Dixon

Dixon

I guess every DJ that started at one point I was thinking about producing music, and the other point for some people it takes two months to think about it and for others it’s like ten years or something but at one point every DJ starts to think about producing his own music because everyone thinks you can do it better.

Tim Sweeney

Right.

Dixon

On the other hand I’m running a label. It’s called Innervisions. It’s a sub-label of a German label called Sonar Kollektiv that is owned and [inaudible] running it. I’m working together with them for quite a long time now and just lately I realized I want to do a house division of this label because Sonar Kollektiv is a very open-minded label that is bringing out totally different stuff. But at some point I decided OK, for the house heads we need to make clear that there’s a sub-label and it’s bringing out only house music so if you have a new release of Innervisions, which is the name of my label, you know it’s going to be house. That’s why I started it.

Tim Sweeney

When did you start the label?

Dixon

Actually, what it is it now, four months ago so we have three releases now.

Tim Sweeney

Well that’s quick that you put out those releases.

Dixon

Since I’ve been around for ten or 12 years or something I’ve met a few people over the years that I’m constantly in contact with and there’s a friendship going on and these are producers and they have tracks that I want to bring out and we have a schedule that says that we try to bring out every month one release, which is 12 releases a year, and this makes one CD a year and I think that’s a good balance of not bringing too much out. You know there’s a lot of labels that bring out every week a record and if I like #45 and I’m listening to 46 through 51 I just don’t like the other records. And there’s a few labels that bring out two records a year and I wish they would bring out more, so I’m trying to do a balance between bringing out constantly stuff and quality stuff.

Tim Sweeney

Who’s on the label?

Dixon I

It’s Alex from Tokyo, who is a DJ that is obviously from Tokyo and he...

Tim Sweeney

But isn’t he from a bunch of other places?

Dixon

Yeah, he’s quite an interesting guy because he’s actually from France, which makes him French but he was growing up in Tokyo which gives him a very much Japanese character and now he’s living in New York, so we have like influences from all over the place, that makes him very special I would say. Then there’s this guy called Arm or Amet like other people say and there’s now coming a new [inaudible] and there’s an [inaudible] coming and myself, I’m going to release up there. Henrick Schwartz is going to bring-so a lot of house DJs that I know from over the last decade or so.

Tim Sweeney

How did it work with setting up your label with Sonar Kollektiv? How does that setup work and how did you get that started?

Dixon

Well to explain that, I’d have to say that [inaudible] is an act that is releasing music on a Munich-based label called Compost and they were quite successful from the first reason, and with this success they thought it might be a good idea to open up a label in their hometown. So if I’m bringing out music on a label in Chicago, Detroit or whatever, it’s nice, but there’s still a distance there. Ideally, you have the office that you go to and give your music to at home and you just go around the corner and you can speak to the people and you get direct opinions and you can look people in the face because over the phone it’s easier to say stupid things than straight.

Tim Sweeney

Right.

Dixon

And so I decided OK there’s a huge scene in Berlin that was still very underground at the time and because of the history of the city there was no business in Berlin, there still is no big business. When you think about German, it’s a country with a very good economy. You have basically all the companies that really make good money, you have them based in Munich or Bavaria in the south of Germany and nothing in Berlin because Berlin was and still is a city that was located in former East Germany so there was no, it was a socialism country, and companies that wanted to invest money into West Germany, they invested it in a city that was based in West Germany, not in West Berlin, which is just a little island in former Eastern Germany.

So you had also all the media companies not coming to Berlin and we still have a lot of music companies in Hamburg or Munich or Cologne, and just when the wall came down in late ’80s, the companies certainly saw the chance to go to Berlin and all of a sudden you had all the music companies coming to Berlin and you had the first time in Berlin history not just an underground scene that everyone knows about and everyone loves, but you also had people from that city releasing music.

