Monday, 22 March 2010 11:20

Plenty of superstar DJs regularly enjoy what might be termed “presidential treatment"—private jets, secret passageways, massages of parts you never thought massagable—but few of them get visits from the actual president of their country.

But then, Slovenia’s Umek isn’t just any old superstar DJ. The fact that he’s ranked #39 in DJ Mag’s 2009 Top 100 DJs poll pales in comparison to his other achievements: pioneer of his country’s electronic music scene, entrepreneur, philanthropist, nurturer of new talent.

He’s done all this by keeping a few crucial values in mind: stay grounded. Stay focused. Give back to the people that have helped you along the way.

Oh, and be very, very good at what you do.

 

Umek’s new album, ‘Responding to Dynamic’, handily captures that last quality. Its 10 tracks show Umek doing what he does best: doling out savage bass lines, hair-raising sonics, and more drama than an Oscars ceremony. It’s classic, big-tent techno, unapologetically populist but uncompromising—a gargantuan dose of funk delivered with surgical precision.

In a genre where many artists feel the need to wrap up their albums in abstract concepts and airy philosophies, Umek treats his longplayer the way he’d treat any EP: what makes it provocative is its dogged pursuit of raw functionality. Its an investigation of timeless dancefloor mechanics played out across 10 relentless variations.

Fresh out of his meeting with Slovenian president Danilo Türk, the workaholic producer, DJ and grassroots dynamo took time out to talk to us about his music and his career.

You’ve been extraordinarily prolific over the years - according to Discogs, you’ve done around 100 records since 1996, not counting remixes. How can you stay so productive, especially when you’re touring every weekend?

I guess the size of my opus is just a logical consequence of the fact that I really love my work. I am quite disciplined, a bit of a workaholic, hyper-productive even, and so far I’ve never experienced serious creative blocks. But I don’t release everything, I do some selection – I have over 100 hours of more or less finished unreleased music in the archives.

Even after more than 15 years I really enjoy spending time in studio creating new music, so I’m there most of the week. In general I spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday traveling to the gigs and back. I need one whole day a week to listen to the music I get sent and to shop on Beatport. So I have three more days left for producing music and leisure activities. I treat myself with occasional ski or spa trip or something like that, but I spend most of my days in the studio. And if the creative bugs are biting me too hard, I always travel with my computer, so I can work on the way to the gigs and back.

There was so much positive energy, common consciousness, and the willpower to make things better on every level. And I was just old and stubborn enough to get sucked right in. I was a rebellious teenager looking for my purpose in life, and I found one.

What is your studio like? Hardware, software, or a mixture?

I’ve operated in a fully digital studio for quite a while. The heart of the studio is my Apple computer. I use a Mytek sound card and converter, and I just got Pro Tools HD1. I used to work with Pro Tools, but I shifted to Logic some years ago. Logic 9 is a very good program and I’ll continue to develop my tracks in it, but as I found the sound and engine of Pro Tools a bit better, I’ll transfer the files and do the final mix in Pro Tools in the future. I use Quested HM 412 speakers, which are real monsters and produce great sound, and additional Yamaha NS10 speakers for controlling.

I still keep a few hardware synths in the closet, but they are only of sentimental value: Waldorf’s Pulse, SE-1, ATC-1 and Omega 2 from Studio Electronics, Yamaha’s TX81Z and some Roland 808s and 909s lying around in some other studios. I think I have a pair of each, but honestly, I don’t really know where they are. All this stuff doesn’t have real value for me, as the sounds it produces are so old and overused that I can’t do anything really inventive or fresh with it. Right now I’m building another studio in my home, which will be really good. I’ll keep the old one operating and use them both to work on my music.

Umek ‘Squeamish Sort’

 

Are there any devices that you’re particularly excited about right now?

Pieces of software I’m using a lot are the sequencers Logic and Pro Tools, the Waves L 316 multi-band limiter, Flux for dynamics. Faw Circle is great to combine soft and hard synths, and I’m using Reaktor for plug-ins, rewired through Logic. I like the width of its sound – it offers a great stereo picture of the original synths. A good point of Reaktor is that it allows users to create their own synthesizers from the parts that are available on the homepage. There are freaks with brilliant ideas from all over the world that are creating unique sounds and make them available to other producers. This is a software community where everyone likes to show what he has put together in weeks and months of hard work. Sure, 90% of the content is a total crap, but with some knowledge and luck, you can discover that 10% of those tools that produce amazing sounds.

What is your favorite club to play right now? And what’s your favorite city or region to perform in?

