
There's religious singing.

And there's this idea

of repressing music as entertainment,
at least in certain religions.

Certain religions
prohibit dancing at parties,

because music
is only allowed to be religious.

So there certainly is a relationship

between music and religion.

Nowadays, there are certain countries

that neglect both music and religion.

In some countries in the north,

there is no kind of musical communion,

there is no communal singing.

People are timid,
there's no singing, no talking.

Some Nordic countries
really repress these kinds of things.

So there's a lot more cold techno music
coming from those countries

than from southern Spain
or southern Italy.

There's an obvious difference.

Of course.

I travel with a lot of records.

To make sure that I'm able

to take the people

where I want to have them.

You can't just arrive somewhere,

force your message onto the people

and expect them to receive it.

It requires a certain finesse

to get to the point
where people listen to you.

And then you can
communicate your message.

So I make sure
I have a wide range of records

in case I want to play something
a bit cooler, a bit more reserved.

Or, on the other hand,

maybe something more cheerful
at the beginning.

And then I'll take them
where I want them to go.

But I need time for that.
One hour is not enough.

I need two or three hours
to achieve that.

And it doesn't always work.

- When it works, it's poetry. Or...
- Exactly.

When it works...

When it works,
it's a divine moment of communion.

It's a real climax.

And if it doesn't work,

somehow it's not so bad either.

Then you have to try another approach,

try to present it differently,

to get things moving.

If it worked every time,
you wouldn't make any progress.

You could stop when the year was out.

You have to go a longway back
to answer that.

In Germany,
electronic music fortunately...

it emerged
as early as the 1950s and 1960s,

through people like Stockhausen.

And it developed slowly from there,

with a lot of musical experimentation.

Unfortunately,
it didn't get much recognition

and visibility in German society

People like Conny Plank

then took it a step further.

That led to Krautrock.

That led to Kraftwerk.

And as a result, the German influence

spread to the US.

The Americans loved our stuffy.

The black community
couldn't get enough of it,

this harsh, electronic, cold dance music.

That's how they described it,
and they were totally fascinated

by the precision

of an Audi.

And they were totally into that music,

and totally fascinated
by the sound quality of the music.

Of course it had a lot to do

with German technology,

and in the US,
this led to the music scene

and the gay scene
starting to pay attention.

And then it all kind of merged

with everything in their scene,

and out of that developed house,
they invented house music.

And Germany played a huge role

in that whole electronic music community.

And today, even though the centres
are New York and London,

in Germany we don't have a centre.

I wouldn't say that the centre
is only Berlin, or Cologne or Munich.

There's a Cologne sound, a Munich sound,
a Berlin sound, a Frankfurt-sound.

But ultimately, in Germany...

there really is a German sound.

Made in Germany is something that exists:

techno, electronic dance music.

For the whole world.

And we've been a major export

for over ten years now.

And the biggest and best DJs

come from Germany right now.

In the past, tones and sounds

used to be musicians
playing in an orchestra,

different frequencies
represented by different musicians.

And at some point, people wanted
to create these sounds themselves,

without the musicians,

with a synthesizer, for example.

And those values, the idea
of enabling the creation of a tone,

out of a complex context,

out of a certain circuitry,
with certain resistors.

And this whole thing belongs...

with all of the developments involved...

it's all part of the world as a whole
that we appreciate so much.

And that's why it all belongs together.

It has to do with
an appreciation of being together,

an appreciation of communication,

an appreciation
of listening to music together,

going to concerts,
even going to a soccer game.

The appreciation of being together
has something to do with the beginnings

of stored or recorded music.

Because with recorded music,

you could take it somewhere

and utilize it by playing it
and dancing to it.

You used to have to wait by the radio
for the DJ to play that song.

Or you listened to hr3 Clubnight,

or you heard some music once a week

when you listened to the charts.

But only for that particular moment.

Now you have the chance to do it anytime

and that's why we're cultivating it.

And of course it has to do
with the origins of sound. That too.

This community
of shared values at a party

is a very low-level community.

That means you reduce all values

to the lowest common denominator,

so that no one can show up
with complicated values

and everyone can meet on the basis
of the lowest common value.

And that is a consistent, rhythmic music.

This consistent, rhythmic music,
which doesn't get you too excited,

and doesn't cause too much of a stir,

but gives you a certain foundation
the whole time,

brings together huge numbers of people

in this age of atomization
and individualism.

And that's what's so fascinating
about the whole thing,

and that's why all of us
are so interested

in this idea
of bringing people together.

It has to do with the values
we used to have.

