|
Richie Hawtin
To put it lightly, Richie Hawtin is kind of a geek. I didn’t know this for sure until he started talking Star Wars, though I should have seen the obvious signs. He’s obsessed with the technology that makes the music that makes robots fall in love. His new DE9: Transitions is not your typical mix album, nor is it your typical experiment in the latest technology. Hawtin just loves how all those gadgets sound like on record, and he won’t stop until every idea in his brain is out in the world. That could take a while, so in the meantime, let’s see what goes on in the mind behind the machine and let's find out what's really behind that plastic hair and wardrobe of white t-shirts.
Someone earlier today had the question, “what do you think of people not liking what you do, saying you should be doing more techno?” If you were going to ask that question, then don’t!
How do you even answer that?
It’s a hard one. Every step of the way I’ve tried to progress and evolve my sound. Luckily I’ve had a group of fans who have contintued with me, but there have always been people along the way who say ‘why don’t you do what you used to?’
Do you even care?
I don’t really care. I’m glad they’ve liked something that I’ve done. But the people who understand what I’m doing, even if they don’t’ like everything that I do, they know that part of my sound is pushing forward and trying to evolve. It’s part of what we do as humans, right?
And there’s an artistry to it. I just saw your video for “The Tunnel…”
For that, we were trying to do something different and it was a collaboration between a good friend of mine [Ali Demirel] who was a very interesting video artist. Part of the push into new areas and try to see how it works and interacts with your ideas. He helped do some of the Plastikman videos and we’ve been working together on and off for the last couple of years. He sees what I hear.
Did you know each other personally before you worked together?
One day I received a package in the mail of a video for an old track by Plastikman and it was so simple and so fucking on point that I called him up and was like “I don’t know you, but you did a video after I tried to do three or four videos with my own ideas of what the music was about and you just nailed it without even knowing me. We searched for projects to work together and the DE9: Transitions was the first big project we did together.
Everyone always talks about the technology, but what are some of the creative ideas that go into making a record like this? It’s more complex and there’s more to say than the technology.
I think from the get-go, how to do it technically, it came from playing a lot of long sets the last couple of years, a lot of afterhours where I could really be free with the music I was playing. The longer I played the longer I could mix records together and the more open the audience and perhaps I was to what I was playing. You really start to climb inside and let the tracks really twist inside your head and they start to relate and play off each other. That progression is the whole idea of Transitions, you have moments… small little epiphanies for the whole CD. To have it so constant so that if you press pause and you’re like “wow, this is really cool.” It’s all different people’s ideas and personalities coming together to create something new.
It’s something organic and synthesized at the same time.
Exactly. There’s a lot of really amazing music right now and when you put all that together, I wanted to have all this technology controlling it but still on the other end with some type of organic or human feel.
Did that interest in being, I guess, more personal, affect your decision to make this a Richie Hawtin project instead of a Plastikman project?
It’s funny, I think with the last Plastikman album, it was very personal, and usually the DJ mixes are a little bit away from you because it’s other people’s music, but with this one, it’s the most personal DJ mix I’ve ever done because it’s really about who I am and how I got here. Because I was so close to many of the artists involved it became very personal. For some people they know some of the tracks, for some people it’s a bit of a history lesson.
Without being all, educational feeling.
Yeah, well so many of the artists trusted me with their music I had to really feel this one and make sure I was going to deliver the goods.
at’s some pressure.
I always put pressure on myself [laughs]. I always work well under stress and pressure. Working and recording the album in Berlin… all the guys were around and no one was hearing it until it was done. Ricardo [Villalobos] and Matt John and friends heard it in its final stage in the studio, but up until that point nobody was hearing it. Clark Warner, who runs M_nus with me didn’t hear it until it was finished.
I know you live there, but why Berlin?
Well, no dis to anyone’s country or city, but when I started out, North America was a different place. Detroit was a suburb of Windsor, [Ontario] and I would go back and forth daily, it was what inspired me, it was where my friends were. And now, people don’t go fucking back and forth! They’re too scared… you have to go through passport control… it’s two different countries. If you take that on a wider level, the freedoms have just been scraped away from us in north America and to do anything which is a little left of center, a little bit out of the understanding of the masses, it’s fucking impossible here. And when you’re working in an artform that’s all about change and all about progression I found it more restricting and more and more uninspiring to be here. I love coming through America, I’m having a great time on tour here and in Canada. I meet so many cool people who are in their cities because they want to be or they’re stuck in their cities who are supporting these ideas and continuing to push forward. But for me to go to the next phase I needed to be somewhere that I reminded of the early days where both peers and up and coming new people would challenge me. After traveling the planet for 15 years I think the only place with that going on right now is Berlin.
