Lars Bartkuhn
The virtues of dance music are either setting the pace or, in most cases, at least keeping up with the ever-changing flavours of the season. Lars Bartkuhn has a different ambition. He’s aiming for longevity, combining influences like classic deep house, soul, funk or Brazilian music with modern jazz elements. Together with his brother Marek and Yannick Elverfeld he set up Needs Music in 1999, a production threesome and label based in Frankfurt that rose to international fame among music lovers and dancers with songs like “Worlds.” For his solo projects, Bartkuhn also uses the names Laurentius and Passion Dance Orchestra, to spell out his deep love of fusion music. In this lecture at the 2004 Red Bull Music Academy, he talks about some of his most-loved records and how they've influenced his unique approach to production.
Hosted by Fergus Murphy Once again, a big welcome to Lars Bartkuhn from Frankfurt, the Needs label, lovers of the deeper, more musical side of house music. We’re going to start nice and easy this morning. We got a whole bunch of music. We’ll talk to Lars about his influences and his inspirations. We’ll kick things off with a very recent track. Lars Bartkuhn More or less recent. It’s not so new. Fergus Murphy This is called “The Wake Up Call.” (music: Laurentius – “Over the Sea” / applause) Lars Bartkuhn This song is two or three years old. It’s a project of mine called Laurentius, which is the Latin origin of my name. The song is called “Over the Sea.” It’s how I would feel if I could be there. Fergus Murphy Over the sea? Lars Bartkuhn Exactly. Fergus Murphy Please tell us about the Needs label and the crew. Lars Bartkuhn It’s me, myself and I… No, it’s three guys. Me, my brother Marek and a good friend of ours named Yannick. His real name is Jan Elverfeld. But if you know him, you will know him as Yannick, as a DJ, journalist and former editor of the Groove magazine. So we’re a trio. We formed the label in 1998. At that time we started hanging out together and producing music. Me and my brother, we did music before that, but then Yannick joined us. It just was the right chemistry and we came up with our first record pretty quickly. We didn’t know where to send our music. There was no label we felt connected to, so we just did it our own. And once we started, we got used to it very quickly. Fergus Murphy And that was Needs. In what year did the first record come out? Lars Bartkuhn I think it was 1999. But I’m not good with dates. Fergus Murphy Would you describe the label as a house music label? Lars Bartkuhn I think I have to. Even though I don’t feel comfortable with the term so much today, it’s a house label, yes. Fergus Murphy Why would you not feel comfortable with the term? Lars Bartkuhn Because we try to do things a bit different, take things from the music called house – what we love – but do a little bit different, arrangements that you don’t hear in this kind of music, an instrumentation that is unusual for house and a harmonic input that is not so common in dancefloor music. Even though dance music always had a focus on stealing from other styles, we felt like the house music scene of our time is too limited. Fergus Murphy So you don’t feel at home listening to the latest house releases? Lars Bartkuhn Not really. I did listen a lot to house music, of course. I studied my stuff. But today it’s like, I have to be honest, my friend is checking out the records for me. He gives me the stuff he recommends. And even if I get ten records, it’s only one that I like. Fergus Murphy So what is it you’re not feeling at the moment? Lars Bartkuhn Should we really talk about this kind of negative stuff? Fergus Murphy I think it’s not necessarily negative. Lars Bartkuhn It’s bothering me to hear the same song over and over again, I must say. People who were really having a good constant good output for a period of ten years now have a constant bad output long since. Listening to their stuff, it’s just not inspiring anymore; they are repeating their formula, repeating their chemistry. This magic, innocent touch of the music is pretty much gone. I don’t want to sound arrogant; it’s just how I feel. I’m not sure if I succeed on my own template, but I try my best to make it at least a little bit fresh. Fergus Murphy To get away from the formula? Lars Bartkuhn Yes. Fergus Murphy And what would be your inspirations in house music? Lars Bartkuhn Of course, there’s many. Larry Heard’s old stuff, Kerri Chandler, Ron Trent, Blaze – all that stuff. They still do great music sometimes, but there was a time when I was digging just every single note in every record. There was nothing bad they did. For me, it was all just perfect. I have a whole shelf of records of each of these artists. And many others. John Robinson, Danny Tenaglia, Detroit stuff – Mad Mike. The obvious, I must say. It’s nothing super underground or special. I just like the classics. Fergus Murphy But today you feel like that most artists are repeating themselves? Lars Bartkuhn Yes. I remember last year, there’s been a couple of records everybody was talking about. But they are like the old stuff, like the old Kerri Chandler. And that’s exactly what I hate. If he was the old Kerri Chandler, he would do something that sounds new. Because every good Kerri Chandler record was something crazy, something new. To hear the old sounds from