When you think about the golden ’80s that everyone is speaking about in Berlin where you have all these crappy underground clubs that are really fucked up places, drugs, new wave sound, David Bowie was there. But still from this very creative scene, there’s not a lot of music out of Berlin, because there was no company there picking it really up. Of course you have some examples but in generally as a Berlin producer you always have the feeling that if you would like in Hamburg or Munich where all the companies are, you just need to do shit and still get releases, and in Berlin you have the feeling like OK whatever you do here it’s really cool but no one will make it you know? And this changed in the middle of the ’90s because the wall was down, companies were coming, Berlin was again the capital of Germany, and everyone hoped or expected that Berlin was going to be the new city in Europe so you had all the people moving to Berlin and constantly there was not just cool underground stuff happening, there was music released in Berlin.

Tim Sweeney

How did you get started with your label underneath Sonar Kollektiv?

Dixon

Getting back to just what I was thinking, you think OK we have this huge scene here in Berlin and there’s a lot of people doing stuff that we like so we just started a company in Berlin which is called Sonar Kollektiv. They basically came to me, just some DJs that were coming from the jazz scene but were highly influenced by the electronic scene in the mid-’90s so they decided OK we have a lot of knowledge in jazz and old stuff but when it comes to house music there might be someone in Berlin that has a better clue, so they came to me and asked me if I would join the company in an A&R way and it was not like I had it on paper or had a card that I could offer to people, and I didn’t have a payment or something it was just like a small company and we all liked each other and was like OK, “What do you think about that? Would you do this? And you don’t like this, why you don’t like this?” And we were, I don’t know, six or seven people and we just released music that we liked at this point, it was not like, OK you are the A&R you get 1,000 euros a month and now you do your job.

Tim Sweeney

Right.

Dixon

I think it was not even a company in the beginning, and all of this over the years there was more and more business going on and we realized OK it’s really, really cool to play on Friday and Saturday and Sunday in a club somewhere in the world. Coming back on Monday and being in the office at eight in the evening. If you really do business, other peoples don’t like that. There was a time when people was calling the office and you get constantly the information, “Yeah, he’s going to come. I don’t know when but he’s going to come.” That was not really helpful for the business. So at one point we decided, OK, we were growing up now.

Actually, when we started, I think we were all like 22 or 23 or something. For all of us like the first experience in this business and after a while you decide like, “OK let’s do it proper.” You don’t want to lose the spirit of you just playing around. On the other hand you want to get the experience of like there is more than just playing around. On that point we decided, “OK, we have office times now. You’re going to come by and well, actually maybe it’s a good idea to do it really your way and be focused on it completely and start your own sub-label.” That’s what I did then.

Tim Sweeney

When you guys hooked up you were like a house DJ in Berlin? Is that how they like...

Dixon

I actually started in the techno scene in Berlin. Which is a completely different point where, scene than where Jazzanova started. I’m 29 now and I started in 1991 or something. So it was like 14 years ago. I was pretty young at this time and I was not really able to get into the clubs, actually. I always found a way to sneak in.

Out of this techno scene I became more and more soulful house DJ or whatever you want to call it. House is like a big term. When I tell a taxi driver I’m a house DJ he has the completely different opinion than what I think I am. At some point Jazzanova were playing a completely jazz freestyle fusion club that was really small. I always thought, “They play music they don’t know nothing about DJing. DJing is more than just playing music. You have to have really good taste.” On the other hand they were thinking about me it’s like, “He’s this house DJ. It’s a druggie thing.” Actually they realized that I was not playing just druggie music. I was playing somehow soulful stuff.

On the other hand I realized, OK, they are booking DJs that I think are kind of house DJs, so what are they doing with them? I was going over to their club to check them out actually the first time proper. Before I even entered the club one of the Jazzanova guys, Alex, came to me and pointed at me and said, “Like OK you are Dixon right?” I was like, “Yeah.” “I’m Alex from Jazzanova and we want you to do a remix.” I was like, “Uhhhhh... Yeah but I’m not really producing.” He was like, “Yeah but I know someone who is working with you, so I know you’re producing but you don’t have the guts to bring it out so we want you to do a remix for us.” I was like, “Uhhh ... Yeah, ummm ... no I think I’m not ready for this. I’m going to come by Monday in the office and we going to speak about it.”