I know this might sound cheesy, but that really changes on a weekly basis. I’m not a fan of generalizations, but I feel that Europe still stands out when it comes to the musical education of the crowds. Europe has the richest tradition of electronic dance music, and that’s reflected in the club and festival culture. On the other hand, people in Asia and USA have just started discovering or re-discovering this scene, and they’re really passionate about it. In Eastern Europe, the Balkans were overlooked in the past, so there’s a lot of fresh creative energy and parties right now. But when it comes to people having a good time, South America is the place to be. It’s something about the character of the people that brings each party to another level. Anyway, I feel that electronic dance music is a universal thing, with special, local spices, so I like to perform and enjoy the party wherever people invite me.

There is something special when I play in Slovenia, where I’m often more personally involved in organization of the events, and the ex-Yugoslav region in general, as these guys supported me from my first steps. I’ve just spent the whole weekend in Serbia, where I played Sparks club in Niš and headlined the indoor event for almost 4000 people in sports hall in Novi Sad. The energy there was amazing.

If you plan to spend your summer holidays at the Croatian or Slovenian Adriatic coast, I recommend that you book some resort not too far from Poreč, where I hold a summer residency at a really good club called Byblos. This venue hosts parties with the biggest house artists, like David Guetta, Erick Morillo or Roger Sanchez, every week. Last year I performed there for the first time, and as my techno night turned out to be a great success, they’ve offered me a summer residency this summer. It will be built on the musical vision of my 1605 project, and there will always be some fresh names as well as big techno artists performing with me. We’re still putting the program together, so check out my website for updates.

Umek ‘Responding to Dynamic’

 

How would you say that your sound has changed over the years? Your early material definitely displays the influence of Tresor, Surgeon, Liebing, Ho etc. - it’s tight, loopy techno with a whole lot of funk - while your more recent records have some minimal influence (even if they’re not exactly “minimal").

With the respect to all those artists, who are also my friends, and Tresor, who have done their fair share of scene building, the only one that really influenced me was Surgeon. I did play records from all the others but Surgeon’s records stood out. Even from today’s point of view you can hear that his music sounds a bit special. I loved the sound of Birmingham, and it was Surgeon who really took me totally into techno. Until then I played and produced very versatile electronic tracks, from techno to house and trance. But in 1995, after I discovered Surgeon, I decided to focus only on techno.

Later we developed kind of our own Slovenian sound—a bit more tribal techno in the era of Recycled Loops, and finally the sound I’m producing and playing for the last three or four years. I agree that I’ve never produced or played straight minimal music, as I’m not attracted to it. I like a more distinctive, bass-driven and energetic sound. But I adapted to the fact that techno was slowing down and made my sound richer and more versatile. But it’s still very energetic music with strong basslines.

What was it about Surgeon’s music that impressed you so much?

Until 1995 we played all electronic dance music regardless of genre: there was so-called rave music (happy hardcore), techno, house, hard trance, Detroit or Detroit-influenced records. We were still learning about the music and the scene, so we usually bought the biggest hits and played them at our parties. When I look back on the first two years of my career I can only say I was in primary school. At some point I discovered the German Frontline (now Raveline) magazine. My colleagues had to translate for me so I could learn about the artists, trends, record reviews. One day I came to the record shop in Munich and checked out one of Surgeon’s records. And I discovered this amazing underground techno. I bought some of his releases on Downwards: ‘Pet 2000’, ‘Magneze’, ‘Pork Machine’… He made such an impression on me. And I loved this sound even more with every new release. His sound was sharp, he didn’t believe in compromise. And under this influence I decided to focus on techno as a DJ and producer. I got in touch with my musical soul.

Umek ‘Slap’

 

I was surprised to learn that you used to DJ house music as well. What are house-music producers inspired you? Do you still DJ house, or produce it?

I remember playing Terence FM’s records on Cajual Records. I liked Robert Owens, Junior Boys Own, Relief. I was huge fan of DJ Sneak and the whole Chicago house scene. I have a big collection of classic house records. I always followed house for fun, more as a hobby than my professional calling. But I was one of the first promoters of house nights in Slovenia, with three weekly residencies, so at some point 14 out of 16 bookings in one month were for house sets. Then I realized things that things had gotten a bit out of hand, and I decided to focus only on my techno career. I felt, and in fact still do, that my soul is there. I am not a purist producer and DJ. I made some house records in the past, but with clear techno influences. And I still incorporate some house and tech-house elements in my techno tracks. One of those is ‘Pravim Haos’, released on Cocoon Records few months ago, which is quite housey, but not a typical house record.

Our first rave was held in a fireman’s hall that we had rented for a one-off gig. The night went so bad that we couldn’t even afford to have the place cleaned afterwards, and we to clean it ourselves.

