Move D

Gerd Janson

To my right there is a man all the way from Germany, David Moufang, alias Move D. He has done almost every form of electronic music you can picture, except for gabba maybe, and has been running a label called Source Records for years, was making electronica from even before the term was invented. So please give him a very warm welcome. [Applause] And, like always, if you have any questions throughout the lecture, do not hesitate to ask them just look for a microphone. David, one person once wrote about you that if talent converted into record sales, you would be a very rich man. Are you a rich man?

Move D

It is a good question. I would say that I am because I am able to do what I want to do and I don’t have to do any other job, which is good. But, certainly, I’m not rich, I am surviving.

Gerd Janson

So, what is it that you do? Your body of work is so huge that it is pretty hard to pin it down in just a few words.

Move D

Probably it is. I am into all kinds of music for a start so I am interested in many things. But, I guess, in the last few years in electronic music it would be house music so that is what I am doing mainly at the moment. But I am also doing radio pieces, radio art, and still into jazz, it is very much whatever comes along. I would also work with a singer if I had something which I really like.

Gerd Janson

You just mentioned jazz, so for those people who don’t know, you are coming from Heidelberg, a city in Germany that not only has a quite well-known university but also a big jazz tradition. Maybe you can talk a little bit about how it was growing up there?

Move D

Heidelberg is a NATO headquarter, an American forces base, so after the World War pretty soon they established a jazz club, a very cool one that had great people playing there, for instance, Don Cherry or Karl Berger, Charlie Haden, lots of cool people.

I wasn’t around then, but my dad was also into jazz. He was a jazz trumpeter and he played at that club and, for instance, he remembered Karl Berger who was a native Heidelberg vibraphone player. He was like a house player in the club and the pianist as well – he would play with anybody if they needed someone, and when Don Cherry was playing in Heidelberg he kind of discovered him and took him to Paris because Don Cherry was living in Paris around ’65. Then, in ’66 he moved to New York and he went there with him and founded the New Music School in Woodstock.

Karl Berger, I think, is about 73-years old now and he was coming back to Heidelberg once when I was like 25 or something, and my parents, especially my dad, said, “You have to go to see this guy, he is really cool.” So, I went and I was really blown away, and that is how I got in touch with him. I asked him if he would be interested in doing something with electronics and he said, “Basically yes, but first you should earn your merits and then we can talk about it.” Maybe two years later, he phoned me up from New York and said, “I’m just in Bill Laswell’s studio and I saw your CD lying around there,” and I guess this was the moment where he got really interested and this is how we started our collaboration with Karl Berger.

Gerd Janson

And who is Bill Laswell?

Move D

Bill Laswell, for those who don’t know, is a big, big producer, everybody should know “Rockit” by Herbie Hancock. That was a Laswell production, and it is typical of his sound more than it is of Herbie Hancock’s sound, so his influence on this number was really particularly big, I would say. And since then he has done hundreds of records and has been working and producing. There is material with Sly & Robbie and George Clinton and Bootsy Collins, he knows them all so it is that scene in New York. Lately, he went into dub, ambient stuff and also collaborating with Jonah Sharp, Pete Namlook – these are people that I work with, as well.

Gerd Janson

And the piece with Karl Berger, do you have it with you maybe?

Move D

I have one piece here, it is not so long. We have done three albums so far, two studio albums and one is a live CD, which is the most recent one. I’m going to play a piece of an album called Earprints – this is only three minutes.

(music: Conjoint – “Bar Rock”)

And what you can hear now is the vibraphone with the harmonizing effect and everything else, basically. I called it “Bar Rock” because it is kind of cheesy, rocky and it could be in a bar, but it could be baroque as well as a classical style, so that is where the name comes from [fades track]. That is enough maybe, I think we are late anyway. That is just an idea, this is kind of really cheesy just as a very short idea of how else it could sound. This is from a live recording and a lot more abstract and I tend to go somewhere in the middle.

(music: Conjoint – “Bar Rock” (Live))

So obviously, this is a lot more far out. And this is Karl Berger playing the piano as well, he is a pianist as well as a vibraphonist.