Monday came and since that, it was like six or seven years ago, I’m there every day you know. I was constantly like "OK. I can learn from you, you can learn from me. I think what you are saying is totally stupid but I convince you from what I’m saying.” There was constantly like we are coming from completely different scenes but having a feeling for similar things and like discussing about it.

Tim Sweeney

You were talking about the different ways of seeing a house DJ. What would be your definition of a house DJ?

Dixon

Well, when I started to play, not really started to play international or whatever, really playing at home in this bar around the corner or something. There was a time when you were really able to play all night long. This is basically in Berlin in 1991, 1992, 1993. You had a lot of underground clubs popping up. There was no money that you could spend on superstar DJs from all over the world. They were not so much superstar DJs like today where you think everyone is a superstar DJ. Basically the clubs gave people from the city the opportunity to play. When you play in Berlin all night means you playing form 11 to eight in the morning. You play nine hours. Even if you’re really deep into one really special feel there, within nine hours you play different stuff. Compared to today where DJs from hometowns usually are playing from the first hour before the guest DJ comes by and do maybe the last hour when everyone left already.

Back in the States you really got to get the experience of playing a long set and really understanding what it means to play in front of an empty club. Which means you don’t put up the volume. You just play low level. Down tempo. Not aggressive. Coming to the point where people are there and you get the feeling of, “OK, there’s like 20 people are there and it would be nice if two people of them would dance, but no. I don’t play dance music now. If I play it now later on there’s no step higher than this.” I still really try to keep it low and I wait until really enough people are there before I pull out the dance tracks. You get experience of what it means to play all night and play the prime time and have the guts to play at four o’clock at the prime time a tune that is not a prime time tune. Because you play five more hours you have enough time to play the other records that you know they are going to work.

This experience is gone today. Due to this experience, me as a DJ, I really was open-minded to different house things. There’s techy house stuff, there’s broken beat stuff, there’s vocal stuff, there’s disco stuff, there’s lots of stuff. I know DJs that are just playing one kind of it. I’m playing constantly different stuff and there’s the year 2001 where I’m really influenced by Jazzanova for instance, which means I’m playing a lot of broken beat records. There’s 2005, where I’m really influenced by a lot of techy stuff like Carl Craig, so I’m playing maybe the same tempo but a completely different feeling, different beats, different arrangements.

It’s really hard to explain a house DJ because a real house DJ is for me someone who plays every kind of house.

Tim Sweeney

You said before you were doing the house you were playing techno.

Dixon

Yeah, I was playing actually drum & bass and techno. In the early ’90s, when you were playing drum & bass it was called breakbeat or jungle at this time. It was still the same tempo as house or techno. Maybe it was 5 to 10 BPM faster or whatever but with the pitch you could adjust the tempo and play different styles into one hour and people were not thinking, ‘Hey, that’s completely different music.’

Where you go today in a drum & bass club and you listen to drum & bass there. Or you go in a techno club and you going to listen to techno there. In the early ’90s, it was very close by. Even when I say I come from the techno or the drum & bass scene, it was all all a mixture of this. For instance you have Lil Louis a very famous house producer that produced “French Kiss” for instance that everyone knows. He was producing in January vocal house records and then he’s producing on 115 BPM and then the next month he was producing the acid techno track. The same person. This is gone today. You have the techno DJ. [makes chopping motion with his arm] You have the techno producer and the house producer, and the house DJ and the drum & bass and so on. Yeah I’m coming from techno scene but it was all a mesh of different styles.

Tim Sweeney

I read that you used to have a residency at Tresor? Right? What would you play there? For me I think of that place and it’s like banging and German dudes without their shirts on like sweaty and...