What was the Slovenian electronic-music scene like when you started out? Where were parties held, in clubs? Bars? Underground spaces?

I discovered electronic dance music by listening to the student radio station in my hometown Ljubljana, as they were introducing the first weekly show with underground electronic dance music in Slovenia. The same crew hosted parties at the club K4, also run by the student organization. That’s where I started my DJ career, and it’s still my favorite club. The thing that really got me into it was the novelty of the sound. This music sounded so fresh, like nothing that I’d ever heard until that time.  The music industry in Slovenia was, and still is, very locally based, and almost non-existent from a German, French, British, or Italian point of view. We had some records shops but not with this kind of music. You have to bear in mind that in the early ‘90s there was no internet, CDs had just emerged as an industry standard, club culture was not covered on TV or in the mainstream press, so we had to go to Germany to buy specialized magazines in order to know what was happening outside. In Slovenia, our whole generation was raised on pirate cassettes, which were our “study material”. And we had to travel almost 500 kilometers by bus to Munich to buy techno on vinyl; that’s also where I experienced my first big raves. The information and the music were both scarce, but we really fell in love with the music and the scene, as we had to put some effort into it and build the scene from scratch.  There was no real infrastructure for this kind of music at that time. We had some nice discotheques dominated by Italo-dance as well as western and domestic pop music, just a few underground student clubs and two student radio stations in the whole country that were dominated by alternative pop and rock music. There were some guys before me who ran the electronic music show on student radio and the electronic night in Ljubljana’s student club K4, but I was among the pioneers who brought the scene to another level after we discovered the mass raves in Germany.

 

Our first rave was held in a fireman’s hall that we had rented for a one-off gig. The night went so bad that we couldn’t even afford to have the place cleaned afterwards, and we to clean it ourselves. But after we built up the hype, the open airs and events in abandoned industrial spaces and expo centers started to flourish. In the late ‘90s the scene was already so big that many clubs adopted commercial and alternative electronic dance music as their main program, and even more commercial discotheques started to get into it. In the middle of the ‘90s, Radio Salomon, the first radio station with a daily prime time DJ program, started up. Even it was really commercially oriented, it did help introduce electronic dance music to a wider audience and made it more acceptable. On the Slovenian coast near the Italian and Croatian border, the 2500-capacity Ambasada Gavioli club opened, which was another important step to take this music into the mainstream.

But the taste of our whole generation was raised on listening to pirate tapes. In the early ‘90s one of my friends bought a satellite dish, and he called me the minute after he discovered this specialized radio program. And we were hooked. The program was run by DJ Phantasy and Tasha Killa Pussy, and it was there where I heard Carl Cox for the first time. There were contributions from different DJs, some playing only Detroit stuff or only hardcore stuff; Red Planet and Underground Resistance were heavily rotated, and we were literarily shocked, as we had never heard that kind of music before. I recorded whole crates of tapes and didn’t even know the artists and titles at the time. Only few years ago, when on-line music shops offered this kind of music, did I put names to the sounds. I’ve gone over whole catalogues to find tunes I loved as a kid and bought up original, old-school vinyl. I’ve paid up to 100 pounds for some rarities. So Dance Nation and Green Apple were huge influences for me as they opened my ears to so much fresh music.

Umek ‘Legitimate Priest’

 

In Germany, the rise of techno coincided with the fall of the Berlin wall, and techno culture became a meeting point for young people from East and West. Did techno play any role in Slovenian young people’s attitudes around the Ten-Day War and Slovenian independence?

I don’t think electronic dance music played any particular role in that conflict or the process of gaining our independence, which, at least in Slovenia, started in the late ‘80s and went through a long but very soft transition. Rave culture really hit us few years later. So we don’t have any stories like our German colleagues or even our Serbian friends, who organized parties during the bombardment of their cities years later. There were some alternative bands like Laibach and Borghesia, who were part of anti-establishment movements and tapped into electronics, but in general techno culture in Slovenia was always a more or less hedonistic leisure activity. Still, we felt were doing groundbreaking work, and we were really proud to stand apart from the media, which didn’t always welcome us with open arms.

But the early ‘90s were very dynamic, and the music flourished because it connected with the sudden feeling of freedom, to do what we wanted to do and go wherever we wanted. It’s not that living in Slovenia was like living in Romania or Russia. Our borders were always very open to the west and north, and we could follow what was happening there, but it was different when we gained independence. We got democracy and adopted capitalism, borders opened up, and people started to think a bit differently. There was so much positive energy, common consciousness, and the willpower to make things better on every level, from politics and industry to society and culture. We were introduced to so many new ideas and consumer goods at the time that western pop culture really flourished.