Atmosphere, that doesn’t inspire me in no way. That’s a problem in todays music scene. People have too much understanding of what is going on in music. They have a system of categorizing the whole stuff. Like, “Now we’re doing this kind of song.” In their computers, they have all the sounds already. There is no exploring. I don’t know how people are producing their music. But it seems like they have their set-up. They don’t travel. They are inside a room they know perfectly. Of course, it’s good to have skills and routine, but your mind should be open for doing some really new stuff. To me, house music was once like a journey into something that I didn’t know before, every song… Even though it’s a really simple music, there was so much going on. Fergus Murphy But you came to it as a musician? Lars Bartkuhn Yes, of course. You mean that I have been playing an instrument? Fergus Murphy Yes, exactly. You are classically-trained, am I right? Lars Bartkuhn A bit. A bit of everything. What I was really doing a lot was studying jazz guitar. For ten years I didn’t do anything else other than practicing – eight, ten hours a day. I went to university and studied jazz. But I also practiced classical piano and classical guitar. That’s my official graduation. Fergus Murphy Have you always been listening to club music? Lars Bartkuhn Actually, not consciously. All the time, I was listening to music that has a meaning to club music. But I wasn’t listening to club music for a long time. Six or seven years ago, I started going to these shops that are offering especially club music. But of course, I was always been listening to music that was in a way clubby or danceable, or whatever. I have been listening to Stevie Wonder – what better club music can you have? Even though I didn’t go to clubs, I loved soul, funk, some jazz funk, boogie and all this kind of stuff. Fergus Murphy Would you describe that as music where the rhythm is upfront? Lars Bartkuhn Not necessarily. Rhythm is the foundation, of course. Melodies need rhythm. Each melody also has a rhythm and a clave of its own. You can just clap a melody. Sometimes you can understand from the clapping what melody is meant. But I’m a very harmonic, romantic guy, I must say. I love to get lost in harmony when playing on my piano or keyboard. Fergus Murphy Can you clap “Superstition”? Lars Bartkuh No, you wouldn’t recognize it. But I could clap “Jingle Bells” and everybody would hear that it’s “Jingle Bells.” Fergus Murphy Give us a demonstration, please. Lars Bartkuhn OK. [claps “Jingle Bells”] You would immediately understand that it’s “Jingle Bells.” Fergus Murphy Christmas comes early this year. Lars Bartkuhn Let’s wait for Christmas. Then we’ll do a workshop on clapping Christmas tunes. I do that for my family every year. Fergus Murphy You’re the clapping guy. Let’s play another tune. Tell us about it Lars Bartkuhn It’s a classic. I picked this one because I want to show you how different music can sound. But to me it’s still connected in a way, even though I don’t want to compare myself to this. It’s the stuff where I draw my inspiration from. It’s a band called Wood, Brass & Steel, the song is called “Funkanova.” Fergus Murphy It’s a disco classic… Lars Bartkuhn It became a disco classic. But it’s definitely a jazz funk jam. It’s nothing related to the disco scene. The guys have been playing some straight funk, like Headhunters stuff. They added some good harmonic brass. I wouldn’t call it disco. But just check it out. (music: Wood, Brass & Steel – “Funkanova” / applause) Fergus Murphy What are the elements that you consider to be important for your music? Lars Bartkuhn It’s hard to give a short answer to that question. As many other songs of that era, this song is containing all the elements that are important for me. First of all, it’s just the way it sounds and the instrumentation. The sound of certain instruments combined with each other can be already an inspiration to me. Like the Solina strings. I don’t know if you've heard about it. A synthesizer. Later on, after the company had been bought by ARP, this synthesizer was called ARP strings. This was a machine with beautiful string sounds. Before there were samplers imitating strings, the synthesizers may have sounded very synthetic. But their feeling was much closer to the string effects of a big orchestra. The arrangement of this song is also an inspiration; the way it’s layered up, the chord progression, and it’s leaving enough space for the hook and bassline. Audience Member The bass of that song is great. Lars Bartkuhn Yes, it’s a killer bassline. Everything is killer. It’s a constant groove without being too tight. That’s something I don’t like about the disco movement. It became too good. This song leaves the feeling of having a jam session in a garage. It’s not played after a metronome, like the later disco producers did. Audience Member Lars, would you say that you were inspired by this sort of music 20 years later? Lars Bartkuhn That’s why I picked it up. Audience Member I mean, I found references in that sound. So I don’t want to deny that… Lars Bartkuhn You can tell me. I steal a lot from this music. I use the term “steal, many other say they get inspired. Of course, I am inspired. But in a way, it’s a big supermarket. There’s all the music history, I steal the vibe and try to play it with my own skills. Of course, I