Gerd Janson

Jazz is a big influence in your life with your father being a trumpeter. Also, this DJ thing came pretty soon, and perhaps you can talk a little bit about that. You mentioned Heidelberg as a natural place where you were likely to see jazz clubs, but also so-called GI discos?

Move D

I never went to one, though. I saw DJing in ’87. Techno wasn’t there yet, only kind of mainstream discotheques in town and they played black music, maybe funk and hip-hop, and stuff like this. Among the people going there were a lot of GIs, so I got to meet these people and I always wanted to go to the US clubs, but I never really made it, unfortunately. Maybe, it is also worthwhile mentioning that because of the Americans in town, they also had their own radio, American Forces Networks, army radio stations and whatever, and this was pretty cool to listen to as well, as opposed to the German crappy stations.

Gerd Janson

So, what were some of the things, bands and artists that influenced you back at this time listening to AFN?

Move D

It is difficult. I guess, a lot of things. I did not know what they were and I was not speaking English then, so I could not really understand what they were saying either. But, in general, it was a different sound to what the European or German stations were playing, which was the same all across the board, like top 40. They just had their own style and I certainly heard the first interesting funk records that were not really on the radio in Germany, like Parliament, George Clinton, this kind of stuff.

Gerd Janson

You weren’t speaking English then?

Move D

No, I was not born speaking English. I don’t know when I started listening to AFN. I was about four years old when I realized that music would be the thing for me in a way. I was really into the Beatles, and I remember records I was playing then and I was really listening to them, the same record eight times in a row. I felt like I knew every single note, even though I couldn’t play any instrument. And then it took a while – my parents were trying to send me to some music school, but this was all really lame so I didn’t really have the nerve to do it. Later on, when I was ten, maybe, I started taking lessons for drums first and then guitar and piano.

Gerd Janson

So, becoming an architect or policeman…

Move D

An astronaut was the only other thing that interested me, but my dad told me with my bad eyesight, they would never let me into space. Actually, I was building a lot of pseudo-spaceships with Lego and stuff and fake headphones and stuff and walkie-talkies, so I was technically interested and in the studio at least there is a lot of buttons and knobs and lights and it is a bit like a cockpit.

Gerd Janson

Would you recommend to people, if you want to become a music producer, to pick up drum or guitar lessons or have this classical education?

Move D

Throughout the ’90s I had the impression or I often wished I would not know anything about music because lots of really interesting stuff was coming from an experimental angle or approach. Sometimes, if you know what you can do and what you cannot do, you are limited in what you are trying to do, so I wouldn’t say it is necessary to play an instrument to produce music. But on the other hand, now we are not in the ’90s, we are in the 2000s and things are changing… Guitars are coming back, I happen to be a guitar player so it comes in handy now as before, in the ’90s, I would really not admit that I played the guitar because it was so uncool, and now it is a lot more easy. I think it depends on what you want to do, but it is alright if you know stuff or if you are a drummer and you learn some stuff. It is maybe not such a random approach, you have more of a concept of what you are aiming at and what one is or what is the one in a bar, or the concept of a bar and all this. It may be easier, but it is not necessary.

Gerd Janson

But speaking of computers, aren’t the endless possibilities these days not confusing?

Move D

It is a curse, really. When I started off with electronic music, it was around 1990, and it was the Roland machines, 909, 606 and a mixer and an Atari computer probably, so you were really limited in what gear you had, which was kind of nice. If you wanted something else, you had to get rid of other elements to get a machine, so you could use it and there were some natural limitations to what you were doing.

Also, the sounds back then, a lot of the synthesizers were not even programmable, so you had the sound, but if you waited for a day, it may have wandered somewhere else without even touching it. You had to get stuff down on a tape immediately, otherwise it would be gone and it was not easy or possible even to reproduce. Which adds a certain value to whatever you are doing. It may be wrong, parts of it, but some parts of it you think, “How did I get that sound? I will never get it again.” It added value to stuff. Whereas today, you store it in your computer and you can work on it forever, and you can add and add and there are no limits and I don’t think it is very helpful in order to finish something. When is a track finished? It is always a difficult question that is even more difficult if there is no end to what you can do.

