How many countries do I play in? I would guess it would be ... hmm ... well, I do on average 160 to 200 parties a year ... 40.
40 countries a year.
40 countries, yeah.
Quite a lot. Where’s your favourite place to play?
Ummm, there are a couple. Japan, there’s one. Italy, that’s another one. Switzerland.
Switzerland? That’s an odd choice.
Yeah, it is! I mean … well, come on, it’s not, I mean, they’re nice people.
(laughs)
But I’ve played in Switzerland for a long time, very quietly. It’s a very small country but I’ve had a long relationship with places like Zurich and Geneva and Lausanne and in Austria, places where I played when I first came to Europe. Places like Linz, and of course Vienna.
I just didn’t know Switzerland had a big techno scene.
Actually, it’s been quietly very consistent for, well, over a decade. You know, it just doesn’t have a large media like the UK or anything like that. So it’s a very quiet place, but it’s been consistent for the longest.
And why do you always play at Sónar?
Well, because I’m always asked. You have to get to be asked to come here. Well, I don’t know, you’d have to ask the organizers of Sónar. You know, I mean, to be asked you have to be involved in something and you have to be at a certain level of creation, so we’ve always made it a point to work on numerous projects that create new things and keep the DJ set up to a certain level, take chances and things like that, and I think the organizers recognize that.
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I mean, they asked you, but you also have to accept.
(laughs again)
It’s come to a point now where we reserve the time. I think, not only that, but June is one of the months that we kind of take a break, or we do just a few …
And they love you here.
Well, and I love them.
When you started it was like, whoah! We were watching Jimmy Edgar before you and there was no-one there and then suddenly everybody just arrived! So, how’s Berlin’s techno scene?
It’s good. Berlin is one of the older markets, one of the most mature markets in Europe. I don’t want to say it’s the best, because there are places in Europe in very small towns that have incredible nights, you know, but it’s very, very, very active and very healthy.
But when you say this, what qualifies a really good night?
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Umm, the makeup of the people, the relationship between the DJ ... You want everyone to have a consensus to what the night should equate to, and people, not just the DJ, but the audience works towards this active feeling or state. Scotland has a long history of the relationship between DJ and audience. And in many ways they push the DJ more and more and more …
I was wondering about that, because, I mean, when you’ve got sort of 8,000 people in front of you going nuts, and you’re trying to change like 70 records in an hour, like, are you concentrating really, really hard on the technicalities – because what you do is incredibly precise – or do you sort of interact with the audience at the same time?
Yeah, of course, yeah. Well, you take indications, you take signs from the audience based on the record you’ve just played, and what the reaction is. That determines the next few records that you’d want to play.