try to be as inspired as possible. Actually, I just do music when I have the feel for it. I don’t produce every day. In this case, there’s just something that you have to steal as a producer, I think; think of the spacey guitars. Whenever I plug in my old tape delay and play my guitar or Rhodes, I feel like I’m part of that band. I have to imitate them. I imitate the language of this music in my dialect. Fergus Murphy You have another track there that is a big inspiration. Lars Bartkuhn What I’m carrying with me is just inspiration. The next song is a popular song, I would say. I saw a boxing documentation on TV, and George Foreman was entering the ring with that song. This made him pretty sympathetic. If I was boxer, I would choose this for sure. Nobody could defeat me. Just listen to it. (music: Asso – “Don’t Stop” / applause) I wish I had done this track. This is an Italian band from the ’80s. I think they were just doing soundtracks. Their name is Asso. The song is called “Don’t Stop,” it’s really rare. I was introduced to it by Ron Trent actually, on a compilation. My friend Anthony Nicholson, a producer from Chicago, they listen to a lot of ’80s stuff that is not the obvious ’80s music. It’s almost the same sound we know from today – in terms of the hypnotic atmospheres, the pad sounds and it’s pattern-oriented. “Don’t Stop” is another perfect song. It’s exactly the same as we heard from Wood, Brass & Steel, only with a very different instrumentation. Both tracks are mind-expanding funk music. It gives you a good feeling, you want to close your eyes and dance to it. The Asso song is not acoustic at all, it’s electronic. But I think that they were inspired by music like that Funkanova tune. This kind of music keeps me going. Fergus Murphy You said this Asso song is very rare? Lars Bartkuhn I just have it from this compilation. I know the original record from my friend’s house. He has a vinyl copy. As far as I know, people are paying a lot of money for it in New York dance shops. I wouldn’t do that. Fergus Murphy Maybe it will turn up in Rome. Lars Bartkuhn Exactly, I never thought about that. Let’s go to the shops today and find it. Tomorrow we can count the copies we have. If you want, I can now play a joint of mine, which is a bit more fusion-y, more jazz-inspired. It’s something that I see in the middle of all that. In Germany we would say “noodling,” which means that there is a lot of playing going on. It’s more complex, but I tried to get into this rhythm. I play a little bit now, it’s called “Windy City” and it’s about Chicago. (music: Lars Bartkuhn – “Windy City” / applause) Fergus Murphy That’s a heavy tune. Lars Bartkuhn Yes, there’s some music inside of it, lots of music… Fergus Murphy That’s your own thing? Is it a studio production? Lars Bartkuhn Yes, a studio production. It’s hard to talk about it, actually. It’s a song I wrote. And then I went to the studio and played the instruments. Fergus Murphy You played all the instruments on there? Lars Bartkuhn Some are programmed, some are played. Fergus Murphy It’s got that kind of live feeling that the Wood, Brass & Steel had. Lars Bartkuhn Exactly! You see, this is why I wanted to play you these tunes before – “Funkanova” by Wood, Brass & Steel and this Asso song. I feel like being in the middle of these two songs. My song has this ’80s styled, harsh bass sound. Audience Member You said you wrote the song and then brought it to the studio and then recorded it. Lars Bartkuhn This sounds much more professional than it actually is. My studio is next to my bed. So I wrote it in my bed and then took it to my studio. I’m kidding. Audience Member Do you actually write notes down? Lars Bartkuhn Sometimes. I’m a forgetful person. So I have to write things down sometimes. Even though I’m bad at reading notes, I can write a bit. This helps me to remember melodies that came to my mind. When I say that I write songs, that’s what people say. Of course, the songs are not really written. Composing a song, that would sound even worse. I came up with this idea, just to be humble. Audience Member Do you feel there’s some space for improvisation in your music? Lars Bartkuhn What do you think? Audience Member What’s your approach? Lars Bartkuhn My approach is what you heard. I mean, there was some I think some improvisation pretty obviously, like in terms of soloing, in terms of rhythmic freedom. I don’t have patterns that go throughout the whole song. I play the whole song through, and when I feel like doing a break, I do a break. That’s improvisation. even though it’s of course produced. I feel like that’s a long time improvisation, the whole process in the studio. There should be something going on that makes you twist a little bit and not so boring. Audience Member But in the jazz you keep some parts for free improvisation. Lars Bartkuhn Ah, you mean free improvisation? I wouldn’t say there’s free improvisation. Audience Member Solos. You have that part, that 10 bars for example in a tune that you’re producing and then you decide, “Well, here I’m not going to follow a plan. I’m going to solo, I’m gonna… and whatever comes to my mind, here it is.” That’s what remains. Lars Bartkuhn So the improvising aspect. Audience Member Yeah, free improvising. In a jazzy style. Lars Bartkuhn Yeah but you know jazzers would complain about its simplicity and would complain about its… it’s