Gerd Janson

So, when is a track finished to you?

Move D

Maybe when the deadline is up probably, or if somebody else tells me it is finished. It is really hard to tell. I can’t even say how long it takes. Sometimes it goes really quickly and often those quick things are the better ones, so it may only take two hours to do a whole track. But usually, you get the feeling of, “Only two hours? This can’t be it, there has to be some sweat and work involved.” Sometimes, it is best the way it is done first, then when you try to define it you water it down and it gets really boring and shallow. It is a difficult question, I can’t answer it.

Gerd Janson

But you just said when someone else tells you, what is like a red line through your work, you have never hesitated to work with other people, so you weren’t really the bedroom producer on his own?

Move D

It is the opposite. I do have a history of playing in bands with guitars… to me music is about communication. I communicate with people listening to the music, but more interesting is the part of creating it if you deal with another person. I am very much into collaborations of all sorts because also I think when you work with someone, mostly you have got a limited time frame, like two days or something, and then you want to see what you can do in two days. Naturally the approach won’t be to try to do everything, make it perfect, it has got to be 110%. You can’t do that, so you do it really instantly and spontaneously and, of course, there will be some things or aspects of the music where I think artists could have been better. But in the long term, I think even if there is flaws in it and mistakes in it, it is nicer like this, if it is something where you can tell two people are meeting and doing something quickly. I am totally up for it.

Gerd Janson

But you also have to compromise then?

Move D

Of course, you do. Sometimes the other one brings in something you don’t like. If you absolutely hated it, you would tell them, of course. But it is kind of embarrassing, so you try to work with it and deal with it and it can be really interesting, maybe something I would not have thought of and would not have done, in the end I do like it. I think it is always a great way of learning new things as well if you work with different people.

Gerd Janson

And you said you were a bit ashamed of admitting that you played guitar in the ’90s, so why was that? Did you buy into that whole techno philosophy back then that no one has to be a pop star?

Move D

Yes, totally. I did really buy that approach of the music has to speak for itself and it is not important who you are and how you look. It wasn’t cool in the ’90s to put out records under your real name. Nowadays, it is quite common, but back then nobody did. Everybody had a fake name and were trying to be as anonymous as far as they could. I sort of like the idea still, because after all it is the music that matters and not how somebody is looking or who he is going out with and stuff like this. Obviously, the DJ within the last two or three years in my impression took a role of the rock star, and he was up there on this high stage again and [there was] a big discrepancy between the party people and the DJ, and it is horrible how still today clubs are like this. I would much rather play down on the floor and give everybody a chance to whatever, yell at me and say, “Hey, play something cool, you fool.” I think it is much better than if you can hardly see what is happening there.

Gerd Janson

Maybe you could talk about what attracted you a bit to techno coming from that jazz and funk background?

Move D

Obviously, it wasn’t music in the first place. I do remember the first acid house parties I went to because people were saying, “You have to go, it is crazy…” I was never really fashionable in that way and, I suppose, the people were all younger. In ’88, I was 22, which is not really that old, but a lot of the others were 16, I guess, most of them were. It wasn’t for the music. Hits around that time were like “Theme from S’Express”, “Pump Up the Volume”, late ’80s, this was all UK music, and at that time there was already the cool Chicago stuff, like Mr. Fingers that I had heard about. But this kind of music was not played at those parties, it was really this UK kind of thing, and I was not too crazy about the music, but the people and the whole scenery really blew my mind.

Having started DJing in ’87 in a mainstream club, I knew the rules as they existed then. The bouncer would be instructed. “Look if the people are wearing sneakers, send them off. If they look like they have a big wallet and want to spend the money on booze, let them in.” And, of course, this does not help much to create a nice atmosphere or get good party people. These were just stupid people in a way.