Matt John is moving to Paris…
Paris, London, New York, all talk about how they use to be and Berlin talks about how it is. I love all those other cities – and I’m not saying there’s nothing going on – but it’s every day of the week in Berlin. Where else can you walk down the street, bump into Ricardo [Villalobos], have a coffee on your way to talk to Abelton about software ideas and then end up going to a club to see Matthew Herbert play for eight hours and he’s starting at 8am on a Sunday morning? [laughs] You know what I mean?
have this community that you’re establishing in Berlin…
I’m really an adamant supporter of Berlin. Also, Berlin has welcomed artists for centuries. In the early 1900s before the war it was a place for theater and vaudeville and of freaks and it continues to be that way.
Have you learned German?
I’ve been taking classes… it’s getting better and better.
On a more superficial note, your sense of style is notable, especially when most DJs tend to look the same. You have to tell us, who does your hair and how many white t-shirts do you have?
In the last year or two I’m suddenly turned on to white t-shirts. I’ve had one main stylist or idea person in Windsor who does my hair. There are a number of different facets about being an artist and taking your art form to the masses. There’s a way to work within the game to get more people to at least listen to your CD and hopefully be into what you’re doing. The whole idea of imagery was there from the beginning. As I’ve grown older I’ve looked and read things about some of the old jazz musicians or artists like Rothko and those guys and how people saw them back in the day. I guess that’s all filtered through the brain. And I was never into David Bowie, I don’t know any of his songs, I don’t own a David Bowie album, but from growing up and reading here and there I love the idea that Bowie changed his image so much and that was always a part of it. He continued to challenge his audience and himself and we have to do that in electronic music.
It’s not done enough in the dance music scene.
It’s not, and it’s part of being an artist. If you can learn all these different things, it’s a way to get your ideas across.
What are you doing with your time off these days?
Well, I’m going to a health spa for ten days to work on some new ideas for –
Wait… you’re going to a health spa to work?
Yeah, you know, my life is work. It’s my time to filter through all the new ideas, all the emails I’ve sent to myself in the past two or three months, I want to be ready to implement in January, when I usually take a month off.
Will you at least get a steam and a facial while you’re there?
Oh the steam room is one of the best places to lie down and think.
What are some of these new ideas?
I want to do a large scale M_nus tour, but it won’t be a showcase, because it’ll be a bunch of friends that happen to record on the same label. It’s like inviting everyone over to our house and taking the house around America. We want to connect the dots across North America and give people our town. Right now… I just watched Star Wars Episode III, and it’s a little bit like after III and before IV, and the Jedi’s have gone off to exile and Yoda still has the force and they’re waiting for the right time to come back.
Who’s Yoda, then?
I don’t know… Ricardo! No, but I think everyone’s ready again…
So does that make you Obi-wan or Luke?
If I’m Obi-wan I have to sacrifice myself next year. I’ve got too much to do before I sacrifice myself.
So you’re Luke.
Perhaps. But I don’t want to be Luke because then the hot girl is my sister.
Yeah. Or your mom.
It’s all incestuous like the M_nus camp anyway [laughs].
Do you all share girlfriends?
We won’t even go into that side of the story.
Oh come on! That’s the most interesting. Do you share groupies? Are there groupies?
I don’t know. I have some crazy fans and supporters and Magda has even more these days. She’s made such a dent in Europe and she’s so much a part of M_nus and the success we’re having.
Hmmm…You totally avoided the question of girlfriend sharing…
Nov 29, 2005, 12:19 PM
by rhythmism
SOURCE
Enjoy Fokers..
Harold
___________________
My Space
| quote: | Originally posted by callme
I've always meant to ask this....who the fuck are you? I mean i have never heard of you or the 5 friends you have on your myspace. Official info : chokeonit |
|