still very pattern-like. Compared to other pattern music it’s not so pattern-like, but if you compare it to straight-ahead played music, of course there’s a lot of pattern. I put a lot of hooks that repeat in a way. Audience Member What’s up Lars? First of all, how old is that track? Lars Bartkuhn That track is one and a half years, something like that. That’s not out yet. And I don’t know about it actually. Audience Member Do you guys have to work with guys maybe from South Africa? Because [inaudible] did a track with [inaudible]. Do you have guys have plans to do something with South Africa? Lars Bartkuhn Yeah my friend Yannick’s been there once and he had a good time, that’s all I know. I haven’t been there yet, but of course I would love to work with people who feel it, but it hasn’t happened, anything yet. In a way we are very isolated, hanging out, just together you know, and we haven’t done so much on other labels. Audience Member Maybe in the future some time? Lars Bartkuhn If it happens, yeah. But I don’t see this music on any other label, actually I don’t see it on our label right now. I just have a piece of music, just listen to it, that’s it. We have to wait. I don’t know yet. Fergus Murphy Our man here is gonna hook it up. Audience Member How relevant do you think your education was in what you do now? Lars Bartkuhn What do you mean, education? Ah, this kind of education. Because everything is education. Audience Member Formal, institutional education. Lars Bartkuhn Important. Very important. But I could live without it, but now that I have it, it’s important. I don’t have so much. There’s other students who studied better, they have skills in theory and all this, but still it’s a good tool to have. But of course we all know there’s music without all that that works too. Once you have it, you like using it sometimes. Audience Member What is going on through your head? Is it sad, were you dumped recently is or something? [laughter] Lars Bartkuhn You’re right. That’s a sad song to me. it’s a classic situation. I like making positive music when I need it, and I like making melancholy music when my life is too simple. So it’s always looking for something, some escape, whatever. But I forgot about it. I just know that I, I remember one thing, I made it before I first went to Chicago to see my friend. I needed to bring a new piece because he was so productive at that time, and I think that was the hook for that song, just bringing something, a gift, to Chicago. That’s what I call the Windy City. Audience Member In the production process of that last track, did you have some real instruments, at least an electric piano, a real Clavinet, or was it only synthesizer instruments? Lars Bartkuhn First of all there’s a lot of heavy guitar playing in the music. Audience Member Real guitar? Lars Bartkuhn I don’t know yet the synthesizer guitar. Audience Member Steinberg Virtual Guitarist. Lars Bartkuhn No, it’s a real guitar. Audience Member OK. Lars Bartkuhn I mean, I would be stupid if I wouldn’t use it. It’s something I know at least a little bit about so I use the guitar from time to time. actually I use it more and more. what else? There’s electric keyboards. I do some little percussions, but in my studio it’s impossible to play the djembe or the conga. I have this little bedroom studio, you know. I have to make the big sounds in the smallest possible way, with my headphones on and program like this. Audience Member Is the bass real? Lars Bartkuhn The bass? No. But who cares? It’s a synthesizer bass, but I play it like, I feel a lot like playing it. that’s important. Audience Member Regarding synthesizers, you use hardware pieces or virtual instruments? Lars Bartkuhn At that time I didn’t have virtual or whatever. I just have this for a couple months now, and I hardly use it I must say. if it’s electronic it should be at least — what’s the word? — touchy. I need that, I must say. Audience Member Can you talk about your ‘70s jazz fusion idols? Joe Zawinul, George Duke, Herbie Hancock? Lars Bartkuhn In terms of the style, I would definitely compare this song to this type of music. George Duke of a certain time is definitely a big hero of mine. I really love the funkitivity and the positivity of his music. It’s a hard groove that makes you smile very much. And once you smile, you can dance. It makes your soul dance first, and then your feet will follow. Audience Member Can you give us a little list of influences? Lars Bartkuhn OK, all George Duke until the early ’80s is really good. If you like, we can listen to “Brazilian Love Affair” of course. This songs means a lot to me. I’m really a fusion guy, I must say. Fergus Murphy This has been sampled to death… Lars Bartkuhn Is it? Fergus Murphy Wasn’t it that “Africa” tune from Meitz, the intro? Lars Bartkuhn I don’t know. (music: George Duke – “Brazilian Love Affair” / applause) I like all the obvious stuff from that time, like Herbie Hancock, George Duke, Eddie Henderson, also Brazilian jazz funk like Azymuth or Airto. Unfortunately, drum computers and the metronome killed a lot in this style of music in the ’80s. They lost control over the music. Audience Member How do you like Weather Report? Lars Bartkuhn I like them, of course. I also wanted to play you a song by Jaco Pastorius. But it’s such a long song. We should just skip through to the part I wanted to show