At house parties it was the opposite, you could see black people, Turkish people, all ethnics mixed, poor people, rich people, funny-dressed people, straight-dressed people. It was all alright, and I do remember one night sitting there and watching the scenery and a young guy, a young raver was coming to me, he said, “You’re looking kind of pale, are you alright? Did you have a bad pill, maybe?” I said, “No, I’m fine, just listening.” This was really so striking to me. In the rock business, at festivals people would trample on you and nobody gives a damn if you’re feeling bad. They would rather hit you on the head with a beer bottle or whatever, and now it was this and I was really overwhelmed and I thought, “Wow, this is a new generation.”

To me, it felt as important as the late ’60s, the hippie movement, a real new era with new values or new ways of interacting with people, and I very much liked that, so I accepted the music for the benefits of the party crowd. And then it did not take long to discover all the good music that existed around then in 1990, 1991 – as you mentioned already, Mr. Fingers, but also the UK Network label did a great job combining Sheffield and Detroit to show this kind of stuff on compilations called Bio Rhythm, which is a very good recommendation, I think. I got Bio Rhythms One, the first track “Self Hypnosis”, Altern-8, Nexus 21 – they were most popular for Altern-8, really hardcore banging UK bass, but with Nexus 21… they did intelligent techno or whatever you want to call it, but it is very intriguing, very cool stuff.

Gerd Janson

“Intelligent techno” is another term applied to your kind of music, right?

Move D

I do hate “electronica,” I think I hate it more than “intelligent,” although I think I hate intelligent, too, because it is kind of stupid or self-important or whatever. I hate terms in music, anyway. Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

Gerd Janson

You did an album very early in your career that you put out on your own label, Source Records, maybe we could listen to something from Kunststoff to give people an idea of what you were doing back then as opposed to the jazz-influenced stuff?

Move D

Maybe we should say the very first things that I did was kind of ambient music, very much influenced by Chill Out, the KLF, and probably The Orb as well. So that was ambient, and obviously there were some other ambient artists at that time, and then there was techno like Detroit techno, Frankfurt techno, but techno-techno, and in between I felt there was a huge gap, an open field, and that is where I tried to come in when I did Kunststoff.

(music: Move D – unknown)

This one is called “77 Sunset Strip…”

(music: Move D – “77 Sunset Strip” / applause)

Gerd Janson

It sounds a bit like dubstep. Is that something you are into, dubstep?

Move D

I try to be open to it. As a DJ I find it kind of hard to mix it in and make it work, but at home it is different and I do try to listen to it and I like some of the stuff a lot.

Gerd Janson

You put Kunststoff out on Source Records, your label which you started together with Jonas Grossmann, so maybe what was the impulse to do a label of your own?

Move D

I guess we were not ready to go through this process of sending demos that would never get listened to, probably, and all these frustrating things. So, we decided we would just do it ourselves, which was clever at that point, I think. We were trying to do albums and there were hardly any albums, so it was pretty easy for us to pop into the market and we got a lot of nice response, especially from the UK, but eventually from all around the world. Initially, it was just the idea to do this one record – Jonas and I – and do it ourselves.

I wasn’t planning to do a label really, but it dynamically evolved like this. There was a demand and there were people coming, first friends from around Heidelberg, but soon on the second or third release, we already had people from Canada. Internationally, we got demos, and we just went on, but we never really had the focus on financial success. We were more interested in finding new things, and we were particularly interested in releasing stuff that we thought nobody else would put out. We did and still do get a lot of demos from people who have names and have records out, but it is not a challenging thing, it is much more challenging if you can confront people with something really new.

For instance, we had this one CD out, which was just prepared piano being played live to two-track, nothing else, and I don’t know if any of you heard about the prepared piano or how it sounds, it is very abstract. You treat the piano with pieces of paper or rubber or nails, you open it and put these things on the strings, and it totally changes the sonic appearance of the piano. It could be gamelan but it could also be synthesizers, and people were actually taking it for synthesizer music. I remember at the record stores somebody was saying, “This is crap, the sequencing isn’t tight,” and he totally didn’t understand or realize that that is just a piano and somebody playing it.

