Modeselektor (2010)

Torsten Schmidt

It is going to be the afternoon breathing session and it is going to be courtesy of Charlie [aka Sebastian] and Gernot, who are also known to some of you by the name of Modeselektor. So please join your hands and welcome them. [applause]

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Thank you.

Gernot Bronsert

Thank you.

Torsten Schmidt

It is kind of good that you got comfy there, because obviously, this is couples therapy. I do have my notes here and are there any issues that you want to share with your counselor?

Gernot Bronsert

Too many to tell.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Let’s start.

Torsten Schmidt

Where do you start? Speaking of starts, there might be an outbreak of joy in the next two hours because our dear friend Wulf is actually going into labor — or rather his baby mama — at three this morning, and we somehow made a bet this morning that the baby is actually going to pop out while we’re sitting here. If you see us checking the phones now and then…

Gernot Bronsert

…pop out…

Torsten Schmidt

That is going to be one giant, that is for sure. So don’t take it as rudeness, that is the only time mobile phones are allowed here and we might have to get a song of joy at some stage, so make sure you prepare one in your native language. But speaking of couples, I never knew how you actually met, you two?

Gernot Bronsert

At school, primary school.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

In the ‘80s.

Gernot Bronsert

It‘s true.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

In the dark ‘80s.

Gernot Bronsert

East Germany, communism. Dusty air, East side.

Torsten Schmidt

Because there is one thing you have to understand. I mean, you are ‘75 right? You’re ‘78? Well, I was born in ‘74 as well, the year we lost against another nation in the football World Cup and we still won.

Gernot Bronsert

Football was forbidden in the GDR.

Torsten Schmidt

Well, can we therefore erase that game from the records then?

Gernot Bronsert

Yes.

Torsten Schmidt

OK, done, hooray! But what you have to realize is that people our age were actually raised to hate each other. You see the wall here. Am I sitting... no I am sitting east, damn. It’s complicated. Obviously, everyone that went to the East during those days was just coming back with all these stories. What were the stories that you heard about the other side?

Gernot Bronsert

They didn’t tell us. You know, I think they are still afraid to talk to us.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

I think they were isolated, when they came over. There was no contact.

Gernot Bronsert

They still hate us.

Torsten Schmidt

Who is “they” now, just so we get the hate right?

Gernot Bronsert

I know one story a friend of mine told me, his name is Rashad. He works for Dubplates & Mastering in Berlin and he came before the wall came down to Berlin because he just wanted to be different. He was maybe the only person from the west side who wanted to live on the east side, and he might know the East German history better than me because I was a child. I didn’t have an idea anyway about what was happening. It was a crazy time because everybody was very confused — my parents, the people around us, the teachers, the bus drivers, the police, everybody was very confused because everything was new, everything changed. I was just a little boy in the middle. I didn’t know exactly the day when the wall came down just because I was in the church to get my piano lessons. I needed to go to church two times a week, to the guy who is playing the organ in the church. He taught all the kids piano lessons, and I hated it to go there but I needed to. My parents forced me since I was six to play piano and I never liked it. That’s why I make techno now or electronic music. I remember the day when I was there, I needed to prepare something and I didn’t and I was there and the phone was ringing and he picked up the phone and he said just, “Yes... Yes... No... Yes.” He hung up and left the room and never came back. I didn’t know what was going to happen and I was waiting 20 minutes, 40 minutes, one hour. After one and a half hours I left. I just thought he went out and was taking a piss, or I don’t know what, and I went home and my parents told me that the wall has gone and my piano teacher never came back. I was just happy that I didn’t need to go to the piano lessons any more, so I was just, “OK, cool. The wall is down and I’m free now. I don’t need to go to church.”

Torsten Schmidt

So basically, there was like a very personal freedom that you won that day?

Gernot Bronsert

Yes, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gorbachev.

Torsten Schmidt

So what did you actually speculate about, what do you think happened to your piano teacher?

Gernot Bronsert

I have no idea. I just asked my parents recently if they know what is going to happen with this guy, but I think he was just happy. Because all the people who were involved in Christian movements, they had massive problems with the communistic government and they just wanted to leave. I think he tried since ages to leave the country. He was a nice guy… but I hated him.

Torsten Schmidt

Welcome to life. What was your experience of that?

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

I was in bed. It was a Thursday, November 9th. Thursday evening and I was in bed. My mother came to my room and she said, “Sebastian, the wall is down, we are free.” “Should I go to school tomorrow?” “Yes.” I went to school and 30% or 40% of the class was missing. That’s my story. One day later, we went to West Berlin for the first time. We went shopping, records, clothes, Coca-Cola, turntables.

Torsten Schmidt

What did you spend your 100 Deutschmarks on?

Gernot Bronsert

You know what? He is an asshole. When the wall came down the government decided to give every member from the ex-GDR a welcome present, and this welcome present were like 100 Deutschmarks. Every bank was packed with East German people with this little paper in their hands and they were waiting for their first 100 Deutschmarks. Western money, real money, the good money. Everybody took his 100 marks and Charlie, he’s an asshole, he found another 100 marks on the ground, so he got 200. So I think he is the only one who found 100 marks because some idiot lost his first present.

Torsten Schmidt

It doesn’t sound like much now, 60 quid. But still, how long would your parents have had to work for that?

Gernot Bronsert

One-hundred marks? I think, a month? I don’t know, two years.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

I think on the black market it was a horrible exchange rate.

Gernot Bronsert

And he bought a ghetto blaster. I think our generation everyone bought a ghetto blaster. Everyone went straight to the store and bought a ghetto blaster. You still have it? You sold it for drugs? Five years later. When he became a proper member of the Western community you sold it for weed. For Red Bull.

Torsten Schmidt

Knowing how much ghetto blaster you would get for a 100 Deutschmarks, which is about everything you could save up for in a summer of paper delivery and scrubbing the streets and whatever a young kid does to make money, there wasn’t much of a party if you used that in a party afterwards, right?

Gernot Bronsert

We didn’t use that to party, we just wanted to have it. Looking at it.

Torsten Schmidt

And when did you actually master that thought of, “Oh my gosh, it does play music as well.”