you. This kind of music has a lot of impact on me and many other people. I try to focus more on the harmonic aspects. It’s not just the bassline and the drums, the chords are funky as well. You can get a lot of inspiration from the way they treat the keys and the melodies. It’s very complex. I like that about music. Audience Member Like you said you were just talking about the metronome, the electronic stuff, has kind of made a major influence in the music obviously, no? You’ve come from a very classically-trained background, and when you arrived to the electronic field of music, what other difficulties do you find? A lot of music now is lacking harmonies or melodies, and this metronome feeling. What else do you think in terms of the new electronic music, what else do you think have been one of the problems to make electronic music a little bit boring now? Lars Bartkuhn I just mentioned the metronome and all this kind of stuff for the reason why this music turned down. Of course I’m a big fan of it, makes things pretty easy on your computer and editing your music and all that, but in general it’s nothing bad of course. Audience Member It’s just another avenue, but I can understand where you’re coming from. Sometimes I find that some electronic music lacks melodies and harmonies like you say. Lars Bartkuhn And lacks a lot of natural feeling. Of course there’s cats around like Osunlade who knows to do music that just sounds like… Audience Member Who has a touch on the machines… Lars Bartkuhn You feel some human is doing this music. The best example for me is this Mad Mike music from Detroit, like Underground Resistance. They have harsh techno but it sounds very human. They understood how to talk through machines. I don’t know all the stories but to me it just sounds like at the time synthesizers were really cheap, and that’s why they used synthesizers. Guitars became more expensive and that’s why they took the guitar side and used the synthesizer. They have the same approach, I would say. Just try to vibrate. That’s it, you know? Audience Member It seems like now everyone’s gone to the machines, now they’ve gone full circle and gone back to using acoustic materials. Lars Bartkuhn I think everybody tells the same story. There’s many people doing club music who have an instrument background, I would say. Once you see all the possibility and the control you can have music you are fascinated by, and then one day you see, “I studied so much before, I should bring that into the music.” In the beginning my brother said, “Why don’t you use the guitar stuff? It would make our music much more organic.” And I said, “No, no, I like these cheesy guitar sounds of the synthesizer.” Or whatever, you know. And today of course I try to combine. It’s the same boring story everybody tells you. But still many people today have an organic sound, “organic” sound, which is still not very vivid. I would say not very communicative, because they are happy if they have three or four chords, and then they do the same shit over and over and repeat. Audience Member Do you think it’s really important that people have their own sample material? A sample library or their own sample sources? Lars Bartkuhn Oh don’t talk with me about libraries. Every song I do, I do from scratch. I don’t have libraries. I have no hard disk or whatever for sample stuff. if I feel like sampling I do, if not I don’t. I don’t have a library. Sometimes I have to ask friends for records and stuff like that, if I want to sample. Obviously what we heard is not so sample-based, my music. Audience Member And for example when you’re using your synthesizers or using your sampled sounds, they’re coming directly from the machines or no? Lars Bartkuhn Most of it, yeah. And I sample myself, of course. I play guitar and sample and experiment with that. I sample vocals, my own voice or whatever and play with it, build up layers and combine sounds. But technically you can get too much information, because I don’t have a recipe how to do. Every song can be different, so I’m doing very jam music, very programmed. But I’m not a really good programmer. Audience Member Do you look for new sounds for inspiration? Lars Bartkuhn Always, always. Constantly. I’m not this nerd who says I have to program every sound by myself, but I want to have my own sound, my own voice of course. Sometimes I use standard sounds, but bring them together in a way that I think is not too common. Audience Member Do you think it’s really important for a person making music to find their own little niches or little sounds that help them put a personal feeling in their music? Lars Bartkuhn You mean if it’s important… Audience Member For example a track might stand out because it has something that is odd or has a sound that is quite different from another track. Do you think it’s really important to not keep the same sounds happening but keep resourcing different sounds and different ways of making different sounds? Lars Bartkuhn That’s a pretty difficult issue for me. Audience Member I imagine your ears are very trained and very harmonic, very clear sounds. Lars Bartkuhn I don’t know, that’s a pretty long question. In a way, I think it’s important to have a sound, but the sound is of course not the most important thing. For instance, if I ask you, most of you produce music, I think. And I think most of you say, “Oh, my