And I was just old and stubborn enough to get sucked right in. I was a rebellious teenager looking for my purpose in life, and I found one. I discovered techno music and, quite early on, decided to become a big, internationally respected DJ. It wasn’t just a wish. I really meant it and I dedicated my life to achieving that goal. I left school and I quit basketball just when I was invited to the national team. You must imagine how my mom felt when I came home and told her that I was leaving school to become this big DJ figure. It was a big shock for her. But in time she saw that I was really focused, and she supported me. And the whole family now agrees that I’ve done the right thing in following my dream.

Does anything that you learned as a basketball player apply to your life as a producer and DJ?

No, not really. Discipline and dedication are two qualities that sportsmen should have, but I’m not sure you develop them by doing sports. I believe this is part of your character. I was never forced to do sports or to do music. But I did both and enjoyed both very much. I was training for eight years, and only in the last two did I get involved in music.

Umek ‘Pedestrian’

 

What is Slovenia’s electronic-music scene like today?

The Slovenian scene is very diverse: we have a long tradition that we’ve grown domestically. Foreign event-promotion companies have just recently gotten involved doing things like indoor trance events, but the clubs and festivals are all run by local entrepreneurs and artists. The Slovenian audience’s tastes are pretty specific, and there are artists that are still really popular here even though they aren’t so popular on a global level. For example, until last year DJ Rush was a bigger star than Tiësto. Space DJz and hard techno DJs are still bigger than most if not all of progressive house artists. The Slovenian electronic dance scene was always driven more by the underground than the mainstream, although we’ve established a nice co-habitation of the commercial Italo-dance and Euro-dance scenes and more underground house and techno parties.

Traditionally techno is the dominant genre, and the house scene is also strong. Progressive and breakbeat almost non-existent, trance is really small but growing, and other styles are nurtured as niche underground scenes. We have big commercial outdoor and indoor events as well as very good underground parties. We get all the big names and new artists, and we have a lot of good homegrown DJs and especially producers that are releasing on top international labels. As everywhere else in the world we feel the recession, I personally don’t have trouble scoring gigs in Slovenia, but smaller artists are complaining that there’s less and less venues and opportunities to perform.

Umek ‘Individual Breath’

 

I know that there’s the SEEME festival, and it seems like I hear about quite a few other events throughout the region (especially in Croatia and Romania, and Belgrade has the Dispatch festival). Do you think that the countries of the former Eastern Bloc are developing any kind of regional identity, when it comes to electronic music - that is, a sound, a style, or an attitude they can call their own?

 

The SEEME festival is a project launched by the Western club industry with the goal of unifying national scenes in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe that right now have very little in common. Even the scenes in ex-Yugoslavia don’t have real regional identity. So it’s impossible to talk about the common electronic-music identity of the wider region, much less the whole of Eastern Europe.

The last time that our region was known for a typical sound was in time of Recycled Loops with me, Valentino Kanzyani, and Marko Nastić as the leaders of the scene in Slovenia and Serbia. We were the crew, we used the same tools to create music and thus we sounded similar. The same thing that happened in Detroit, Chicago, Paris, Berlin, Sweden…

But I can’t say that Eastern Europe has a unique sound. I don’t even hear it in the ex-Yugoslav territories. Marko and his friends are gathered around the Recon Warriors/Traffica label cluster, Valentino is defining his own deep house sound under the Jesus Loved You label; me, Tomy DeClerque and the whole new generation of artists are defining new Slovenian techno sound, Beltek is doing pioneering work in trance, and Gramophonedzie, the hottest new artist from the region, is conquering the world with a very specific, retro house sound.

You told Resident Advisor that you were sending out 100+ demos a month when you first started trying to get signed. Were those on cassette? The employees at the post office must have thought you were quite a character, always turning up with another batch of packages.

For promos, cassette was the industry standard at that time. And yes, people at the post office did look at me sometimes in a special way as I bought a hundred or so envelopes and started writing out addresses on them all. And the labels still sent replies through snail-mail back then. And they all answered in the same way: that it’s good material but not for their label, though I should send them my future promos. I was sitting in the studio when I got a call from the UK one day. It was Regis on the other side of the line and he offered me to release my first record. I was so happy, I was jumping all over the studio like mad! I’d had some releases as co-producer before, but this was my first solo release.

Tell me about “Party for a Cause,” your humanitarian event.