Gernot Bronsert

The thing is, the only way to discover electronic music was via the radio. There were a few really nice radio shows in the late ‘80s in West Berlin, so we were able to listen to the shows, and we recorded a lot of these shows on tape. I think my mom is calling me. I think I still have some of these shows. It was the only way to get into electronic music or music in general. You couldn’t buy any records. For example, Pink Floyd released Dark Side of the Moon, when was it released? Eight million years ago? In the GDR you just got it 12 million years later. There was no new music. We still recorded the music from the radio shows. I still have a few tapes from the old days, like Marusha, Grandmaster Flash.

Torsten Schmidt

I guess, that is what the then Chancellor Helmut Kohl called “the mercy of the late birth.” But for those who don’t know about Marusha, can you give us a little bit of information about the significance of that person?

Gernot Bronsert

Does anyone know Marusha? No? One. Two. I am getting old. Marusha was the Mary Anne Hobbs of Germany for techno. She didn’t play dubstep at all, in the end it was more like hardcore and Micky Mouse techno or whatever.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

But in the early ‘90s she had a really good radio show.

Gernot Bronsert

Called “Rave Satellite” and it was a really important show. Before her was Monika Dietl.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

She had a very nice voice, a girl from Bavaria, a very erotic voice on the radio. I had no picture what she looked like.

Gernot Bronsert

And he was masturbating.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Oh, my god!

Torsten Schmidt

That is something else people would not understand. Obviously because of the wall and not being able to get over it, a voice from Bavaria is about as exotic as like a Japanese geisha, right?

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Ja.

Gernot Bronsert

Jaaa. Let’s think about it.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Can I take a picture?

Gernot Bronsert

Then everything went really fast.

Torsten Schmidt

Before it goes fast, one thing that is probably really hard to understand, now you just plug it in and everything that you possibly want is there within however long that is. The mere fact that you could not only not go to a shop, but the availability was a totally different thing and a totally different way of how to discover pop culture, electronic music, however you want to call it.

Gernot Bronsert

I am too young to describe that. I just got into music after the wall and my musical socialization was different than to the other kids around the world. It’s just because I grew up in Berlin, that is my theory, I didn’t grow up with Nirvana and all this music. The first track who really touched my heart was Derrick May, a remix of “Sueno Latino,” I think in ‘91 or ‘92. And that was the first music that really blew me away. I was just saying, “What is going on? What is it? I don’t know what it is, I don’t get it, it’s too amazing.” Since then I was interested in these black discs and turntables and bass.

Torsten Schmidt

And where was the place you would go to get these black discs?

Gernot Bronsert

Hardwax. Hardwax record store. It is the record store in Germany, or maybe in Europe. UK is not Europe, OK? But I went to the store the first time, Charlie discovered, he started buying records very early, I think…

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

I think it was shortly after the wall came down, we went to West Berlin and we visited the shop, and they founded it in 1988. They were the first in Berlin. They imported US records, techno and house records. A very small store, like this room, with 5,000 records. That’s the story.

Gernot Bronsert

I went there very early, I don’t remember. Like ‘93 or something, and I asked for jungle. I didn’t know what that was, it was a new thing and I was just into Underground Resistance before and techno stuff, the Mover, hardcore stuff. Then I heard the rumors about this new thing jungle and I went to the store and I asked for, “Do you have jungle records?” And Pete, he still works there, he said, “Son, I give you jungle records.” He gave me a bunch of records and I still have them. One of them was an Aphex [Twin] record and since then I just brought those records and I played them ‘til death every day. I woke up in the morning and I played them. Then, I needed to go to school, came back and I would play them. I was just listening and listening to it again, saved all my money and went to the store. It took me one and a half hours to get there, sometimes I had just 10 marks or something, that means one record. I spent three hours a day to go there and buy one record.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

It was a hard life.

Gernot Bronsert

It was!

Torsten Schmidt

Hardwax actually was also great because the guy that took care of the mailorder, for people who lived far in the West like us…

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Do you know the system of the mailorder was somebody called the shop and said, “OK, do you have this record?” And they played it with the telephone in the air. No e-mail, fax. And then a monthly paper with all the 12"s and T-shirts.

Torsten Schmidt

What I loved most about it, I think Charles was his name? James. The poor guy had a horrible stutter and they made him do the mailorder.

Gernot Bronsert

He was British, wasn’t he? He didn’t speak any German. And remember, East German, a 15 year-old boy calling Hardwax to buy the new Jeff Mills record and then you had James on the other side. And James was a strange person, he was always talking like this, “Er, er, er, the new Jeff Mills?

Torsten Schmidt

That was way too fast.

Gernot Bronsert

“Er, er, hold on a second, er, hello?” It was like this. But it was part of the charm of the whole store. I loved the store. I still love it.

Torsten Schmidt

I mean, the great thing with him was also, again, phones were so expensive. We’re really boring you with stories from the trenches here, but to call Berlin from somewhere in West Germany for just a minute would cost a fortune, so in the end the record would cost, I guess, about three times the cost just because the phone conversation was so long. There was always this excitement when you went to the mailbox, phone bill or records, what comes first? You had to find out that there is no use in hiding the phone bill or burning it, or something like that. It all comes back in the end.

Gernot Bronsert

One day I replaced James. He left and they asked me to work there because I was there every day and they said, “You should work here.”

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

And after this point everything was getting faster and faster.

Gernot Bronsert

That was the time when we lived together, we were roommates. They paid good money but the problem was I hadn’t got any money at the end of the month because I spent all my money on records. I bought everything. Stupid shit. I just wanted to have it.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Every evening he was coming back home and he had a big package of records. Twenty, 30.

Torsten Schmidt

That’s better than food, right? What did you do all day while he was providing you with records?

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Chilling. Unemployed. Sitting by a window drinking coffee, waiting for Gernot.

Gernot Bronsert

He still does the same. But now I am waiting for him always.

Torsten Schmidt

Why is that?

Gernot Bronsert

I don’t know. That is part of my Modeselektor job, waiting for Charlie, at airports, for example. It is not okay. So, “OK, Charlie, let’s check in now.” “No, wait! I just want to smoke a cigarette.” “OK, let’s smoke a cigarette.” “I need to buy a coffee. Where is my money? Can I borrow money? I need to go to a cash machine.” Always waiting. I think he lives longer because he is very slow. And I am so fast, so we are totally different. As you recognize already I am the talking guy, he is more the…

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

…the listening guy.

Torsten Schmidt

So how do you ever get anything done then?