It is funny, we only did 500 of these and never expected to make money and we didn’t, but it was really nice because it gave me contacts of interesting people, like Squarepusher or Jamie Hodge. These were people that were really excited about it and called me up and said, “Oh, this was crazy.” Lately, it was quite a triumphant feeling when I heard Richard [D.] James was using a lot a prepared piano, a fixed one.

Gerd Janson

But you never had a real office or a full-blown label?

Move D

No, we never had any employees, for instance, we always took it as a two-man business.

Gerd Janson

Would you recommend someone to do a label?

Move D

I don’t think I would recommend it to anybody who is looking to make money, but if somebody really has a strong affection for music and has contacts and can afford to do it in some way… I would still do it, even though these days it is really tough business-wise and most labels are complaining. But, on the other hand, I feel that for a little small underground label it is not going to hurt – it probably hurts those the most that deserved to be hurt.

Gerd Janson

But Source is also in a kind of hibernation mode, right?

Move D

The last release was in 2005. The reason was after EFA, which was the biggest European independent distributor, went bankrupt in 2004, we were left with an enormous loss of money, which they owed us and has never been paid. The records were sold, so we had neither the money nor the CDs or the vinyl, but yet we had to pay all those bills from royalties and manufacturing, pay artists. This was a real financial stress and at that point my partner Jonas decided he had to move on and find a job and make some money, and the label has been on hold since then. I also wanted to get back into the music making myself again more. The more I worked with the label the less I was able to work on my own music. So, at the moment there is nothing happening, but I will put out stuff on Source eventually. I guess, next time it will be only my own stuff or real friends, not as a real business label.

Gerd Janson

So, before we listen to something that you made more current, and that may be done for clubs, you mentioned that the utopia attracted you to the whole techno thing, the whole melting pot of people. Do you think this is still valid today? You play quite a lot as a DJ.

Move D

I play a lot and I would still say that to me – it is all techno, including dubstep and house and everything… it is all techno. Techno people are still the nicest crowds you can find. I don’t have a great time if I go to a hip-hop event, nor do I when I go to a rock thing, maybe jazz people are alright but they are maybe older and more boring. I think techno people are the best party people still, but a lot of that utopia has vanished with that big DJ stardom and the differentiation between who is on stage in who is not on stage, and that is a pity.

Gerd Janson

And the drugs have changed as well…

Move D

Yes, but the drugs are coming back. Have they changed? There were Es then and there are now, and maybe people doing more acid in the early ’90s, which I think is the more creative or revolutionary drug, maybe. It is not just a good time, it asks you some questions, so I think it is worthwhile to try, maybe.

Gerd Janson

We don’t want to promote anything here except Red Bull. But you had a record on Source which was like a tribute?

Move D

The 50th Anniversary ov LSD, yes. It wasn’t really my idea, but I went to a lecture by Albert Hoffman, when he was like 88 years old, the inventor or discoverer of LSD. He died this year at 101 or 102. He is an extremely interesting person. He was working as a chemist in Basel and he was looking for a heart medicine, and by accident he came across LSD. So, this guy is not cool or esoteric like Timothy Leary, and all these other people. I have a much harder job to listen to people like them, because they mix it with their own idea and concept of the world and how it should be. But Albert Hoffman was really interesting because he was like a scientist guy with this really rational approach. But when he talked about it he said that, “Now I realize there is another reality,” and it had a lot of a different impact than if one of those freaked-out dudes said that. He was never promoting it, he was saying, “You have to be really careful and it is made for the shaman people.” It was very interesting.

Gerd Janson

So, what shall we listen to now, you have brought a few records?

Move D

I have brought a few recent records. I don’t know, maybe you should pick some. This one here is on Uzuri, a relatively new London label, and we were saying it is more like house music. I have been DJing forever and I have been doing music, but it was always a problem to me, because as a DJ I am not really an ambient DJ back then, when I was doing these ambient records. I went to a lot of events and I got really bored…

(music: Move D – unknown / applause)

So this is a lot more compatible, but I am still trying to do different stuff as well. This is on Workshop, some kind of slow disco, 106 BPM, so not easy to play in a club but I really like it because it is so disco and so slow. Even some vocals in there later on.