This is my special annual 6-hour solo performance in Ljubljana’s central city park, Tivoli, that happens every last Saturday in August. It’s an open-air charity event that supports various organizations that help young people in distress. Each year more than 30,000 people come to party, and everyone that wants to get involved has to donate one symbolic euro by sending an SMS on their mobile phone, and the reply message is accepted as a ticket. The event is part of wider SMS-donation campaign, and the mobile network company and other involved parties chip in their own donations, so the final sum is always really big, we gather tens of thousands of euros each year. And that’s what makes it really special: it’s fabulous event, I use it to test a lot of my new material, and we help other people by having fun at the same time.

Umek ‘Uncouth Manners’

 

What are you working on now, any big projects or anything unusual?

The most special thing I’m working on right now is my first sample CD for music producers. I’ve just finished a new collaboration with Beltek, for the Italian label 303 Lovers, that sounds really different than 2008’s ‘Army of Two’ on Armada. I’m going to Miami in couple of days where I’ll be performing at the Bullitt Bookings party, plus we’re doing our own 1605 label party, and I’m playing Carl Cox’s stage at the Ultra Music Festival. Then I’m off to South America, have a few gigs in Europe, and on May 8 I’m hosting another Dan Elektronike (Day of Electronics) event in the Ljubljana city centre.

And what’s next for 1605?

The music we release is quite versatile. We are focusing on techno of all shapes, colors and sizes, as the label follows the course that I’m developing as a producer and a DJ. Sometimes it could be house blended with techno elements or very hard techno. But I always release music that I play in my sets. When I get a demo I always ask myself, if this is something that I personally like. The next two steps are, how would this track sound in my set and how would the crowd on the dance floor respond to it. But no matter if it’s a techno label, we’re always open to any good ideas even if they’re a bit borderline when it comes to the genre.

Another specific of 1605 is that we take special care of new artists that have not yet been signed to other labels and give them some exposure and push for further work. We have a good promo pool and a dedicated label manager, which allows us to get some attention from the scene’s tastemakers. And I’m always happy when some of “my” artists get a track signed on another label – the bigger the better, especially if that happens on account of their involvement in 1605 project. We are a small label and we will never sign artists to 1605 exclusively, but we’re glad to release good music from new artists and introduce them to the scene.  And about our new projects: I’ve just released my artist album ‘Responding to Dynamic’ on Monday, and we just sent out the new EP from Wehbba and Ryo Peres to our promo pool. I’m in the middle of compiling the remix version of the album, with contributions from artists such as Spektre, Christian Smith, Koen Groeneveld, Kaiserdisco, and Joey Beltram. Then we’ve scheduled some very interesting projects from Russian producer Tesla and Spartaque from the Ukraine. Loco & Jam and Fergie are also working on their new contributions, and there’s a rising producer named Steve Parker that has sent me some demos. And I count on the guys that have already released stuff on my label to produce some new material, too. Right now we get sent so much good music to release it that we are literally unable to get everything that we want signed.

Umek ‘No One Could Have Suspected

 

Where do you see the music scene headed in the next year or so? It feels like the status quo of the last few years (the ubiquity of minimal, etc.) has been shaking up a little bit, opening up space for more different sounds. You have always blended sounds from different scenes (techno, progressive, minimal). Where do you see things going?

Styles are coming and going. Nothing really new is happening any more. New styles are just a fusion of things that were already done in the past. Music comes and goes in cycles, one genre dominates the scene until people get saturated with it, and as it fades away the next one takes its place. The minimal wave is now fading away in favor of tech house and deep house, more organic music. One good thing that the minimal wave brought was unification of the scene. DJs from house, techno and trance could play the same records in their sets and those records became proper anthems. Right now the genres are again getting more distinct, house is going back to its organic roots, techno is gaining pace and energy—and at the same time, tracks are more genre bound and there are fewer big crossover records. But at least not all DJs sound the same to someone that is not very into this kind of music, and maybe they will find the whole scene more attractive and colorful in the coming months.

Umek ‘Utopian Societies’

 

What producers are you excited about right now?

I’m always on the lookout for young talents and fresh ideas. I’ve mentioned most of the artists that I’m really into right now, but there’s a bunch of really talented artists from our region. Beltek is the hottest trance artist in the region. There’s Siniša Lukič from Bosnia and Vladimir Ačič from Novi Sad, Serbia, and whole new breed of artists that are redefining Slovenian techno sound: Tomy DeClerque, Ian F, Andrew Technique, Aneuria, F.Sonique ...

What is the one question that journalists never ask you, that you really wish they would?

Actually, that’s an interesting question, but I don’t have a really good answer for it! I’m doing at least one or two interviews each week, sometimes even five, so you can imagine I’m answering the same questions all the time, trying to tell same stories all over again in at least a bit inventive way. So I really appreciate it when somebody asks me interesting questions, even if they’re a little weird.

Source: beatportal