Gernot Bronsert

I don’t know. That is the other difference we have, he is synaesthetic. He can remember everything. Like when he said, “…it was on a Tuesday,” then it was Tuesday, I’m sure we can check on the Internet, it was a Tuesday. He remembers the shittiest, smallest things but he forgot to bring the music this morning.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Really, I remember things which are ten years ago.

Gernot Bronsert

But when you ask him what time it is, he says, “It’s three, three o’clock now.” And you wait ten seconds, “What time is it?” And he must look again to see what time it is.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

That is my problem.

Gernot Bronsert

He is handicapped.

Torsten Schmidt

Which brings us back to couples therapy, I guess. I will be the shrink. So how does that make you feel?

Gernot Bronsert

First, you should tell the story you told us this morning for everybody.

Torsten Schmidt

Which one, exactly?

Gernot Bronsert

The one you mother likes to tell.

Torsten Schmidt

That one. That’s a absolutely lovely one. But we’ll do that later. So how does it make you feel when you have to wait for Charlie?

Gernot Bronsert

It is a process. When you ask me how I felt two years ago, I needed to learn to handle that problem. Last year I bought a book. It was a sketchbook, and the sketchbook was there to write down every minute I am waiting for him. After two weeks it was full.

Torsten Schmidt

Who of my colleagues actually prescribed that?

Gernot Bronsert

Was? [speaking German] He is like Charlie.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

But I remember that sketchbook was a gift from me to him. It was yellow.

Gernot Bronsert

I think after the year I was waiting two days, I’d just write down 30 minutes on Tuesday, 15 minutes Wednesday, and so on, and I think it was in total two days waiting for Charlie.

Torsten Schmidt

That is not bad, come on. There are 365 days in a year.

Gernot Bronsert

When you are on tour you need to wait for other things as well, you need to wait for planes, drivers, sound check…

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

That is addition. In the end you have 150 days for waiting.

Gernot Bronsert

I would say two weeks.

Torsten Schmidt

It’s like being a supermodel.

Gernot Bronsert

Yes, that’s nice.

Torsten Schmidt

Just try and think of it that way.

Gernot Bronsert

I like that idea. Geisha.

Torsten Schmidt

Now what would your wife say about that? About you being supermodels?

Gernot Bronsert

I don’t know. I don’t know.

Torsten Schmidt

Obviously, you both do lead a family life. Now with all that waiting, how do you run a family? Especially when you’re on tour all the time?

Gernot Bronsert

I don’t know. Now we have a tour manager and she is taking care of us. She has been doing our booking since the beginning, and after a while we have fucked so many things up. We lose flights, took the wrong trains, then the booking agency decided to hire a babysitter for us, and since then we have a tight schedule. Having a family, a little baby, or now a kid at home, it’s not easy when you are on tour. And it means to me, that we pay the biggest bill. That means that we don’t sleep that much, so we take always the last plane we can get to the gig and take the first plane back home. That means we arrive very late and then we leave very early. That means totally wasted to the airport, no sleep sometimes. I remember one time we played at a festival in France together with T. Raumschmiere, and we drank a lot. We went together with him to the airport and the ground staff didn’t want to let us in because we were smelling so much and we said, “No, we’re not drunk any more, we stopped drinking two hours ago.” And T. Raumschmiere was just wearing sunglasses like this, with his passport, and they didn’t want to let us in. And that is because we took the first plane. And T. Raumschmiere has a little baby, two little babies at home, and he is doing the same thing. Latest plane, first plane.

Torsten Schmidt

Are there actual kindergartens and primary schools in Berlin for techno producers?

Gernot Bronsert

It’s a good idea.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

We should do that. Opens very late. Two, four until one. Skpping Monday.

Gernot Bronsert

Little Ricardo is coming, hello! Little Modeselektor, hello!

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Black painted walls.

Gernot Bronsert

Strobe light. Little small customized Funktion One system. Our kids, they grow up with our music, with beats.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

They really love beats, bass drums.

Gernot Bronsert

Bass drums, they love bass drums.

Torsten Schmidt

Does that make the whole production process easier?

Gernot Bronsert

Which process? Producing babies or…?

Torsten Schmidt

That is kind of hard I hear, yeah.

Gernot Bronsert

They changed our rhythm totally. We used to work by night, always, so we would just wake up at four usually. We started drinking at six and then we went at eight to the studio, and we got out of the studio at seven in the morning, and since the last two records we are not able to do that anymore. We have a studio day job.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Like normal boring workers. We go to work at ten, we get a coffee, lunch break…

Torsten Schmidt

It is almost like an old socialist ideal, every artist works in the same way as everyone in the factory. Do you find your health has improved?

Gernot Bronsert

I am tired. I’m just tired always. I feel always like jetlagged. I hope it stops soon. Maybe in ten years. I feel always pretty tired, just because I never get enough sleep. Never.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Too much traveling.

Gernot Bronsert

Too much children. Waiting for Charlie.

Torsten Schmidt

It’s getting really sad here, and on this note maybe we should go back to the production process, but maybe we will leave the babies aside for a second and talk about the music. What is it that you set up over there, is this only for live circumstances? Would you use something similar when you are in the studio?

Gernot Bronsert

No, this is just a live set. And that is a surprise today because he forgot the records. We wanted to play some of our music and records, black discs, you know them? That is why we wanted to bring them, you know? Yeah, we forgot them at home this morning, then we asked for a cab driver who was bringing the records from my house, but it was already too late so I sent him back halfway. He was already almost at the airport, but I needed to check in so I called him and told him to go back, we need to check in. We didn’t have any records and then we had a great idea, let’s buy all our records on iTunes and play them, but because we don’t have records on the computer and we have all the live tracks, we can play the tracks live. We need to perform them live. That’s no fake, that’s true.

Torsten Schmidt

Shall we get into it straight away and leave a bit of the talk for a minute?

Gernot Bronsert

What should we play?

Torsten Schmidt

Are you taking requests like a wedding DJ?

Gernot Bronsert

OK, the first request. Let’s make it easier. One for girls or one for boys? Girls? Shit. OK, for girls. Which one?

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

I have an option but I think it is too early?

Gernot Bronsert

I think we will play one of the tracks we did with our friend Apparat together from the Moderat project. We can also play it with the visuals, maybe that is a good idea and then after we play some stuff. Do it like this? OK, can we turn the lights down? We want to see the projection. So this was actually the first track we did for the Moderat project, it is called “A New Error.” OK. Can you see it? Just have a look.

(video: Moderat – “A New Error” / applause)

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Thank you.