Dixon

You’re right, but the club was opened at this time Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Four different days. Obviously you had different DJs playing there different styles. Me and my partner at this time, DJ Clay, we started actually Wednesday night, which was the first house night at Tresor Club. If you’ve been to Tresor Club the club is made in a way that you have different floors and you also have an entrance that fits like 80 people or something. Maybe 50, I don’t know. We actually started in this entrance our house night there. It was summer and it was the garden around Tresor. All of a sudden there within three months or something there was like 500 people showing up. 400 outside, 100 in this really tiny space. Then it became winter. The club was thinking about doing it again, but the space was too small so they moved it to the big floor in the Tresor Club. That’s how I ended up at Tresor. It was my first really club that I was really running.

Tim Sweeney

How many years did do that for?

Dixon

Actually I did it one year. The whole idea of this was like when we started it it was summer. There was a beautiful garden around Tresor. We thought, ‘OK, it’s Wednesday night and we just want to play some music.’ Tresor offered to not take an entrance. So people just come by don’t need to think about paying an entrance. Maybe just go into the garden and don’t really enter the club or whatever. We really liked the summer thing.

When it became winter, they didn’t expect that it’s going to be successful. So they thought, ‘Let’s just do it.’ But at the point that it was successful, so they said, “OK, it’s winter now. We close the garden because winter in Berlin is quite cold. We have like two bars open in the club. We offer a really good sound system we have like a VJ going on. We should take some money at the door.” They took eight German marks at the time. We thought this is not really what we wanted to do there. It became really successful but normal night. We decided, ‘No, we’re not going out there.’ This night was called Bonita House Club. It was still running, the same night without us, was still running till 2005. The Tresor Club just closed six months ago or something. It was still every Wednesday there was still like 1000 going there then because it was the only space in the city where you could go out properly on Wednesday, but without us and without house because it was techno then.

Tim Sweeney

Do you do a night in Berlin now?

Dixon

Yeah, there’s this club called Weekend, which is in the center of the city. Berlin’s not very high. There’s not like tons of skyscrapers around. It’s just a very flat city. This building is one of the few skyscrapers because it’s like 14 floors or something. The club is on the 12th floor. You have no other high buildings around. It’s 12th floor and it has windows all around. You can have a nice view over the city. You have a really good sound system. I play there every third week or once a month. It’s not really regular. Every third week or once a month or something. It’s not really regular. It’s not like I have the first Friday or Saturday, no. I do every 3 weeks or something.

Tim Sweeney

Is that like an Innervisions night or something?

Dixon

Yeah. It’s called Innercity actually. It’s basically me playing all night long on month one, and then on other months I have someone coming over that I really like. The night is, luckily enough, really successful right now. I have the feeling the house music is really coming back right now. Within Europe, the last three years were really dominated by electro and minimal, tech-house or something. Right now, really have the feeling that people are really getting back into house music, or just different stuff.

My residency like two years ago was not really good, but right now it’s really good so I have the opportunity to invite people that I‘ve met over the years that maybe don’t really have a big name but I think they’re really good DJs. I can just bring them over because the night is really successful. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to book Erick Morillo or whatever banging house DJ to fill up the club. It’s full anyway, so I can book whoever I want to.

Tim Sweeney

How do you think the Berlin scene has changed from back when you first started to now?

Dixon

I think one of the main differences of the scene in Berlin was that the people that were really doing the clubs were actually owning the spaces. At the beginning, the people that would do the parties were really doing everything there. There are a lot of empy spaces in Berlin, and people just go in there and do parties. After four months or something, the police come by and shut it down. Within this four months, the club was running good or not. If it’s not running good, you know, well it doesn’t matter. The place is shut down. If it was running good, the same people were doing the next phase, like a half year later.

Maybe because it was successful in the first place, in the next space they were not just renting the sound system, they were having their own sound system, and then after the next four months the place was shut down again. After doing this three or four years, these people started to have the money to actually rent the place officially and do a proper club. Back in the days, you had really a lot of empty buildings that they just stole. Now, you have the same people, they were doing these one off parties back in the day having their own clubs. Even if the Tresor is closed now, the guy that was running it was really the guy that was running one off parties back in the day.