studio sucks, I would like to have this and this equipment.” Most people I know say that, I’m sure. And I think that’s just wrong, because then you put too much emphasis on the outside. We did our stuff in the beginning with the most simple stuff. Some people still, I was told, listen to them, and sometimes when I listen back to it, I think, “Ew.” Audience Member It’s important to go back to the basics, do you think? Lars Bartkuhn Yeah and you can use the most obvious stuff and have a lot of fun with it. That’s the most important thing. Now we got it. Just jam around with the stuff you have, and then you can have something new, something fresh, even though it doesn’t sound so futuristic. Audience Member With a live band you can feel the conversation with the instruments that’s happening. Now with MIDI and stuff you can also have that same conversation with the machines. Do you find that’s really important when you’re making music with other people in the studio, or by yourself only? Lars Bartkuhn Now I have to say something. I don’t want to sound ridiculous because I’m just a producer, but think of Stevie Wonder. He did all the instruments himself and had a conversation on his records that there’s more communication and inspiration going on than bands playing. That pretty much answers your question. I don’t care if it’s a band or someone alone, all you need is a vision for how it sounds all together. Of course I love bands. There’s this guy Shuggie Otis who produced this album on his own, and it sounds like a band is playing. I love that, you know? I love both concepts. Audience Member For the last two years or something, house has been really stagnant. I know you mentioned Osunlade, I think he’s super revolutionary. I kind of dissected his music. He’s using a lot of live instruments as well. Lars Bartkuhn But it’s not about the live instruments. He can do tracks that are very techno-y. Audience Member Exactly. And that’s still interesting, also stuff like Metro Area. I just would like to know what other people there are. Lars Bartkuhn In this kind of style you mean? You already mentioned some of today’s producers. But I have to make an advertisement my best buddy, Anthony Nicholson. He’s putting out great music, if he’s putting out music at all. He is so fucked up by the scene that he doesn’t see a point in releasing music. Fergus Murphy He doesn’t want to release records? Lars Bartkuhn Not right now. He’s studying and producing a lot. We exchange stuff. I get a kick out of his music. If you like, I can play something later. Anthony started as a co-producer of Ron Trent. I don’t know if you remember the music on the Clairaudience label. That was something that made me a real fan of the music. At that point I thought, “Hey, you can do everything with this music.” This was a revolution. Many people didn’t understand that these were the guys that brought back influences that had been lost for 15 or 20 years. Now it’s some other people getting respect for sampling or imitating disco records, which is wrong. There’s other people who did that before. I still like the stuff that is being done today. But there’s others who tried before. They just didn’t get the credits, maybe because they did more subtle music, music that needs more time to be listened to. Their records may be a bit rougher, not so super well-produced. Ron Trent is still inspiring me, Osunlade is a good man. Tell me some names, I’m not good with names. Audience Member Lars Bartkuhn Yes, of course. But what is this? It’s music music. This is like the next step we all should take. We shouldn’t think about limitations and genres. Actually, I don’t call the music we’re talking about house music. It’s all house-y, but house music had a certain feeling. It was hypnotic. Like Larry Heard, that’s house. It’s just beautiful music. Sometimes it has more in common with Brazilian music than with house. And Amp Fiddler, that’s just modern soul to me. Fergus Murphy You were talking about this Jaco track. Lars Bartkuhn I’m going to play it now. The next song is from Jaco Pastorius. (music: Jaco Pastorius – “John and Mary”) That’s just something that clears your mind after all this simplistic music or whatever. It is something to clean your soul and your mind. This jam has inspired a lot. Audience Member I think we all would like to know how this is called exactly. Could you please spell it out? The track title, the barcode, everything. Lars Bartkuhn It’s from a Jaco Pastorius album called Word of Mouth. It’s the Word of Mouth band playing, which was his big band at that time. The album was released in 1981. The song is called “John and Mary.” It’s a killer song, we just heard the last piece. It’s like a symphony. The whole album is a killer. There’s a cover of “Blackbird” by the Beatles on it, then it has some Bach – Toccata – all in this Weather Report style, of course. All the cats from that time are playing, Herbie, Don Alias on percussion… Audience Member I wanted to ask you something. Do you actually earn a living from making records? Lars Bartkuhn Ah, me, myself? No, no. I couldn’t because I had to work on things that I don’t feel like working on. I just do music whenever I feel like that. Sometimes I don’t feel like making music for months. But on the other hand I need to have some food in the refrigerator. So I can’t rely on music. I did that for some years. But I’m