Gernot Bronsert

This is the project we have with Sascha Ring, the artist name is Apparat and this is Moderat. The idea of this project is an audiovisual idea. Charlie and me as Modeselektor, we work with an artist collective from Berlin since the beginning called de Pfadfinderei. They are a pretty famous VJ crew and agency and they are in charge of our artwork and our corporate identity, whatever you want to call it, and they come with us on the live shows usually. When we decided to make this Moderat thing happen, we just added them to the bill and made an audiovisual record, and this was one of the tracks with a clip made by them.

Torsten Schmidt

But if they are that much of a big part of the whole show, why is it not Moderat and Pfadfinderei in the end?

Gernot Bronsert

That is always the question the Pfadfinderei are asking me. We put the emphasis on the music first and the Moderat project was already existing since…

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

…2003.

Gernot Bronsert

When, exactly? What day?

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

It was 2002 during the soccer championship in Japan. Then we played with Apparat some shows, some synchronized shows with our very amazing equipment, three laptops, three boys. Then we tried to find a name. Then we found it.

Gernot Bronsert

The first thing that was existing was Moderat and that was one of the main reasons we continued. We really liked the name. Apparat, Modeselektor, Moderat.

Torsten Schmidt

But to some extent what is great about the project is that it somehow rather accentuates things that are interesting in your separate work. It is almost like it brings it out a little more. It is almost like euphoric music for manic-depressive people.

Gernot Bronsert

You think so? It is not manic-depressive, it is more the mood we like when we are in Berlin. Berlin is pretty depressive when you live there, when you grow up there. Now it’s full of people from all over the world who are so excited always, but they are there usually for one or two years and then they leave. We grew up there and we saw the big changes and we still see the big changes. It’s not a nice town, it’s not beautiful, not at all, I mean it got destroyed 90% in the World War. This record, it’s a little homage to this town, because we wanted to show the world that Berlin is not minimal techno and having a party for three days. That is not the reality. Since the wall it is a rave town. It is all about techno and electronic music.

Torsten Schmidt

What do you reckon is the percentage of people who actually grew up in Berlin and are actively doing music, not everybody in Berlin who claims to be a DJ, but is actively doing something and getting gigs with more than 20 people?

Gernot Bronsert

I don’t know.

Torsten Schmidt

Any ideas? How many people that you went to school with ended up in music?

Gernot Bronsert

None really, just me and Charlie. One of the funny things is that normal people now, they have families like us but we are not normal. They have a house and garage, two cars, all that shit, but they know Jeff Mills. That’s maybe some of the effects from Berlin.

Torsten Schmidt

As a visitor it almost seems a bit like New York in the 19th century condensed in five or ten years. You always have these waves, and in the same way that you have the Irish there and the Italians and the Germans and the Polish coming into New York, it’s like, “OK, first of all everyone from Schwaben comes there, then all the other counties of West Germany, then...”

Gernot Bronsert

Then New York. In 2003, 2004, it was full of New York guys. That is where we met all of our friends from New York. They are all back in New York, they just spent two or three years. Fantastic nobodies. We have a few friends we met in Berlin that are from New York.

Torsten Schmidt

Then all the Latin Americans and Spanish came.

Gernot Bronsert

Yeah but they come just for the weekend. We call them EasyJet ravers. They arrive on Friday, then they go straight to Berghain and they leave on Monday morning almost dead. That’s why we have so many wheelchairs at the airport. On Mondays. Some of them cannot walk any more. It’s over.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

It’s so sad.

Gernot Bronsert

I think I was 14 or something, 15 years old, I went every Wednesday to Tresor club, which has closed now. It is open but it is different, a different location, it is not run by the same people. I went there every Wednesday because the entrance was just five marks and I was able to afford it.

Torsten Schmidt

Who was playing Tresor on Wednesdays?

Gernot Bronsert

It was called Headquarters, new faces and residents. From time to time you had the luck to see Mad Mike with a hockey mask and Jeff Mills on a 909 and Rob Hood playing and I didn’t know what was going on. Mad Mike was rapping. Underground Resistance with a hockey mask and Rob Hood with a 909 and Jeff Mills and I was like, “Oh. What’s that?” And it was on a Wednesday and the next day I went to school. “How was it yesterday?” “It was nice.” Things like this are not possible any more.

Torsten Schmidt

Were you still part of the same school? You were years apart, but you were in the same school?

Gernot Bronsert

I was a little shitty guy and he was the big dog.

Torsten Schmidt

Did you have any other rave buddies from school?

Gernot Bronsert

I have one who lives in New York now. He used to live in London so he followed the music when he lived in London. Now he lives in New York and he is still on the ball, he knows everything. “Hey, have you checked out this new UK funky guy. Do you like UK funky? Hey, do you know this aqua-step guy from West Brighton? Ah yeah, yeah.” I don’t know. What’s that music called from Argentina?

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Cumbia. You have ten different styles of cumbia. That electronic part. It’s like a tree, you have the cumbia tree. Gangster, high speed.

Gernot Bronsert

Country, ambient tree. Whatever.

Torsten Schmidt

Why did you to stop working in the record shop then?

Gernot Bronsert

My problem was I had Monday. That was one of the main reasons I had to stop, because we started playing at weekends and then the Monday was a bad day when you play Friday, Saturday, Sunday, a typical Sunday thing.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Was somebody there on Monday? Customers?

Gernot Bronsert

Yeah, yeah. I couldn’t change the date, and then it was time to say goodbye and Marcel Dettmann replaced me so I needed to work him in. Marcel came after me and he got the Monday and I said, “Heh.” [raises middle finger]

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

And now you’ve got a Tuesday?

Gernot Bronsert

He is not in the store anymore, he is in the distribution, and he is ordering the techno stuff, Euro stuff and US, so he is in charge.

Torsten Schmidt

Is there anyone working there that did not go on to make records?

Gernot Bronsert

Yes. Michael. He is one of the very, very long members. He is the only friendly guy in the store. You will recognize him because he has glasses. They are all friendly but you need your time to break the barriers. Every new face they check, so when you go to Hardwax and you ask if they have some pumping stuff, then you can go. Just turn around and go. They will never serve you properly. You need to read a book about Detroit and dubstep before and then go and you need to drop some skills, you need to show you know what is going on.