Or, there’s another famous club in Berlin that was called WMF. In the ten year history of this club, this club was changing the venue every year. [It went] from being completely illegal to now being completely official. It’s still the same people doing it. That’s a really good thing. In other scenes where I’m going to, there’s always this point where I’m playing in this whatever club, and then the guy that booked me is introducing me to the owner of the space. There’s a 45-year-old guy that just invested money in something and doesn’t care about anything but the money. You have all these clubs in the world where people running the first Saturday and the second Saturday, it’s completely different people doing it because there is just someone behind it that owns the place, wants his money and is just renting it. In Berlin, I would say that in eight out of ten clubs the owners are really doing the parties there. That's actually really special.

Even the doorkeepers are really connected to the club. Yesterday when I was playing this club, there was someone working at the door that didn’t care. He’s a security guy. He’s doing his job. Maybe he’s a nice guy, and he’s doing a good job, but he’s completely not connected to the music. If he’s saying, “OK, you have to bring down the music in five minutes,” that’s really what he wants. It’s not like in Berlin. It’s kind of like, “OK, you’re going to bring down the music in one hour or something, so I can think about how I want to end up the night.”

Even if there’s a situation where, “Hey, we have to close in 10 minutes,” I’m saying, “OK. I need 15 minutes because I want to play this song as the last song to finish the night in a good way.” The guy would say, “OK, do it.” Yesterday for instance was like, “OK you have five more minutes and we have to ...” He was doing the lights to tell the people, “OK, it’s over now. You have to leave.” Something that just would never happen in Berlin. It’s kind of like people owning the space, they decide when they have to close it and the door guy works at the door. That’s his job. Even the bar guys, or girls, it’s always the same people that you see. You see people dancing in 2003 in this club, and you see them in 2005 working there and earning money there. There’s a strong connection between everyone that works in the club. It’s maybe not like a happy family but there is a connection and there’s the nightlife. It’s not like it’s just a job, like, “I need to earn money on Saturdays, I’ll work at the door in this whatever nightclub.”

Tim Sweeney

Do you have any other favorite DJs that are around now that you’re into?

Dixon

Yeah. There’s this guy called Kristian from Âme, which is on my label also. He’s really, really good DJ. I think there’s tons of DJs around. I could give you t names now. Also, there’s a DJ for every situation.

Tim Sweeney

Right.

Dixon

I mean, when I’m going out and I want to enjoy myself, I don’t want to go to a deep house DJ. I don’t want to go to a deep house club. It’s like what I’m working the studio on this music. I’m listening to it in the office. I’m playing it on the weekends, so if I’m going out, I want something else. It’s even really hard for me to have an opinion about other deep house DJs because they’re doing the same. Yes, they may be a little bit better or not so good, but I really don’t have a serious opinion about them. When I enjoy myself, I go to a techno club, or I go to a hip-hop club, or I go to a rock concert. That’s actually much more interesting. It’s not like I’m going around in my scene and I want to see the superstar DJ there and I want to have an opinion about then. No, it’s not like that.

Tim Sweeney

With your own productions, you have... I know you have this Wahoo thing. How did that get started?

Dixon

As I told you, on Sonar Kollektiv, which is the label there, there’s a lot of different music coming out there, which means there’s a lot of completely different people sending demos to Sonar Kollektiv. There was this one guy called George Levin who was sending a demo with a lot of soulful productions. Most of them down tempo but some of them up tempo. I got this demo, and I picked two of the tracks that I liked and told him to produce them properly so I can put them out. He told me, “That’s everything I can do. I have a two-track at my home and I’m playing the Rhodes, and I’m playing the bass and all this but I can’t produce it better.” I offered him to produce it for him.

Out of this, we became friends, and the first two tracks were pretty successful for the label. Me as a DJ, without any music background, I was never playing piano or guitar or bass, I was just playing records. When I started to produce in the studio, I started to think about harmonies and all that. It was a perfect match with him having a musical background. I could actually tell him what I wanted to and he was playing keys on my productions. There came a point where it was not just me producing a track that he wrote or I am doing a remix project and he’s playing some keys for me. There was a moment where we decided, “You know what? Actually we could do a project out of it and really make a name and do it together.”