Nowadays, people think
that their independence

gives them a certain degree of freedom.

But of course, independence

brings with it a certain loneliness,

and people emerge out of this loneliness
and meet at parties.

And facilitating this situation

is our role in all of this.

That's what fascinates us all.

That's what's so great
about the whole thing.

The studio is basically
just a reflection of the rest of life.

And the rest of life doesn't just consist
of happiness or wonderful moments.

Instead, you sit here

and you're faced
with your own weaknesses.

But that's what makes it exciting
and it's all part of it.

You have days, weeks
or maybe even longer

where you're just not on form.

And that becomes a problem
if you just throw in the towel.

It's always been very important to me
to be able to cross a line

and put up with
a certain level of dissatisfaction,

but not to give up.

Because this means everything to me.

with all of its ups and downs,
so I'd be crazy to put it at risk.

It's actually
the part that I enjoy the most.

So what you make for yourself
at the weekend,

financially speaking,

allows you to have this freedom
in the studio?

Absolutely.

To be honest,
and this is common knowledge today...

the money you make
from selling records and streaming

isn't as much as it used to be,
in my experience.

So the live sets
are absolutely essential.

It all goes hand in hand these days.

I have to get out there at the weekend

to make sure
I have the artistic freedom

to sit in this studio here

without having someone in the background,

breathing down my neck.

Well, I'm at a strange point
in my life right now.

On the one hand, I'd like to bring
my musical career to an end.

I've sold my records.

And I have to say:
I still don't miss them.

I actually feel quite liberated.

But on the other hand,

it's really nice to find myself
reconstructing the music in my mind,

based on what I can still remember.

I then look for the music on my computer
and find some of it too.

So I'm building up a digital collection
of my favourite tracks

on this little hard drive.

Now I can do what I always wanted to do:
I can play a huge range of music.

I can take my pick,
which I couldn't before.

So in a way, I've taken it
to a whole new, professional level.

Before, I had 80 or 90 records

and couldn't really do that.

I actually wanted to quit altogether.

I wanted to do something else.

I wanted to be surrounded by nature.

I've bought a house with my girlfriend
in Italy on a mountain.

An old borgo.

And I wanted to escape there,
and that's what I'll do.

You can hear birds chirping.

It's been so long
since I heard five or six voices

blending together without a bass drum.

And it's so funny because
when you listen to the birds,

they're singing melodies.

So you're sitting there in the sun,

enjoying life without a bass drum:
it is possible.

So it's a great change of scenery.

And then suddenly
you hear the sound of a cuckoo.

And that's the fascinating part of it.

It's also great to dig
my fingers into the earth,

to come into contact with something else.

That's essential for me.

I'm a big food lover too.

I want to get into that more
and grow my own food,

to draw a different type
of strength from that,

so I can kind of recharge
my batteries for Friday night.

But if we look out of that window here...

You know that this place
was a kind of children's home, right?

- In East Germany.
- Or was it a kindergarten?

Well, I think
it was a kind of convalescent home.

Local children came here on holiday
to get their spirits up, or whatever.

Maybe they can tell you
more about what it was.

But if we just look out of that window...

Well, we're not exactly
being blinded by the lights

of an Asian capital
or New York or Chicago or whatever.

But actually...

But going by the soundscape,
we could be in Calabria.

It still looks pretty good here..

The rest of Berlin
is barely recognizable anymore.

Crazy.

It's crazy how time has sped by,

because it's all connected:

techno, the fall of the Wall,

reunification, and Berlin...

as the "stage" for all of this.

It's all got so long in the tooth,

but it still keeps on going.

Like we do.

Techno is like an institution now.

It will just go on forever because...

it's almost like a virus.

The means of production
have been radically democratized.

Anyone can do that shit now,
even with their crappy phone.

You just have to go ahead
and do it and so...

There's no stopping it anymore,
and for years now,

I'm sure that
there are way more people producing it

than really consuming it.

And I don't mean superficially.

If you really immerse yourself in it,

it's almost impossible to avoid
giving it a go yourself.

It's just an obvious choice.

we all have the tools at our fingertips.

IF I THINK OF GERMANY AT NIGHT

I can't really say, to be honest.
I can't think of a pithy answer.

How would I end that sentence?

Well, if we're talking
about music and nightlife,

it's probably the best thing
that could have happened to Germany,

these 25 years of techno music.

When I think
of other things going on here,

some of it makes me feel
pretty scared, to be honest.

So I'm really happy
there's something to balance it out.

Subtitles ripped by gooz
karagarga, 2019

Translation:
Peter Rigney, Rebekah Smith