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INTERVIEW: MODESELEKTOR

“We needed to take the monkey. We had no choice.”

The above photo was taken by Nick Minieri (beantownboogiedown.com) when Modeselektor came to Identity Fest last summer. Dispatches from that show are as follows:

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Modeselektor’s on at 2:30 on the Main Stage so my friend Brian and I book it there so we can get good spots. We’re sitting near the aisle in the second row of seats when Gernot Bronsert and black jump-suited, sunglassed Sebastian Szary take the stage and Szary says matter-of-factly in a thick German accent:

“You’re all really welcome to come into this area right here,” pointing to the VIP pit right in front of the stage.  I love him instantly.

The security guard looks confused and then afraid; he has no choice but to open the gates as we pour in and secure spots feet away from the Berlin-based duo.

Modeselektor puts me in a humorous mood as they vivify the techno set with a whimsical performance: lip-syncing the slow, melodic samples while caressing each other, Szary laying down right in front of us, downing Heinekens and smoking cigarettes—at one point he even gave the rest of a full cigarette to someone in the crowd, went back behind his mixer and laptop and immediately lit a new one for himself.

I really want to hang out with these people.

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And we will. Tonight! Because Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary, aka electronic duo Modeselektor, are coming to Royale, and they're coming for YOU.

Here's the trailer for the US Monkeytown Tour:

Here's the interview I did with Gernot:

What’s the story behind your 50 Weapons label? Behind 50 Weapons is not really plan, ya? There’s not really a master plan. When we founded 50 Weapons in 2005 already, it was supposed to be a bootleg label where we wanted to release only 50-cent bootlegs. It was a pretty stupid idea. [Laughs] I mean, we were drunk and we had fun with some friends in the UK who helped with distribution…

So we don’t really have a concept behind how the label should sound in a couple of years, in a couple of releases.

When we started Monkeytown, we got so many demos that we couldn’t release them all on Monkeytown, and then we chose the more darker, clubby, future dance stuff for 50 Weapons and  the other stuff for Monkeytown.

How do you feel age affects electronic music, like the type of music coming from young producers who don’t give a fuck about genre? I actually totally don’t care. I just like music. If the tune is good, the tune is good. It’s very simple.

We won an award for the best Dubstep and Grime in 2008-2009 from Beatport—we didn’t even know at this point that we made Dubstep or Grime.

Actually it doesn’t totally matter which music is what genre .. it’s totally unnecessary to think about that. All we know is we like electronic music and not guitar music.

Like if we had to listen to guitar music, we’d go crazy or whatever.

On a scale of 1 to 10, is running a label easy or hard and why? I don’t know if it’s hard. It’s fun, you know? It’s not about the business, and I think that makes a difference.

We are  not running a label to make a lot of money. We are running the label to represent something which is cooler than money.

So I was always jealous to see that you have crews from France or crews from the U.S. or from the U.K who just their focus was on label platforms and they went on tour together and I was never--Szary and me-- we were never able to do that because we were just artists from the neighborhood.

When we stopped that and we started our own thing, we just wanted to make this dream to come true, that we have a platform and we give an opportunity for befriended artists to take them with us on tour or support them and just spread the word of good music, find new talented musicians and push them and bring them forward.

How many demos do you get and how do you manage to listen to them all? Oh, pshh. [Laughs]

And who listens to them? Who gets to decide what gets put on 50 Weapons and stuff? [Laughs] It’s always different … so a demo which you really like—it’s not very often, so we get tons of music. We have SoundCloud, so if someone wants to show us her music, she just needs to go on our SoundCloud site and put the music in our drop box and we have someone in the office who’s downloading the music for us, or sending us the relevant link.

But actually we are scanning non-stop anyways the music world, you know? If we find someone we really like, then we get in touch with them and try to work with them and make something happen.

For example, have you heard of Bambounou (Track 3 in mix below)? It’s a 21 year old guy from Paris and I just heard one track he made last year, and that was for me one of the tunes of the year. Really the tune. And I played that tune out. Then he realized that we were playing his tune, and then he got in touch with us and now we signed him for our 50 Weapons for an album.

Modeselektor – Essential Mix by Astronof

How many would you say if you had to guesstimate, that you get on your SoundCloud a day?

So I just checked this an hour ago and now I think we have two and a half million hits.

This week we had already 20,000 plays. But it’s just because we’re promoting the music on the label on the SoundCloud account.

Electronic music has always made a place for humanity and stuff, but there’s a lot of new technology to use now. Is putting some funny bits in your way of keeping it human or keeping your personality in your music in a way?

I think the trick is that we try our best to not think as much about what we’re doing and when we’re doing it. Actually right now we tried to make music in the studio this week and it’s almost impossible just because we are thinking too much.

We did a lot of music in the last 10 years and we know how to handle that problem.  We just need to spend a couple of time in the studio and

then at one point, when you’ve gone already crazy three or four times and you are depressed and happy, and you start drinking beer at 10 o’ clock in the morning. And when you are over this, at one point you get bored, and then you start making music.

And these are the moments we’re always looking for, because we cannot go into the studio and decide what kind of music we want to create. So it always depending on how we feel and how the mood is and how the situation is ..whatever.

Who do you hang out with? We have no other friends [then the artists on the label]. [Laughs] 

All musicians or artists or writers or whatever, but they are all creative people.

So we don’t really know normal people.

I mean, we are normal people, of course, but you know what I mean.

You played in Cambridge in the Enormous Room back in 2006. How do you remember that experience? It was very small.

We wanted to tell you that last time you played you had a converter issue--or the first time you played--and David Day said it won’t happen again. [Laughs profusely]

Do you ever get asked about Speaking in Code anymore? Yeah sometimes. I actually saw the movie once in the cinema in Berlin and it was really funny. Because we were really not prepared for this when they were filming us. I actually, the story, this documentation that electronic music was becoming more and more a personal thing—it was a very interesting twist in the whole story.

Yeah definitely. I love that movie. It was cool. What’s your favorite kind of beer? Not Budweiser. Of course not Budweiser. Maybe I don’t know, European old brands?

British beer…I don’t like British beer. I think Estrella from Spain is cool. Estrella. They sponsored the Sonar festival in Barcelona?

When I wrote about your set at Identity Fest last year, I said, "I I really want to hang out with these people." So I was wondering, will you hang out with us when you come? Of course! I think we are with the tour bus anyways so that's the only place we have to escape...

So I was wondering, what’s with all the monkeys? I don’t know. We’ve never really thought about it..

Pfadfinderei (the graphic design agency they work with/also do visuals for their shows) just came up with this one day and said, ‘This is actually your new logo.’ And we said, ‘Oh cool. Perfect.'

When they bring your artwork, you need to take it. You cannot say ‘No. It looks shit. We want a different one.’ That would tick them off.

We needed to take the monkey. We had no choice.

MMMMAVEN & BOWERY BOSTON PRESENT: MODESELEKTOR WITH EGYPTRIXXX

THU 4.19.12 ROYALE 279 TREMONT ST. BOSTON 617.338.7699 8PM/18+/$25 @MMMMAVEN @BOWERYBOSTON MMMMAVENAGENCY.COM BOWERYBOSTON.COM

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Awesome mix from my friend BALTIMORODER

for MMMMAVEN

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