We Are Modeselektor Page #3

Whether it be the journey on

the sleeper bus or a flight:

Shortly before departure

I always send a text message

to my wife and my mother:

'Hello!'

Every time?

Yes.

And I also send a text message saying:

'We arrived safely. '

They are short phrases,

but they really calm down I have noticed.

Guys, the gig starts.

Will I go to the bathroom again or not?

I'm not sure.

Yes, I am nervous.

I am worried again,

that nobody turns up today.

Leave me alone, I am nervous now.

Quiet.

- It is always like that.

- Ey, it's enough, leave my buddy alone.

- It's always like that.

- Gernot, Gernot, it will be alright.

My wife is totally important to me

- she is my earth anchor.

When I do some remix

for this and that band with Szary

and come home and euphorically

want to tell her what a great remix I am doing,

she just nods at how great it is what I do

and then hands me the shopping list

and sends me off to get some milk.

It is really cool to have a family,

because it connects you to reality,

the reality that is important.

We never were the Jacks-of-all-trades

who jumped from one groupie to the next

and went to one

after show party after the other,

it was always more like

we kept a little Shire within ourselves.

Our nice little Shire

with little sheep and cows

and little monkeys of course.

In the end, we are two

We are country bumpkins in a way.

Don't know, it's...

I just want to prove that

you can create a lot out of nothing.

That you can achieve

a lot with little means

and we always try to convey

that everyone else also boil

their damn tea with only water.

I moved to Berlin early 1998,

to the Mitte district

in an incredibly large flat share.

First of all I went to school in Berlin,

and then there was also

a lot going on in Berlin already.

And then I had to cut

the cord with my parents.

So we lived in that flat share

for a while and lived of Kebabs.

Above us a flat with the same layout

was up for new tenants.

It just happened that

I told Szary the flat was free

and he moved in with

three friends from Berlin-Buch.

Also three musicians.

It was a real musician flat share up there,

everyone had a tiny studio in his room,

and we became neighbours.

There was always a lot of movement

upstairs and downstairs,

and usually you met at Szary's place,

who always refilled his coffee pot

and already knew how

to make a really good espresso.

Our circle of friends grew

much bigger all of a sudden.

First of all, we had the biggest flat,

then we constantly had parties,

it was like the pivotal point,

because we had the space for it.

During that time we met most

of the friends we have now.

It was a great atmosphere.

I think that influenced the guys a lot, too.

There were 15 people in one spot,

who were all very creative in different areas.

We had a puppeteer,

the Pfadfinder, musicians,

I came from a classical background,

always did my vocal exercises.

It was a wild mix.

Labstyle came in 1998

and was in the Kurvenstar club once a week,

it was really important

for our musical development.

Our motto has always been:

See with your ears and listen with your eyes.

And then we had two floors

in this tiny club that had two rooms,

so we always had two bookings.

One at the front, at the bar,

and one booking in the back.

Szary and I used to be the main DJs

together with Skate,

still with Paul Kuhn back then

and Krsn.

And the Pfadfinder did some visuals

with VHS tapes and video projector,

that was quite funny usually.

They piled shoeboxes full of VHS tapes

and then off they went.

Again.

Wait, what I find really cool

is to just fall like that.

Yeah, great.

Do it again.

Kurvenstar, Labstyle for us was

like a playground most of all,

a playground we had built ourselves.

We all had no idea really, no future vision,

we just wanted to do it.

We were keen on doing it and

invited everyone to observe us doing it,

or to get involved themselves,

or invite all friends

just to have a good evening

and it didn't have a commercial outlook.

We just wanted to have a playground

where we could play out

all the stuff that we had in our heads,

because we are all children

of the 1990s Berlin Techno

and wanted to realise the ideas

we had in our head.

Every Thursday we completely

changed the whole place.

It never looked the same.

It was extremely eclectic.

There was any kind of electronic music,

a lot of non-Techno and non-House.

In my memories it was the coolest series

you could have imagined.

They had an audience that they themselves

had educated and that never eloped them.

I didn't know that from any other club night.

They could play Bonzai Rave Techno

and then abruptly switch over

to Otto von Schirach type of noise,

Hip-Hop or whatever.

Nobody else could do that,

as far as I remember.

Some day we left Kurvenstar

for the WMF Club,

so in the end there was

quite a healthy growth.

Then there was the Labland DVD,

because after two years or so we thought:

What we generate here is nice, but transient,

because its only ever for one night,

so let us cement it

and put into one product.

So we sat down with Modeselektor

and produced an audio-visual album.

I think that the continuity in the collaboration

between Modeselektor and Pfadfinderei

is something very special.

It has been going on for

a very very long time

and I would say the equal status that

we accredit to each other is very important.

The trust into the genre,

the chapter that you describe is quite large,

and that definitely gives

Gernot and Szary security

and we have repeatedly gotten

good inspiration from it as well,

to create something new.

At the moment

we are in the so called ALL,

that is short for Allende Club.

it used to be a youth club

in Berlin-Kpenick.

In this house I used to work on

a job-creation scheme from 1998 to 2001,

it was called SAM

structural adaptation measure.

Looks a little different.

Different colour.

Formerly the studio was...

Here used to be a wall.

And this was the studio area.

I knew Szary from DJing,

we always played in the ALL

on Wednesdays for example,

or in the Blaupunkt Bar in Mitte,

at the same time as Kurvenstar was taking place.

And he always seemed like

the most fitting guy for the job,

because his social streak always

showed that he was a good choice.

The core job was

to take care of a room

to which the youngsters could come

with their ideas, to make beats

- it was mainly a Hip-Hop background here -

to record their raps and create mixtapes.

Szary always used to mix

all my important projects.

That happened, because he is

and always has been an ace in that area

and we all knew that and we

- I don't want to say

kneeled in the dust before him -

but we all said:

'Can you help us with this or that? '

And it was like that back then too and particularly

the experimental bands loved recording with him.

And he also had the assignment

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