Torsten Schmidt

So what are the ten best things stop a dubstep or Detroit techno imposter? Someone who’s just read the book but not know what they’re talking about? There must be a very delicate Hardwax way of finding out, “Do you know or are you just pretending?”

Gernot Bronsert

No. I think the Hardwax communication is a very special way of communication. It depends on who’s working. I had a few situations. So I think they asked me to work in the store to bring some freshness again. Because you had, for example, Pete, a.k.a. Substance], he is working there since a long, long time and he specialized in one very special type of music. Then you have other artists like René, who is Vainqueur. I don’t know if you know this. Everyone who was working there specialized in one thing. You have Marcel for the techno stuff, Sleeparchive is working at Hardwax as well at the moment, it is a family thing. That is pretty weird.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

And you have Manel. Ask for Manel, next time you go to Berlin.

Gernot Bronsert

We forced him three years to make a record. We want to make a label for Manel, Manel 001, we are waiting for the record.

Torsten Schmidt

Obviously, when you are in the store at least once a week, it’s relatively easy to keep up with what’s going on. How do you manage that? Because you seem to be relatively well-informed on what is going on.

Gernot Bronsert

There are two different sides. You have the internet thing. I get a lot of postings every day and links to new stuff.

Torsten Schmidt

Of which you listen to how many percent?

Gernot Bronsert

I try to check everything. When I get the new Powerhouse promo from DJ Nobody then I don’t listen to it, but now I have a well-working system from people all over the world. Jake is one of them, he sends me for the third time the same link. “Hey! New record, totally amazing!” I know it. At Hardwax we have our own little folder, where they are putting stuff we like. So I have one guy at the store who totally knows what I like and what I am interested in, he’s putting promos and all that stuff and I go once a week there and take my records and check them.

Torsten Schmidt

Do you find that old-school system of someone in the store actually deciding that’s something he could like, that’s something he could like and putting them aside works better than these algorithms on Web stores where they go, like, “If you bought this then you might want that”?

Gernot Bronsert

Of course. Because it’s a different way to bring people into music. The personal thing is very important because after a while you have a relationship. I can just talk for myself, but...

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

The feeling when you go in the store and you have a real person with a real record who is showing you, OK that is a record and there is a story behind, linking to another project and you play it on a system, a very good system in a record store — that’s the best promotion you can have to buy a record. For example, when you go on the internet...

Gernot Bronsert

On the internet it is different...

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Every file is short. Bad quality. And it’s not a feeling.

Gernot Bronsert

I really like the idea to have a label which doesn’t want to have any promotion, doesn’t want to have digital sales, just a stamp, white label, doing it for fun, for the music. Sometimes you have a record which has success. For example, last year there was a record from Hardwax, Equalized 03, and it was one of the guys working there and he wants to be an anonymous.

Torsten Schmidt

Which one was it again?

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

It’s not Manel.

Gernot Bronsert

[laughs] It’s not Manel. And this record had a really amazing success. Like the Sleeparchive phenomena, the person behind Sleeparchive is producing music since ages, but he did totally different stuff under different names, so I think they have different pseudonyms, three or four names sometimes. But we are totally different. We are kind of the ambassadors between the realities. We are there and on the Friday we play in Spain with Richie Hawtin, and on the Saturday we play on a dubstep party in Kenya, and on Sunday and we play in Scotland, a UK funky garage house ambient country party. We are everywhere. First, it is fun to discover everything and see what is going to happen. We really like pop and bands. I would die for Blonde Redhead. When we play in the summer, the festivals, and I see Blonde Redhead is playing, then I force the crew to stay two hours longer so that I can see them. They are waiting on a bus totally pissed.

Torsten Schmidt

Finally you get your revenge and Charlie is waiting for you.

Gernot Bronsert

Yes. So it’s a good thing to be interested in everything but it has a bad side on the same moment because you have so much input the whole time. You have inputs from everywhere.

Torsten Schmidt

But I mean having too much input is probably the curse of our times, and that is something we all have to deal with every single day, making decisions on what we focus on. If you are open enough to be just tickled and interested in so many different things…

Gernot Bronsert

Yes, but it’s a question of discipline, you know?

Torsten Schmidt

Natürlich!

Gernot Bronsert

I don’t have discipline. For example, I get addicted very fast and very quick from several things. For example, I have a new app for my iPhone, a game or something, or a little synthesizer, and I’m non-stop playing with that. I don’t get bored of it, I get addicted. I need to delete this app to stop it. I just recently gave all my passwords for all accounts from MySpace, Twitter, Facebook to someone who is taking care of it now because I just realized that I never read a book for months. I didn’t read a book in three months or something and I just wasted too much time on the internet. That scared me a little bit. I think everyone has this problem but I need to make cuts.

Torsten Schmidt

That is obviously a bit of life advice there that if you go back to the studio and the production side of it, it is really like how do you actually come up with a record that sounds like me or us in your case?

Gernot Bronsert

I don’t know. The thing is, when you asked me how I make the Moderat record, I don’t remember. I remember situations when, for example, Charlie was sleeping behind Sasha and me for hours and we were thinking about painting his face black or something. But I don’t remember how I made this melody. It’s like being on a rush. I just need the situation to get into. I need to get into a flow, it doesn’t matter what I use. In the studio we use everything. We use software, we use hardware, we use toys. I don’t know, microphones, instruments, everything. Sometimes we create some sounds or melodies or beats and then we forget to record that or to save the preset or whatever. There is one funny story. We set up one of our studio rooms two years ago with analog equipment, so we have a lot of analog equipment which is just lying in a corner and getting dusty. But this time we said, “OK, now we make a proper MIDI studio like in the old days,” and everything is fine and then it took us three days to set up the equipment. We were thinking about, should we bring the Atari back? We really want to make it old-school. Then it was running and we made sessions and there was one session which was amazing.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

We switched the lights off to see the LEDs. It was like an airport, to see the runway, everything was red.

Gernot Bronsert

We were both wearing UR T-shirts and then we made it a session and we recorded the session and we switched it off and after two weeks we wanted to listen to the recording and Sebastian? We recorded it…

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

…but with the microphone in the room and the phone was ringing in the middle and there was no quality at all and we were just thinking, “OK, I was barfing...”

Gernot Bronsert

He is the best barfer in the world, by the way.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

We still have it and it is a nice session. We tried to recreate it but it wasn’t possible.

Torsten Schmidt

Win some, lose some. OK, so obviously, you can’t always recreate that when you go live, but nevertheless you have to deal with all these punters that come there, pay good money to come and see you and they have certain expectations. How do you make sure you can give them the experience that they want?