That’s why we decided to start Wahoo. It was actually because we did a remix for Jazzanova and it was the first time that he was doing not just the keys. He was doing more. I felt like OK, he’s such a big part of it now, that we have to give this remix a different name than just the ‘Dixon remix’ and somewhere on the liner notes you’ll see, “Keys played by George Levin,” or something. I thought, OK, he’s done much more on this than ever before, so we call it Wahoo mix. From that point on, we were thinking about doing a house album that is not really a house album. We realized that even if I love this music, which has been around for 20 years or something, there’s maybe three or four house albums that I really like. I think we wanted to do a vocal house album. That was our big goal. We’re still sitting there and finishing it now.

Tim Sweeney

When do you think that’s going to get finished?

Dixon

It has to be finished in February. I was saying this one year ago. But now it’s really a deadline, so it needs to be finished in February.

Tim Sweeney

How does it work when you two go into the studio together?

Dixon

There’s two different things. First is like we’re jamming and we have no idea what we want and we’re just playing around. That means it could go in every direction. This is like 50% of what we’re doing, and the other 50% my partner George – he’s actually a songwriter, because he really has all these sketches where he’s writing lyrics, writing the melodies and having a really rough idea of how the track is going to be – then he’s bringing it to me. He’s playing it to me. I might like it or I just hate it. If I like it, we are thinking about how to produce it. I mean, in which direction to go if we want to have a live productions with live bass, or Rhodes, or whatever, or if we want to have it electronic track.

It’s kind of like from the sketch on we think about which direction we want to go and then we go to it.

Tim Sweeney

When you say you guys you just start jamming, how does that work? Are you playing keyboards as well, or do you bring in another record?

Dixon

No, mostly it’s like I’m producing some beats. Even the beats we’re sitting together now. You never can say though because when you’re thinking about jamming and you have two persons, you know, there’s ... Timing is important. Maybe I’m coming in having a coffee and having my breakfast and he is already there. He’s playing some keys on the Rhodes and I’m sitting there and I’m saying, “Stop. I like that.” Then it goes on from there, or he is late or he is somewhere performing and I’m in the studio and producing some beats, or having a base line or whatever. Playing around and thinking that’s quite nice. I could work with Josh on it.

It’s not like formula that you’re going by. Jamming is never a formula.

Tim Sweeney

Right. Well, when you guys go into the studio together, is it like a 9-5 thing for you, or is it you go later?

Dixon

It never was, but since there’s a serious deadline now, now it is. I’m not allowed to do any other thing than going to the studio from Monday to Thursday now. Yes, there’s a daytime studio time now that’s there for sure and if you feel like, you go on at night.

Tim Sweeney

Do you have a Wahoo thing that you wanted to play, or...

Dixon

Yeah. Since we’ve been working on the album for quite a while now, there’s one single released already that came out last year on Sonar Kollektiv. Now it just came out three months ago on Defected Record again. It’s this one.

(music: Wahoo – “Make Em Shake It”)

Tim Sweeney

Did this come out on Defected?

Dixon

Yeah. It just came out three months ago. It was released on Sonar last year and then Defected picked it and said, “We like the track, but we don’t think many people have heard it yet.” It was successful on Sonar, but Defected, which is a really big label thought they could do much more with it.

Tim Sweeney

You’ve done other mixed CDs, right?

Dixon

Yeah.

Tim Sweeney

How would you put those together? The same way?

Dixon

It depends. I have done maybe it’s like five mix CDs or something and half of them it’s mixed in the club. I think never like a real live set at two o’clock at Saturday night and you start to press record and you stop it at some point. Mixed like in the club at Monday afternoon where I thought about what’s going to be on, and I just mixed it. The other one is the other half is done in Pro Tools.