doing jobs that are related to music. I’m a teacher in a music school. Of course, I am a musician in this job. But I would never dare to think of an existence based on the kind of music that I’m doing. Audience Member Why can’t you make a living on the music you make? Lars Bartkuhn I have enough music. But I would have to compromise. I don’t want to do this. Today, I hear the compromise in music, even more than ever before. Even the guys we were talking about are limiting themselves today. And I hate that. I couldn’t live like that, you know. I couldn’t live having a musical taste that spans around the whole planet and you just focus on the same tempo every day. I just couldn’t. Audience Member Do you think that by not producing music every day, by producing music only when you feel like, only when you are inspired by something that you have heard or seen, one can be more creative? Lars Bartkuhn Inspiration is the reason why I’m doing music in a way. Of course, music is just an experiment sometimes. At the end, you will have something, just by studying your machines or instruments and playing around with them. You don’t have to be in this Beethoven mood every day. Of course, this is what I’m looking for most of the time, but sometimes I’m just playing around and at the end of the day you find, “Ah, that’s a good idea” – working with this machine or with that chord progression. Then the inspiration can enter the production. Audience Member Is it a process of your mind or your emotions when you’re dealing with your music? Lars Bartkuhn Yes, a whole lot, I must say. Audience Member Do you work in the studio until you finish your music or do you work on a track, leave it, come back, revise it? Lars Bartkuhn No, I quit anything for finishing the song. I once got fired by a company because I forgot to go to work. Audience Member And did you finish the track? Lars Bartkuhn Yeah, I finished it. And I liked it. Fergus Murphy Was it worth it? Lars Bartkuhn For me? Yeah, it was worth it. I’m happy and proud of that song – even though I didn’t get paid for it. Audience Member What is the longest time you spent making a track? Lars Bartkuhn Oh my god, all these questions, I don’t know. The last song of mine we heard, that fusion thing, this was done in a day. But sometimes it takes me six weeks or something like that. I’m listening to it over and over again, I’m not happy with it. After four weeks, all of a sudden, I might say, “It’s OK, forget it. We’ll leave it as it is.” So I don’t spend six weeks with programming and producing. It’s more about listening and finding my peace with a song in a situation. Audience Member Can I ask you something about the label? How many artists have you got on Needs? Lars Bartkuhn It’s us under different names, I would say. Apart from that we have one release by our friend Anthony Nicholson and one by French producer Franck Roger. We forgot to talk about this man. He’s doing some funny and cool music, even though he also became very repetitive in the last 12 months. But he did a song for us and we’re very happy having that on our label. But that’s it so far. Then we’re gonna release a song by a jazz singer; I did the production. She’s a friend of mine, I travelled with her around the country playing in jazz quartets. She’s a dope singer. Fergus Murphy And this is coming out on Needs? Lars Bartkuhn We hope so. Let’s check this. (music: Lühning – “All Over” / applause) Audience Member Where can I buy this music? Lars Bartkuhn Not yet. It’s gonna be released later on, on our label. So check it out. Audience Member Will online shopping be available? I’m from Brazil. Lars Bartkuhn Yeah we should think about that, we are dinosaurs when it comes to that. I think we have a prototype homepage since two months. Audience Member [inaudible] Lars Bartkuhn If you say. Audience member [inaudible] Audience member Please make your music available. Lars Bartkuhn You can go to the homepage of Grooveattack, our distributor. It’s not so complicated. Audience Member [inaudible] Lars Bartkuhn No, I don’t do that. Audience Member You have your label, which is fantastic, and when you go to a company for distribution, which one did you decide to go with or... Lars Bartkuhn It’s our first distributor. It’s Grooveattack in Cologne. We feel like working with... Actually it seems like it was a good decision because they’re the only one alive right now because all the others had problems I would say, financially and all this. Audience Member Have they been good with distributing your records widely around Europe or, for example, overseas? Lars Bartkuhn Yeah, I can’t complain actually. We are a little underground label and we are doing well. People like the stuff... Audience Member [inaudible] or around the world, no? Lars Bartkuhn Yeah, it sounds bigger than it is. There’s ten people here, five there, maybe twenty there and... Fergus Murphy Your fans are pretty loyal I think? Lars Bartkuhn Yeah, loyal and if it wasn’t for them we would be lost for sure, you’re right. Audience Member I know there’s lots of new formats for music coming out, are you still going to be using, in the future, vinyl for your format or are you thinking that CDs are a better format or ...? Lars Bartkuhn CDs are a better format when you want to promote your music. You don’t have to pay so much on the mail out, for instance. CD’s cool for checking new