568 DJMAG.COM LIVING & BREATHING DANCE MUSIC! DJMAG.COM No.568 April 2017 £4.95 THE BEST NEW UK CLUBS ANDY C, MARK KNIGHT & MORE * ON ALL NIGHT MUSIC LONG SETS * CLUBS MEMORABLE EXIT FESTIVAL MOMENTS * TECHNOLOGY TECHNOLOGY BRIGHTON MUSIC CONFERENCE IS BACK! * ALL SYSTEMS GO! RADIOACTIVE MAN RETURNS GOLDIE’S ORCHESTRAL TRIUMPH HOW COLDCUT CHANGED THE GAME TOP 100 CLUBS SPECIAL! No. 568 !""!# April 2017 $""%!# £4.95 £4.95 !"#$%&'%&()%*'+,#)%-.&(% RESULTS & PROFILES OF THE WORLD’S BEST CLUBS !),/.01*%&)#(0'%2+))0% WILEY, REBEKAH, RAZOR-N-TAPE, MONKI, KELLY LEE OWENS, MARC ROMBOY, EMIKA, PLUS: NORTHERN DISCO LIGHTS, DJ W!LD, GREYMATTER, JOAKIM, NIKO MARKS & LOTS MORE… cover_new.indd 1 17/03/2017 15:01 "$$!(#) *(+'**(,-!%# For long-serving Berlin techno queen Ellen Allien, a return to the physical — in both the way she plays and makes music — has re- energised her immensely. She’s been playing gigs in record shops, buying and playing lots of vinyl, and made her new album, ‘Nost’, using mainly analogue equipment. Her ninth album is a real return to the dancefl oor — deliberately so. It was created in her long-term home, Berlin — from where she runs her label, BPitch Control — although she now spends the summer months living in Ibiza. ‘Nost’ — taken from the term ‘nostalgia’ — is the sound of a DJ/producer still at the top of her game, as much in love with electronic music old and new as she’s ever been. DJ Mag went to meet her in Berlin... Words: BEN MURPHY Pics: LISA WASSMANN listen to techno records all the time,” says Berlin different aspect and genre of what I play. I wanted to techno boss Ellen Allien. “Non-stop. I bring the make an album the way I play in clubs,” she says. disco into my home. I like the feeling of having Of the nine tracks on ‘Nost’, eight are designed for a beat around.” club use. ‘Electric Eye’ is built from wriggling bass, big For this DJ, producer, label owner and vocalist, synth stabs and rolling ride cymbals, while ‘Physical’ the party doesn’t stop when she closes her front is all distorted claps and sinuous arpeggios. ‘Stormy door. Electronic music is her way of life. Memories’, the album’s centrepiece, is a powerful shift DJ! Mag is in the centre of Berlin near where Ellen lives, from melancholy synth and electronics into four-four and close to the offi ces of her pioneering BPitch Control acid bliss — and back again. It’s got a classic acid house label, to talk to the dance maven about her latest fl urry feel, clearly infl uenced by the 1990s favourites Ellen’s of activity as a creator and DJ. recently returned to. Since 1992, Ellen has been a leading light of the German “I wanted to do one track of the music I really love, capital’s club scene. She’s released seven albums, electronic sounds which are danceable,” she says. “That nearly 40 singles, and played sets around the world in kind of music is my favourite. I wanted a very emotional practically every club worth caring about. In addition, beginning without beats, and the end had to be as her label BPitch has released classics by Moderat, beautiful as the beginning. In the middle, it had to be Sascha Funke, Telefon Tel Aviv, Kiki and many more. dance music so I could play it. It’s romantic electronic While Ellen’s last album ‘LISm’ found her in full-on dance, I would say!” experimental mode, touching on neo-classical and Other tracks like ‘Jack My Ass’, by contrast, aim straight abstract, beatless electronics, her new, eighth record for the posterior. With its tough beat, acid bass and ‘Nost’ is a love letter to the dancefl oor and her life as bleeps — plus Ellen’s vocal samples — it’s made for a DJ. peak-time. “It’s a fun techno track, a groove bomb. It’s a body journey, communicating to the body with the On a rainy, cold afternoon at the end of winter, we bass,” Ellen says. wind through the muted yet culturally vibrant streets of Berlin-Mitte, and pass the imposing Fernsehturm "#"$%&'( television tower that’s come to signify the city. When Ellen eschewed software during the making of ‘Nost’, we meet Ellen in a hotel lobby, she’s an immediately instead favouring some newly installed analogue warm and charismatic presence. With her hair dyed equipment that made her create in a novel way. Rather blonde, dressed in cool, understated black hoodie and than being stuck in front of a computer, she could try sports gear, in conversation she has an intensity and out ideas, record the best bits and then turn them into seriousness occasionally broken by laughter or wry tracks with a living vitality. humour. ‘Nost’ has got her fi red up. As we discover, “I bought a Moog, it’s like a wall!” she marvels at the it represents a return to her techno roots and love synth’s hulking dimensions. “Everything came out of classic dance tracks. “Every track is a completely of this. It’s a completely different dynamic. In every 036 djmag.com djmag.com 037 !