Tim Sweeney

Which do you prefer?

Dixon

There’s this argument about as a DJ you have to do it live at the CD players, or at the vinyl players, whatever. I don’t think so. I think on a mixed CD it’s not about proving that you are the best technically, best DJ in the world. If you want to check this, come to the club and listen to me and make your opinion.

I think the mixed CD is about the music, actually. It doesn’t matter for me how it’s done. If you do it in Pro Tools, for instance, you can do it also precisely and if you start to do it very precise, then you don’t find an end. You think this could be a little bit better and this and this. Even all the process there takes long. When you do it in a club, or at home, or whatever on your system, it’s 70 minutes and then it’s over. Maybe you don’t like it the first try and you do it a second time, but then again, it’s two hours. When you do it with Pro Tools, it just takes two hours to put in the files. You’re sitting there for like one day making volume changes and EQ changes and whatever you can do there. It’s a pain in the ass to do it.

Of course it’s better in the terms if you can do it, you can do the best mix ever there. Technically, DJ beat mixing-wise or something. It’s no fun. The next one I’m going to do live again. It’s faster and it’s fun doing it. You’re standing there, you’re touching it and you just do your job. Working on Pro Tools or whatever you use on your computer, looking at the files gives you a completely different feel of the music. Then you’re thinking. You start to use your eyes and your brain starts. When you’re playing music, maybe you see the time that is left, or how much is left on the vinyl [makes gesture with his fingers]. That’s all you see. You just feel. That’s much more spontaneous and faster.

Tim Sweeney

Right. Do you have a mix CD coming out next year?

Dixon

Nothing is agreed yet, but there is two plans that we have.

Tim Sweeney

How do you feel the mix CDs – the ones that you’ve done – have helped you along with DJ bookings and things like that?

Dixon

They help of course.

Tim Sweeney

It’s not as much as production and ...

Dixon

The thing is that I don’t know how much people of you know me, but I’m not really a well known artist in this world. I think when it comes to the DJs in the world, I think everyone knows me, I have quite established name in this, but I never had a hit out, or I never had an album out, which really makes you recognized by the press then, and you get reviews. [Whether they’re] bad or good, you have something out there.

Everything I was doing was doing remix. I was a DJ, and I was playing in Berlin for twelve years. Since lot of DJs from all over the world came to Berlin, to play Berlin, because Berlin’s such a beautiful city. Everyone wants to come there once. I had a lot of people from all over the world in my club that I invited.

There was big, almost like it opened goals for me to go somewhere else. Once I had a mixed CD out, it was the first time for the media to really write about project of me. That really helped a lot, I have to say. Luckily enough, there was nothing really bad about it, so that’s why it helped, maybe.

Tim Sweeney

Right, OK. Switch around, are there any artists now that you’re really into at the moment?

Dixon

Heinrich Schwartz, that’s someone that I’m really into. Lindstrom is someone that I really dig right now. Quentin Harris is someone from New York that I’m really respecting for doing really good vocal productions, and Carl Craig.

Tim Sweeney

With label wise, any labels that have been ...

Dixon

I think there’s no label around that I just trust.

Tim Sweeney

Really?

Dixon

There’s good music everywhere. Maybe Planet E, for instance, the Carl Craig label, but then again, I think there’s no label around that is releasing ten records and I like ten of them.

Tim Sweeney

Your own label or anything?

Dixon

Of course I love my own label.

Tim Sweeney

I heard you own a sandwich shop in Berlin, is that right?

Dixon

Yeah.

Tim Sweeney

Is this like another way of being able to just DJ full time, is you have to have the sandwich shop?

Dixon

I’m 29, I’m not that old. When I that never in my life, that actually means nearly nothing. I have to say that never in my life I was really doing, having a decision made by thinking about something really long. When I was five or something, I was into soccer. I played for a football team and it was not like my dad was telling me I have to play soccer or I thought, I have to play soccer. I was just doing it. I had problems with my knees when I was 12. I was playing on a semi-professional level and I had to stop playing soccer. Then I was doing long running after, but it was naturally going on. When I was 16 I had also to stop these, because again, I had problem with my knees.