(music: Move D – unknown / applause)

So this is a lot more compatible, but I am still trying to do different stuff as well. This is on Workshop, some kind of slow disco, 106 BPM, so not easy to play in a club but I really like it because it is so disco and so slow. Even some vocals in there later on.

(music: Move D – “Computer Flop” / applause)

There was a sample in there. On Kunststoff, what we were listening to before, I didn’t use any samples and for a long time this was my philosophy, not to sample. For this one, the last loop coming in is a sample and sometimes it is really important for me to show a little reference in a way. It is a nice way of showing appreciation…

(music: Move D – unknown)

Gerd Janson

The tune you did before that on Workshop was done with Thomas Meinecke, who is a band member of FSK. I don’t know how to describe it but he’s a book author, who is trying to mix all kinds of academic theory with pop music or dance music, and you two work quite a lot together.

Move D

We’ve been doing pieces for the radio since 1998 and it happens because he is a band member of FSK and an author for a really well-known publisher in Germany. He is also a DJ at public radio in Germany, which is a bit like the BBC in Britain, high-quality public radio. They have asked him when he had a new book coming out, “Don’t you want to do something about your book, like a radio play?” And he said yes, and they asked him if he had any idea who he wants to work with, and he said he would like to do it with me. The reason was that the book was taking place in Heidelberg, my home town. Admittedly, because of that reason, but I also find that people listen to the Kunststoff album and Source Records and it's mentioned throughout the book, and he thought it would be natural to ask me to do it, and I was really hesitant at the beginning. It is not always easy to work with different people, if they are not friends or you don’t know them, it can be very awkward…

Gerd Janson

You thought he’s a stalker?

Move D

Yeah, whatever. But I let myself be talked into it and now I have to say it was really clever to do it because he is a great guy, great fun to work with. In the ten years now we have done – I don’t know how many – five or six pieces, and this year we actually won a big prize, the Karl-Sczuka-Preis, which is one of the top prizes for radio art. Before we were starting the session, there was actually something of that prize-winning thing playing and it is bilingual, so I may give you another example. It is called “Übersetzungen / Translations” and we wanted this time to not base it on a novel or a book that he has written but to use the voice or the texts in a really improvised way and make it weaved in with the music. You want to hear more techno, more jazz…

Audience member

You said about using hardware before, old stuff, do you use hardware with Ableton?

Move D

I still use hardware a lot and a lot of these loops that we are hearing are not being done with the computer but with recorded hardware. I record with hardware and then put it in here and I can take it to a gig, but at home and the studio I still use hardware, yes.

I think the instrument, which really fascinated me the most for the last six years, maybe, is the Nord Modular, which is a hardware synthesizer. You edit using a computer and then it gives you the modules as we know them from modular systems like the old ones, Moog and Roland, and nowadays Dubverse, which has separate units for oscillators, filters. It is not as completed as Max/MSP or Reactor, it is really simple, very much like the pitch unit here on the MS-20. You pull some wires and you work with it and you only need the computer to build these instruments, but you don’t need a computer to create sounds.

Once you’re done programming you can take the keyboard, or there is also rack modules, the smaller things, you can take that to a gig and it will create the sound and you don’t need a computer any more. I think it’s a really stunning instrument, because if you know how subtractive synthesis is working, the basic old-school method of filtering down on two or three oscillators. The architecture of the synthesizer, if you understand this, it is very instant. You don’t need to read the manual, you can just go. So, this is a really inspiring piece of hardware for me and I’m just checking if I can find a good example…

This is Studio Pankow, a project with Jamie Hodge. This was released in 2004 on City Centre Offices…

I don’t know. They seemed to be interested in kind of old-school, vintage sounding stuff and I have from that period about 20 hours of unreleased material. It is not all as good as “Drøne” and that is why he picked it, but also the “Ac1d” on the other Modern Love 12", I did is also like this old. Back then, these 20 hours of material were made in a communal studio we had in Heidelberg. It was a little small rotting house, two rooms, and we had eight people having keys to the house and slowly we set up a studio, really low profile, but a really nice one at the same time.