music of course. They will never die. Audience Member For your company, for example, do you think that... Are you biased at all in this area? Do you feel biased between using CDs or vinyl? Lars Bartkuhn If I see a difference? Audience Member Are you biased? You prefer to just make your music on records or you don’t mind whatever format? Lars Bartkuhn The format that I prefer? Audience Member Yeah. Lars Bartkuhn I’m going to say many people don’t understand but I’m a CD fan. The sound’s not so warm, but I like laying down in my bed and listening to music and don’t have to get up. Of course, you can do that with your MP3 player. A good Brazilian record, I need to have also on CD because the copies suck. Once you buy some Brazilian records, they’re all scratches and they’re very expensive. I like them on CDs, sounds clear and you get all the details and I like that. For instance, I just released an album and so far it’s just released on CD because I want people to listen to it. I don’t want... If it’s on double vinyl I know what’s going to happen, it’s like a double EP. That’s the way people treat records or albums and they are right because it’s many unimportant albums coming out, but I want to just give this kind of... You can listen straight from the first to the last song and have a good time. If you have it on vinyl while releasing it, it’s going to be, people pick one song for their DJ booth. Audience Member You’re not thinking exactly on, for example, that DJ’s were going to play your work but you’re actually thinking of the wider audience who are going to be listening to your work? Lars Bartkuhn It depends. This was like a mixture. There was like the dance version of the song. Audience Member For example, if you have a song that you find particularly dance-orientated, you’re more inclined to put it on, for example, vinyl because you know it’s going to sound good on the dancefloor? Is that the point or... Lars Bartkuhn Yeah, I don’t think too much about it. It’s just something that comes along with it. Once you make a song that is to be played in the club, of course you put it on vinyl. That’s the thing you know. Fergus Murphy Any more questions? Audience Member The name of the previous song. Lars Bartkuhn Okay, this is not on the album. This is just the project. Audience Member Yeah, it’s the project... Lars Bartkuhn The project’s kind of... I don’t know the name actually because it’s up to the singer who wrote the song, she wrote the song. Audience Member What’s the name of the singer? Lars Bartkuhn The singer’s called Inga Lühning. She’s from Germany, living in Cologne. Audience Member Inga? Lars Bartkuhn Inga Lühning. You will soon find out on the home page when we put up... Umlaut it’s called. Lühning. You have to... Fergus Murphy Question over there. Audience Member What was the name of the album? Lars Bartkuhn The album? It’s called Dreamland. My name and Dreamland. Audience Member I was just curious on the vocal harmonies and stuff like that. How many layers of harmony is that? Lars Bartkuhn I haven’t counted but I think it’s many. I think, yeah, we do a lot of stuff. It’s actually, she’s such a good singer, if you have a bad singer you can’t do so much layers because then you get out of tune. With her you can do a lot of doubling. Like, what’s the word? Adding the same, just the same voice over and over to make this spread effect. It can do unlimited with her, she’s a really good singer. With other singers you can’t do it. If I had to do it I couldn’t do it because it would sound like two different notes at the same time. It was done fast, a day, three hours for the vocals and three hours for the rest, that’s it. It was a quick thing. audience member Can I ask you something else, when you were layering, did you put the music down first and the vocals came in second or the vocals first? Lars Bartkuhn They had a basic sketch. All they had was a bassline and the chorus and then I have two weeks time, I say, “Come in two or three weeks,” and I’ll prepare something and that’s it. They sing on top of it and the instruments play a little bit on top. That’s it. We work together, on some parts I say, “You should do some...” The singer didn’t like some parts of the bass player so we worked together. Audience Member Was it her lyrics that she’s singing or did you write the lyrics? Lars Bartkuhn Yeah. Audience Member She’s the songwriter? Lars Bartkuhn Yeah, but most of all she’s an interpreter of music, singing in a standard quartet, singing pop songs in a jazzy way and all this stuff. She’s also... The band of hers, they always have these albums, like five songs from their own catalog and standards, like pop songs in a completely different way. It’s a good band. audience member How did you get in contact with her? You saw her work, liked it, and decided that that was the sound you wanted on your... Lars Bartkuhn That’s just an old friend. I was playing, when I was coming up first on stage, she was someone I played with. I always wanted to work with her and now I felt ready and she felt ready, so that’s what happened. I’m sure it’s going to come out this year, hopefully. audience member On CD or on vinyl? Lars Bartkuhn No this is a 12”, of course. It’s going to be 12”. Fergus Murphy I think we’re going to have to leave it there because we need everyone back here by ten past three. Lars, thank you very much. [applause]