**!'+),%-!) ,.-/0$%(!) 1#%(23).*10&+ Aérea Negrot ‘Arabxilla’ “I simply love Aérea Negrot and her style. When I had a listen to her debut album on BPitch for the first time, I was completely amazed. This album is so creative and abstract in its own way.” Telefon Tel Aviv ‘Immolate Yourself’ “What a beautiful album, and so many memories around it. Good ones and very sad ones, when band member Charles Coupe died in January 2009. I will never have enough of listening to this masterpiece of electronica.” Dillon ‘This Silence Kills’ “Dillon’s debut was something new and special when it came out on my label. It perfectly shows the wide range and diversity of sound I’m trying to present with BPitch. I remember the first show I saw at Volksbühne in Berlin. Very emotional.” Moderat ‘1’ “I have to say, their first album is still my favourite one. When they just came together as a band. Everything on this album still sounds very fresh and experimental.” Ellen Allien ‘LISm’ “This album gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted to do in the studio. It’s a 45-minute journey through sounds and melodies, an experiment, a soundtrack… and it was so much fun to work on it!” the number of shops in existence has dwindled significantly. “I was thinking, when I’ve done all the record stores, what will I do after?” she reflects. “I don’t know. We don’t have so many left. I was a little bit sad when I thought of it.” Club gigs naturally remain Ellen’s primary stock in trade. She’s busier than ever, last year racking up 140 shows. One of her best shows recently was at the newly revived Fabric. “I had my best gig at Fabric, sensation she’d be unable to feel back home. “Many lyrics, and they were very beautiful and very strange. ever. Because the people that came flipped out. I times I go to the sea and I feel so free and happy,” she This opened my brain, everything changed after I thought, when it opened again, it could be tricky. tells DJ Mag. “I don’t need anything, not even an ice listened to this. It was minimalistic, mysterious but But there was extreme energy, I’ve never seen energy cream. I watch the sea and I feel complete, I swim in groovy, and full of effects. This was the music I felt at Fabric like that ever. It’s because the crowd were the sea, and I feel nature. I could live on the beach 100%.” celebrating. That’s great.” without anything. Nature for me is a very free spirit. After a spell in London in 1989, when she heard With a residency at Circoloco at DC10 in Ibiza, Ellen It’s a different way of living and feeling.” house music for the first time at The Wag, she now spends half the year on the island — something In the end though, Berlin is where Ellen feels most returned to Berlin, and after meeting Dimitri she never thought she’d do. In the past, she was creatively energised. It’s the place she feels a Hegemann, founder of legendary Berlin club Tresor, unsure about dance culture there, but now she connection. “For the months that I am here, I want she got a residency there in 1992, as well as the clubs thoroughly enjoys the atmosphere of DC10, and also to create. The city gives me peace. It’s quiet on the E-Werk and The Bunker. Working in the record shop checking out other kinds of DJ sets she might not streets, you can pay for everything, you can eat Delirium and DJing on the city’s Kiss FM station, Ellen otherwise be exposed to. cheaply. Street life is amazing here and I’m only cultivated her own signature style. “For five years I’ve been playing in Ibiza, which has creative here. In Ibiza I can’t create, I’m completely A mix of German electronics and techno, UK acid been new for me,” she admits. “I never thought it isolated.” and IDM with an experimental tenor, Ellen’s tastes could be a place for me, ’cause I didn’t like the music manifested in the Braincandy label, and later in 1999, at all in the past. But at DC10 there are many cool !"#!$%&!'() BPitch Control.