Gernot Bronsert

As I told you, the live thing and the studio thing are totally different worlds. You cannot bring them together. When we are in the studio, we don’t want to have people around us, so it’s like being naked. I don’t feel good. For example, we have a friend from Japan and he’s a really nice guy. We have a really nice friendship with him and he’s interested in electronic music and gear, and it was just a couple of years ago, and he came to our studio every day and he thought he was doing us a favor to show his respect. I was getting more and more into, I was feeling like Big Brother because I was sitting there and then, is he still there? I can’t do it now…

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

He’s behind you…

Gernot Bronsert

I don’t like this, having people around us. For example, we change rooms often. We used to have a caravan with a studio inside. It sounds pretty pimp but it was shit. It was smelling inside like a dead cat or something. It was not nice inside, but the sound was good and we just wanted to have the situation that you can go everywhere you want and make music, record music and have fun.

Torsten Schmidt

How many times did you actually really use it, honest?

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

A half time.

Gernot Bronsert

The problem is when you are in a caravan and you say, “OK, let’s go to a lake and make a track,” then you don’t make music, you end up on the lake. It was fun. It was an idea we had. We wanted to record the full-length record in this caravan, but no.

Torsten Schmidt

But you had a nice sunburn. Now, when you say it is really personal when you are in the studio and you can’t really deal with any visitors, and it is hard enough that you are two already, so there is someone outside of your own brain and emotions there while you are trying to come up with the idea.

Gernot Bronsert

We are one person in the studio, it is crazy, we don’t need to talk. We’re an old couple. He is the technique geek and he’s to explain to me always all these things. I have sometimes no idea what is going on with the computer and then Charlies comes in and says, “Son, let me explain.” I say, “OK, now I got it, because of this…” He got me into music production a long, long time ago, long time. He had a little studio at home and I came one day to him and he had this E-MU sampler, an EMX-1, an Atari and the Space Echo and I came just by coincidence to him. I think I wanted to buy some weed, I don’t remember. [laughs]

Torsten Schmidt

That is something every Berlin musician needs to drop. Is that how you got the money for the Space Echo?

Gernot Bronsert

I’m just kidding, he never smoked. He tried sometimes, PCP or stuff like this. [laughter] Anyway, I came into his room and he had a loop running.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Sending it through the Space Echo.

Gernot Bronsert

And there was one button, the mode selector button, and I think we spent four or five hours with one loop playing with the button going [mimes playing live] and since then we are a band called Modeselektor, that is a story by the way. Should we play a track? Which one? Let’s play “Sucker Pin.”

(music: Modeselektor – “Sucker Pin” / live performance)

(music: Modeselektor – unknown / live performance)

Torsten Schmidt

As far as live techniques go, laptop posing, a very difficult, right?

Gernot Bronsert

We’re so busy always, I think we don’t look like we’re checking emails.

Torsten Schmidt

That’s the main concern, right?

Gernot Bronsert

Yeah, I know. But I don’t care.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

When we started as Modeselektor we played with real electronic instruments, with drum machines. We played only in Germany and Berlin shows. We did a little Berlin tour, because it was impossible to carry all that stuff. One time we played in Berlin, you have a little island on the river Spree, there’s a club, it’s called Insel der Jugend, the Island of Youth, and we put all the gear on a stand over the bridge to the island.

Torsten Schmidt

The glamorous life of being a techno live act. [goes into the audience to figure out where a noise is coming from] So, about the whole being live, how much of that is actually planned? Especially, with the Moderat shows, I mean, most of the tracks stop when Carl Craig would start introducing the bassline.

Gernot Bronsert

You are talking about Moderat?

Torsten Schmidt

You know there’s the build-up, the build-up, the build-up and then, Oh! What happened?

Gernot Bronsert

That’s the way, that is the Moderat way. There is a very nice term for it. I will remember later. When we play as Modeselektor then there is not really a big plan behind. So we talk about which tracks we want to play and in which order, but we change it anyway. When we play with Moderat we need to follow the track-listing because we have a pretty massive visual set-up going on onstage and the VJ who is playing the Moderat clips live. It’s like playing in a band, but we don’t have a bass player, we have a VJ and then we need to hold eye contact on special songs, like, “OK… now!” There is one song called “Les Grand Marches” with Moderat, and there is a concrete block in the middle, which is exploding in one special moment and he needs to play it live. And they are always so nervous because of this song, they’re just like this [mimes intense stare]. They are not musicians, they are so into their visual thing and I told them always, “You just need to count, just count the fucking song!” Maybe we can have a look at it?

Torsten Schmidt

Maybe, while it is warming up, you want to take a question?

Audience Member

So my question is, I saw that you were choosing tracks on the live PA, I wanted to know when you are performing you have to continuously play songs, right? So how do you go from one track to another?

Gernot Bronsert

What you saw is one song. So bassline, beat, vocals, hi-hats, snares, cymbal, and you can save this up as a preset, so when you play the next song you go to the next preset, push the button, pop. We customize this patch to play under every circumstance you can imagine – rain, snow, drunken, without sleep, sleeping, dead, everything. This patch Jihad Live is made from the people who use it. We use it non-stop so, for example, when we buy a new MIDI controller we change the whole patch for the MIDI controller. I buy a MIDI controller for just one or two buttons. So I have more things to play. It is pretty intense to get into this Max/MSP thing but Sasha, Apparat, is helping us a lot with that. For example, Robert Henke, Monolake, he is helping from time to time. We can change little things. But when I want to change global things I need to call Professor Henke, Monolake. He is a professor at the moment, at a university in Berlin. He replaced one of the Kraftwerk guys who was teaching there. Anyway.

Torsten Schmidt

When you go and buy MIDI controllers doesn’t it feel like, compared to buying a synth, isn’t it a bit like going to buy condoms or something?

Gernot Bronsert

For example, we use these blue things, they are not available in the stores any more, so I need to buy them on eBay because I really like the handling of this controller. I think this is number eight already and the last one I bought in the US so it took four or five weeks to get one. Then we sometimes use this KORG thing and it’s too heavy, like seven kilo. Our Modeselektor rule is hand luggage. I cannot wait on the belt for my luggage, I just need my luggage straight. As I told you, I’m just tired of waiting. And anyway, when you play a lot and tour a lot on aeroplanes then it is better to have everything.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

The hand luggage rule is only for Modeselektor, for Moderat we had 19 cases. Four hundred kilograms. We paid extra luggage every time on every airline in the world.