It was called KM20, and it was also the name of the sub-label, where we put out stuff from the house. KM20 was derived from the address it was in, and it was really nice because people would come into Heidelberg and we brought them to KM20 and they would be jamming there, Chez Damier, Aphex Twin, Baby Ford, the Mego guys, lots of people.

It was like a little nice guestbook because they all left a little memory by doing something there in this set-up and I was just about explaining how the studio was set up, there was no computer. It was all hardware so it was not a virtual modular studio, it was a real modular studio. The nice thing about this kind of studio is that no instrument is the master giving the clock of everything running – probably the 808 – and if you press start, there is always something happening. It can really be bad and horrible, but something is always happening, because the trigger out of the 808 goes in to the SH-09, which is going through the filters of the Ms-20.

And so, for friends who aren’t really familiar with this kind of set-up, it was very enlightening because they just had to press start and something was happening and I can show them if they touched this it did this, and then maybe this would change. If you didn’t like the rhythm, you can control it by this sequencer, just change the steps, and there are hours of material from that place. The problem is we were recording onto cassette and later a DAT machine, but it is always two-track recordings so if one element is really wrong then the whole thing is not really usable. But there is enough material.

Gerd Janson

Did you name the cassettes?

Move D

To me there are the names, if I go to my iTunes and put KM20 we will see. I don’t know, for instance, what “Super Dinky” sounds like, let’s see. So this is no computer.

(music: unknown artist – unknown track)

Move D

I think it is important that there is somebody who cares. I have always done music, maybe not as much as I do now, but I’ve never given up on it. It certainly helps if there is a demand for it, friends are saying, “Can you do something for me?” It really helps. Other than this, I don’t really have a fixed mind about what I’m doing. It doesn’t have to be a kind of method, like to explore stuff. I love this kind of analog set-up, but I also like to sit down with one machine. It could be a general MIDI sound box and see what I can get out of it. Musically, it is just the same. One day, I wake up and will feel like an uplifting house tune and the next day I feel like this, an evil track…

[With remixes, I] decide for myself what are the elements that are there and I like personally. I may keep those and I may throw everything away I don’t really like, and then I start playing over it. Sometimes the result can be really nothing like the original and sometimes it is pretty close to the original, it depends on the track. Here is a recent remix.

(music: IMPS – “Almost Live but Definitely Plugged (Move D Remix)”)

Move D

[Working with independent labels,] financially, it makes sense to me. If someone is having trouble and is not paying the money, then maybe the other one is more likely so you balance out the risk. If one label goes bust, you are fucked. Plus, I have a lot of friends and I would not really do it for anybody. Gerd is a friend, so it is a natural development, and so far there wasn’t a real problem because everybody has their own idea and concept of music and so far it never happened that somebody was listening saying, “You gave the track to this guy and I really wanted it.” It hasn’t been a problem yet.

Gerd Janson

What will happen with techno music in the next few years?

Move D

I am sure that techno, again I am saying this with this really wide expression, everything is techno, and this will prevail, definitely. It will go on because it is the most internationally used approach. People who have a computer at home, and almost everybody has, is in a position to do stuff like this. And, as I was saying before, in some interviews there are more producers nowadays than people buying or listening to techno records and I think this will go on like this. There will be many, many people working in the field of computer music, computer-based music.

Naturally there is a lot of crap, but there is also some really good stuff, and I think it will change. New sounds like dubstep or other things will come up and house will be trendy or not trendy or disco or techno, but that is just sub-categories, the whole thing will be in motion and it will be there. Not even death metal has died, there are still people doing it, but maybe on a really small scale. Techno I think it is everywhere and when people are doing films, they are tempted to do their own soundtrack because it is really easy now and I think it is totally right and should go on like this.