All of a sudden, when I was 15 or something, I went to a nightclub for the first time in my life. I was never going to discotheques before, whatever. The first time I was going out, I was going out to Tresor club. It was hitting me straight away. Within two weeks, I was on the turntables. It was not like I was thinking about, I have to be a DJ or somehow, it just happened.

With the shop now, it’s completely the same. I was not thinking, ‘The music business is really bad, I have to do something else, I have to invest money somehow.’

No, the story is we have a football club that we founded, people from the scene, because we wanted to play football once a week. One year after we started a bar, where we were screening football because we thought that places where you could watch football were always crap. We just wanted to have a really small little thing where we all could just hang out on Wednesday nights and Saturdays to watch the football games. After two years or something, it was running so well that we had, “OK, now we have a place for midweek hangout spots, so let’s have a daytime hangout spot and start a sandwich shop.” We had no clue how to do it. It’s also, again, a typical Berlin thing. I don’t really know about Seattle, but I have the feeling I couldn't do it here becuase the prices on a proper street, when you want to open a shop here, you can’t afford as a DJ.

In Berlin, you have all these empty shops around and you have these really cool streets where places rent for 600 euros a month. If you were like two persons that have an idea of doing a shop, that’s not such a high risk. You can just try it. You have galleries popping up everywhere, just trying to be a good gallery. A lot of them close after half a year, but people were trying it and they were not losing tons of money. They were just trying it, it was not working well, OK, they tried. It was the same for us, we thought, ‘Yeah, we have really good taste. We know how a cafe has to be, what’s good sandwich. Let’s do it.’ Now it’s running for three years and it’s good, it’s running good.

Audience Member

In the music business, how are you finding the MP3 market for dance music in particular? Do you think that you’re getting a fair shot from the people that run legal downloading sites? Or do you think that, because it’s dance music and maybe therefore in the eyes of the people that run things like iTunes, is it any less important and are you getting any less coverage?

Dixon

Over the last years, everyone heard already that the music industry is doing really bad, and the numbers of sales are going really down. At the same time, the artists are not earning less money than before. Da Gama, which is the company in Germany that has the rights on the music, the collecting agency, they’re writing really good numbers because, the problem is that the company is earning less money because the sales of CDs or vinyl is going down. There’s the ringtones, there’s the digital downloads, there’s more and more TV companies in the world, they’re doing their own productions and needing music for it.

Me as a person who is bringing out a track, I might sell half of what I was selling five years age or something, but because there’s more markets like the MP3 market or the ringtone markets that I maybe don’t really like or something but it’s there, I still earn the same money with the same music. Me as a DJ, I don’t like the MP3 format. I think it sounds crap and I think you can hear it, especially in a club. You might not hear it in a car, you might not hear it at your shitty sound system at home or in the office or whatever, so it works there. Especially in a club where it’s all about the bass for instance, I don’t like MP3. I think it’s a really easy access for people to get music. You can just listen something in the radio and you can have instant access to it. That’s like a big step, I think, for the music.

First of all, I really like that it’s there, this digital market, it’s just an extra market for me as an artist or as a label owner. When it comes to the share that we get out of it, I don’t really have a final opinion about it already now. I think it’s extra money to be cashed in. You don’t really need to do something for it. You don’t need to take the risks to produce a record and press 10,000 records because you expected it’s going to be a really big track and then it’s selling 2,000 records and you really lost a lot of money. You give it to internet company, to download portal, and if they sell it they sell it. If not, not. Of course you have to do, like you find your way through which company is good and what’s the best strategy to do it, but I think it’s an extra market. The money that comes in there now, I think it’s quite okay.

I’m thinking I’m going to play one of the tracks from our album that is coming out, which is a non-house track, and then after this I’m going to play, in my opinion, the best house track of 2005. The first one is Wahoo.

(music: Wahoo – “Sun in My Candelight”)