Torsten Schmidt

Wouldn’t it make sense in that case to have an airline sponsoring you?

Gernot Bronsert

They don’t sponsor. Just soccer teams or championships. We are little piece of shit for them. Lufthansa, hello. There is just one airline I want to have as my sponsor and this is Lufthansa. Not British Airways.

Audience Member

So when you guys are performing live, as you were doing just then, and you have sections when you are building up to a big drop and you take the bass out for a while, and you bring in the drums or whatever else you’re doing, do you guys have a set regiment sort of thing, or do you just feel it and go for it as you please?

Gernot Bronsert

Just feel it. Sometimes we see it makes no sense to make a big rave deal here. For example, we can play totally quiet. We can play a quiet set if you want to, or a totally J Dilla-esque set, or a trance set, in fact. We can do everything, you know? Mostly, we play all the genres in one set so we have different parts always. Usually, we think in tempi, so we have blocks, 100 BPM is the hip-hop block so we know we have a few tracks on 100 BPM. Then we have 140, my favorite…

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

…and we can change the tracklists in the next ten seconds or five seconds.

Gernot Bronsert

Sometimes, we have a super friendly DJ before the show and he is playing two or three Modeselektor tracks and you need to switch anyway and change your set. It is all about feeling. Sometimes, we are totally tired and the show is amazing and sometimes we are totally into it and it is medium. It’s random. There is no concept, it’s not Chemical Brothers.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Which is not easy for the video guys.

Gernot Bronsert

They have the hardest job by the way, because they don’t know what’s going on, they need to change everything.

Torsten Schmidt

So you’re having these intercom things like on the Tour de France?

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

We Twitter it. We tweet it. Next song?

Torsten Schmidt

There’s another question over there.

Audience Member

I have got a question about the sound because I think you have a very typically Modeselektor sound. Every track, every production when you hear it, it must be Modeseleckor and nothing else because I think every part or every track, it sounds very thick and punchy and it sounds like you didn’t use very many tracks. One track, very minimalistic from the construction, but very punchy. Everything is very... I just wanted to ask about the equipment you use.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

I will show you, there is a secret. That’s the secret.

Gernot Bronsert

We don’t use soundcards. We recorded Thom Yorke with that so you don’t need soundcards. You don’t need big equipment. We have not really a nice monitor situation at all. We just work a long time and test the tracks on sound systems. The good thing is when you tour, you can test your sketches and then you know exactly, “Oh, that’s too much bass.”

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Another thing is also to take the computer in the car, we have a mini jack adapter, put it in the radio. That is the best listening you can have.

Gernot Bronsert

We are checking the tracks on a lot of things, his old ghetto blaster with his first 100 Deutschmarks.

Audience Member

I just thought you have one regular way to do this.

Gernot Bronsert

No, we change speakers always. We worked a long time with Atom speakers, then we switched to Mackie, then we switched to Genelec, now we are working with Genelec. In the end it’s just a speaker. We don’t care.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

The first speakers we used for the first records in 2000, 2001.

Gernot Bronsert

He found them on the street.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Old JBL speakers for a hi-fi. They looked like ’80s...

Gernot Bronsert

They were white, but they were yellow. They looked pretty fucked up. Yeah, but in the end, there are just a few things you should take care. When you buy speakers, just read a little bit about how and where is the best situation and in the end don’t spend too much time with the perfect situation to listen to music or to produce music. A friend of mine, Mark Ernestus, he owns Hardwax record store and makes music as well, he spent two years building up his studio and it’s absolutely over on the next level what this guy is doing. But I don’t need that. It’s really nice to go into a studio like this and to have a mixdown, or master your stuff, or listen to your stuff and have a reference. But I think we will never have a studio like this, never.

Gernot Bronsert

Which is okay.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

It’s okay.

Audience Member

I just wanted to ask, you were saying it is like a rule not having a soundcard? Is it for any particular reason?

Gernot Bronsert

No. We bought sometimes soundcards and we checked them out and we tried to work with them but in the end, no. We just don’t use them. If we want to have a proper studio, we go to Apparat and his studio. He has a nice studio mixing desk, same speakers. [looking at speakers in the room]

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

These are really cool.

Gernot Bronsert

But they are lying to you. They sound too good.

Audience member

Don’t you ever get any latency on the MIDI control?

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

We have a little offset regulation somewhere with the time sync.

Gernot Bronsert

I have a little delay because I’m a little faster than him. When we play live.

Audience Member

Hi, I’m Adam from San Francisco.

Gernot Bronsert

Hey Adam, what’s up?

Audience Member

How are you doing? What’s happenin’?

Gernot Bronsert

Hyphy!

Audience Member

Uh, yeah...

Gernot Bronsert

Where are your stunna shades?

Audience Member

That was five years ago, man.

Gernot Bronsert

I know. [laughs]

Audience Member

I was wondering, how do you guys control the mix of the different instruments? Obviously, you have the mixer there but to know what the bounce is going to be between the kick and the bass and all the different elements. Is somebody else mixing the actual things?

Gernot Bronsert

We prepare the presets in the studio and then we check them on the soundsystems and after every soundcheck, I make new presets. For example, I have some presets which is two years old and I never touch it because I know it’s sounding perfect. And I have presets which I know, “OK, on this soundsystem, it is better to make the hi-hat louder.”

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

That is what we do during the soundcheck. Listen to every track to find a new balance.

Gernot Bronsert

…to check it for the soundsystem so it works on the soundsystem. Which is not always possible, say, at a festival where we don’t have a soundcheck. But usually, at a festival there is a nice soundsystem.

Audience Member

Little question about your sound. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that you guys are from Berlin. I think you have more in common with London sound in a way. A lot of vocals, multi-genre, a lot of big drops. When I think of Berlin I think of longer sets that run on. What’s your thought about that? Is your sound a backlash to that? Do you like that, are you not too into it?

Gernot Bronsert

That is what I wanted to try to explain when I talked about the Moderat record. You cannot say the sound of Berlin is like this, you know? We are influenced by British rave music since the beginning. Dubstep is rave. Even Digital Mystikz, it’s rave because there is one idea behind it.

Torsten Schmidt

Who, by the way, are some of your biggest fans, actually.