In the ’80s it was still like Duran Duran, Madonna, Michael Jackson, I had the feeling I could go to a record store and slowly work my way through all the shelves and know about everything that was there, which was not 100% true but maybe 80% true. Nowadays, even to people like us who do it professionally, there is absolutely no way to know what is going on. You find some good stuff, but always knowing that we don’t know about good stuff that is happening at the same time, because there is not enough time to hear all this. And the reverse effect, people who are selling millions of records in the ’80s are now selling hundreds or thousands to smaller groups and I think this kind of phenomena will last.

I think it also shows that people are a lot more educated and self-confident. Back then, it was like you had to have what everybody else has. Nowadays, you’re only cool if you have something that nobody else has and you can show them, “This is my special record and it is kind of cool.” It should be like this. People should have a strong relationship to the music they like, even if they are just consumers. It is perfect if they say, “I love this and I really want to promote it.”

I personally don’t have a problem with big stars and big major record companies going down the drain. It is not a problem to me. There is a lot of nostalgia when you talk about techno and it is happening to me as well. I remember the early ’90s as the gold-mining age of techno where it was all so new and you could meet people like Autechre and all these other heroes of mine that were really nice people, you were friends and it was a small network. This was back then the ’90s. I felt like everything fell apart with big companies coming in and promoting, making it a major business. But at the same time with superstardom you don’t really connect as a network in the scene.

Personally, I must say I am really a fan of MySpace, even if it is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and don’t really like what is behind that, it doesn’t matter. To me, the important thing is I started networking again on a really low level with anybody. All of you could send me emails and I might not reply the next day, maybe it would take weeks, maybe some of you wouldn’t get an answer because I just didn’t make it, but in general I try to respond to everything. I have just started working with an agency now for getting gigs, which is cool and saves money. But I totally like the way I did it for the last couple of years through MySpace on a direct level. And people from somewhere in Belgium or Spain were saying, “We do this little party, we don’t have much money, but we would love you to come and play…”

I must say I never, ever had a single bad experience. It was always really nice people. Whereas if I go with the agency I get my money usually and I’m not saying it is all bad, but it does happen that I get to places and I think, “Why am I here? What the fuck, the DJ before and after me, it is a different world. I don’t like anybody really, there is nobody who seems to be interested in me.” The promoter is really like, “Here is your money and your hotel, fuck off,” and it is such a difference. That is why I like the MySpace networking thing and you get to meet people on a small scale and it is really good.

Audience member

Did you have any difficulties giving out or bringing out different styles under one name?

Move D

It is hard to answer because I don’t know where I would be if I had done it all differently. I can only say that the way I did it, it is not working out too badly for me. It is OK. Sometimes I have the feeling that people who like one aspect of my work, they don’t even know about the stuff I am also doing. And if they do, they were probably not really caring much about it. I never felt like because I’m also doing this, they don’t really believe I am not a true house head or anything, so I was lucky in that respect.

I did say earlier on that there was a problem for me going to DJ and producing really downtempo music, there was a discrepancy, which was not so cool. Like, the places I got booked at did not always really fit, I felt. But, these days, it is no problem, it is really nice, and I think this is really yesterday’s approach if you think you can only do one thing. As a matter of fact, I do like people who stand for one sound and they’ve done it all their lives, like Larry Heard, it is fine to me. But I also really like people who show some changes, like Squarepusher or Miles Davis or the Beatles.

When I can see where they are moving and their horizon is not limited to these parameters, that they are open to other things… I think essentially that is important for music to be open. Otherwise, it would be wrong. Even, if I reflect a lot on old-school house music these days, I would not say I am trying to imitate it or copy it. First of all, I was there back then, and part of it in a way, but I also think it does not quite sound as it did sound back then. I think first of all you should not think too much about what you are doing, just do it…

Gerd Janson

If there are not any more questions, this is a nice way to end it. Just do it. Move D will show you his special records tonight, and please big the man like Move D up. Thank you for coming.

[Applause]