Gernot Bronsert

Mala? Cool! I mean, we DJ and we’re friends and the last time that somebody blew me away with minimal music… in the end it’s minimal music. It’s not much, it’s dub, and dub is minimal. Very minimal. Not the genre, I don’t like to think in genres. Genres are so old-fashioned. It makes not really sense in the end, it’s about the tune. If a track on M-nus, Richie Hawtin’s label, is good, then it is about the track and not about the cube or the black dress, it’s about the tune. If you have a trance track, which is good, then the track is good, you can’t change it. It is not here, it is in your ass and in your heart.

Audience Member

I don’t really mean the track itself, I just more mean your entire set. You are not the sort of guys to do a six-hour, slow build-up kind of set.

Gernot Bronsert

I am tired of it, because I grew up with that. That was the music, that was my first music experience and I had that long enough so I don’t need that anymore.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

And when we talk about a short set, like Moderat is a short set, we want to show a set like a movie. A movie is about one hour and one hour and a half with no encore, no extras in the end. That was the plan from Moderat, and that is the reason the set is kind of short, but it is intense.

Gernot Bronsert

And it is the difference between DJ and live. I cannot imagine to play a song which is 12 minutes long. What should I do on stage? What should I do? Waiting. Eight bars, 16 bars, hi-hats, effect. Eight bars, 16 bars, snare. Long break, C-part, end, next track. Then you play one track for five hours over. I grew up with that. I can’t do it. For example, when I’m listening to, say, a Digital Mystikz track, OK, Mala, six minutes long, I could never make a track like this, because it’s deep. I just bought an acid record from DJ Sneak yesterday, acid tracks, an old one from ‘94, eight minutes long. It’s great to listen to and great to dance to, but I could never do this.

Audience Member

Do you feel closer to the UK scene in that sense than the Berlin one?

Torsten Schmidt

You really want to claim him, don’t you?

Audience member

It’s just interesting to me because the kind of sound that you are doing is all around me all the time.

Gernot Bronsert

Why not?

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

We are feeling very close to you.

Torsten Schmidt

Speaking of which, is there any place on earth where you’re bigger than Glasgow?

Gernot Bronsert

Maybe Berlin, but I think, no. It is the same level, I think. I have no idea. Last time we played there was Moderat and then I went with Jackmaster to the afterparty. He was playing there with Untold and in the end they needed to protect me because I think everybody in this club wanted to take a picture with me. I needed to sign everything, like arms, faces, hand. Cell phones. I don’t know why it happened. I think these guys were the first guys who booked us in the UK. They were the day before in London at Plastic People, but it was with Martin from Rubadub, so the Glasgow connection. Then we played with Numbers and since then we have played one or two times a year with them. This year, we stopped playing Modeselektor, so we have a break now and we continue touring with Moderat in the summer. And Jack forced us to play Numbers so he is the exception this year that we play, and tonight. Usually, we wanted to DJ tonight but I couldn’t find my record bag. I’m not kidding, it’s true. So we play live tonight, Jack. No DJ set.

Audience Member

Getting a little back to the technical side of things. I was just wondering what do you guys use to sync up your computers?

Gernot Bronsert

An ethernet cable.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

OUC.

Audience Member

Slightly less technical question, you have had a lot of really amazing producers do remixes for you. Do you approach these people purely because you’re into their music, or because of profile, or both? And which is your favorite remix that you have had done for you? And another one quickly, is there anyone who is obviously alive that you would love to remix your stuff and hasn’t yet?

Gernot Bronsert

I cannot tell you which is my favorite, maybe you have a favorite? [turning to Sebastian] It wouldn’t be fair to say, “OK, the remix producer X did is the best.”

Audience member

Not the best because they all tend to be pretty good but maybe a personal [favorite]?

Gernot Bronsert

I am pretty much into this Siriusmo stuff. I don’t know if you have heard of this guy. I’m pretty impressed by him because I don’t get him, I don’t get what he is doing. He’s actually mastering his new record for our Monkeytown label. We started a label just a year ago called Monkeytown.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Don’t send demos to us, please.

Gernot Bronsert

We started the label just because of Siriusmo, because of this guy. He gave me tracks and I was so depressed because it was too good, it was just too good. I think the stuff and the remixes he did they were amazing, but I was so impressed by the remix that Marcel Dettmann did for us, which is totally the way you are talking about, but this is next-level quality. For us, it is a new thing to get remixes because before we dropped the last record we just did remixes for other people. And then we got these amazing remixes from all these amazing musicians from this planet.

Torsten Schmidt

On that note, knowing all you guys’ applications and knowing you have a certain love for a band from this country, how did your perception change when, all of a sudden, people like Thom Yorke were name-checking you all the time and asking for remixes and stuff?

Gernot Bronsert

We couldn’t believe it. It’s still pretty unreal. When someone asks me, “How is Thom? How is Colin? How is Björk?” I cannot tell you. It’s like being on a rush. There was one crazy moment. We played in New York at Studio B and we had a good time, and backstage was a lot of friends, and then the club promoter came in, like, “Björk is coming. Björk! Whoa. Björk is coming.” Then Björk came in and we ended up singing “Jump” from Kriss Kross.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

And the moment that she came in, it was so quiet. Thirty people.

Gernot Bronsert

Just boys, talking about beats and cars, YouPorn, and then everything changed. For me, when we toured with Radiohead, that was for me the experience of how big it is possible to be. The whole production was just amazing, how they work, and very interesting. I think we released the first record called “In Loving Memory” in 2002 on BPitch Control. We just did a one-off thing, just release it and that was it. Thom Yorke was on a German MTV show and he talked about us, this record, and I think this is one of the reasons why we said, “OK, it’s not that bad. Let’s continue.”

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

We were very nervous in that moment. Can you imagine that? You receive 50 short messages on your phone.

Gernot Bronsert

All your friends are like, “Thom Yorke!” He is cooking his tea with water anyway, so... like everybody.

Torsten Schmidt

Do we have another question? Do you want to send us off with either a video or something live or both?

Gernot Bronsert

[turning to Sebastian] Techno or electro or hip-hop or grime? It’s a little bit old-fashioned, I know.

Sebastian “Charlie” Szary

Let’s make a surprise.

Gernot Bronsert

UK funky is too new. [asking audience] Live or video? OK.

Torsten Schmidt

I guess this would be the official end of everything involving a mic so please get up and thank the boys. [applause]