Album of the Week: Pascal FEOS ‘Terra Bong’

Album of the Week: Pascal FEOS ‘Terra Bong’

5 February, 2010 | 8.25AM

• Written by: Terry Church
• Filed under: Music News: album of the week, level non zero recordings, pascal feos

It is 1984. In a quiet street in the small German town of Bad Nauheim a 16-year-old kid frantically destroys an encroaching line of pixelated alien spacecraft on a Space Invaders machine in a noisy video arcade.

“Hey Pascal, wanna make some money?” says a voice behind him. It’s the Italian man who runs a small club opposite. “I asked your dad and he said you can come work for me if you want.”

“Sure, what will I be doing?” the kid asked. “Oh, just playing some music for my customers. Come, I’ll show you how.”

The boy went with the man, who showed him his record collection and DJ equipment, and soon he was playing records for people on a dancefloor.

“It was at that small club that I discovered what it truly means to be a junkie,” jokes Pascal Dardoufas, now 42.

A quarter of a century later, Pascal is still a DJ, and as Pascal FEOS, he’s considered one of the original fathers of German techno.

His fourth solo album ‘Terra Bong’ has just been released, and it is our Album of the Week.

We spoke to Pascal FEOS in Frankfurt about his new record, his earliest club memories, and techno history.

You’ve been DJing for 25 years. This is your fourth album. What do you think are the most important things you’ve learnt about good club music?

As a DJ you always want to be on top of new music and play the latest stuff. You have to be upfront. But as a producer, I don’t really care much for trends.

My productions aren’t influenced by new production styles generally.

With my DJing I try to be hip, but as a producer I stick to my sound, and Pascal FEOS is always dancefloor orientated.

My albums aren’t experimental projects, or concept albums. I don’t want to be too complicated for my listeners.

Pascal FEOS makes DJ tracks, and all my albums are focused on club sounds.

How has your music changed over the years?

Just recently I was preparing my back catalog for Beatport, and to me, I don’t think my sound has changed much. Maybe it’s not as fast or hard as it used to be, but you can still feel the Detroit and Chicago influences in my earliest work.

For this album, I got some ideas from Bobby Konders and Carl Craig, and my first ever album was influenced by the Detroit sound. I’ve always had a connection to Detroit.

Some people have told me this album is deeper and more refined than my previous albums. It’s more specialist apparently.

Some of the sounds reminded me of early German trance music.

Funny you should say that, there are actually some sounds on this album that I recycled from my first ever album that I released 10 years ago. I always collect melodies, and I was going through my old sounds and they just seemed to fit with the sound of now. Those sounds have come back around.

Quite a few of the new German producers are playing with more melody, and more melodic bass. Techno has been focused around tools and beats for the last couple of years, but now it’s getting more atmospheric.

Not many techno albums have been released in the last few years that haven’t been affected by minimal or the recent explosion of tech house.

Thank you. That is what I don’t like. All those pitched up bass drums and extreme shuffle sounds were just getting too much. So many producers copy each other’s sounds to try and be trendy.

I’ve never been like that. I’ve always really focused on my sound, and my music has never had too many breaks, bleeps or clicks. It’s more hypnotic. I like to keep a flow with my music and build atmosphere.

Do you think your hypnotic sound came from the era you grew up in?

Perhaps. From the beginning, I was into Kraftwerk and they gave me ideas for music. Then when the Dorian Gray opened [a legendary Frankfurt club], that became a big thing for me. I saw Sven Väth play there and it was mainly all the early trance stuff.

Which track on the album has had the biggest response on dancefloors?

All of them! I test my songs in clubs and they’ve all had good reactions. Of course, someone will say as a DJ you know where to put your own songs to make people go crazy, and that’s true. But when I test a track in a club, I do it more for sound reasons and to see how the arrangement works. I don’t look at the crowd reaction so much.

What was the Dorian Gray like?

It was under Frankfurt airport. The first time I walked in, I was like ‘Wow, we’re underneath the airport, we’re connected to the rest of the world!’. You could fit about 1500 people in there and it had amazing sound, amazing light. The whole room was surrounded with neon lights, and when the light guy pressed a button, the whole club lit up.

No matter where you stood, even if you were by the bar, you were always be affected by the light. And they had this sub-bass system in there that simulated an earthquake. All the sound guy needed to do was press one knob and the whole club would shake. There was so much energy, it was like being inside an earthquake. And imagine a club with huge songs playing through that energy. Killer!

You must have been very young.

[laughs] Yeah, I managed to get in there when I was really young. As long as you were gentle with the door staff and friendly, you could sneak in.

And how did you get to play at Omen [Frankfurt’s early techno club]?
I was playing in this small club outside of Frankfurt, and Sven Väth heard about it, so he invited me to come and play with him at Omen.

Are you still friends with Sven?

Can you ask me something else?

Ok. Do you see your career aligned in some way to the Frankfurt pioneers? Or do you consider completely separate from them?

My thoughts on DJing have changed in the last few years. I’ve changed my point of view about what it means to be successful. I’ve realised that success doesn’t really matter. More important is to be real and true to yourself.

I didn’t want to keep this big lie going, to remain on top. The underground scene is what really matters to me. Of course, it cost me a lot of bookings and energy. But I just wanted to be real, and now I’m focused on that.

Maybe I’m lost in techno [laughs], but it was important for me. I had to change some friends, and change some of my DJ connections.

I launched my own label Level Non Zero, and I got a really cool bunch of producers to work with me. We all have similar outlooks on life, and we feel it’s better to, how you say in English, eat the dust from the earth than to be a wanker at the top?

Was there a particular experience that caused this change in your career path?

Yeah there was this one night in a club in Frankfurt. I don’t want to say which club it was, but the main DJ there owned the club. It was meant to be a special day for me, as it was my 40th birthday.

Some friends of mine from my label were supposed to be playing live before my set, but the main DJ decided to play 30 minutes longer than he should have because he owns the club and he has the right to do what he wants.

I said to him, ‘Hey, my live act are supposed to play’, to which he replied ‘So what? Cut their set by 30 minutes.’

I thought to myself, ‘If you have no respect for the guys who make the music, the actual producers, then why are you doing it?’

I know a lot of DJs that act like this, but I thought that’s not who I am or who I want to be.

So how do you stay true to yourself?

That’s kind of private I suppose, but sure let’s talk about it. If you’ve been in the scene like I have for 25 years you learn some things. For sure you do it for a job, and you need to earn money, but in the end that doesn’t make you happy. I live with the music. Half my body is probably electronic circuits [laughs].

What you put in, you get back. It’s never really about the money. When I was younger, I was a jealous person, jealous of other DJs or producers. Now I don’t care about any of that.

A young guy can come to me, and if he’s a good guy, I’ll support him. The word ‘minimal’ is such a bad word these days, but my philosophy on life is really minimal. I live in a minimal world. I produce minimal sounds, my flat is in a minimal way, and that’s how my life is.

I think it’s quite sad the way that minimal has become a bad word. It’s unbelievable. You see people come from a party and they complain that the DJ played minimal.

If you’ve been in the scene like I have for 25 years you learn some things. For sure you do it for a job, and you need to earn money, but in the end that doesn’t make you happy. I live with the music. Half my body is probably electronic circuits

But something good came from minimal. Richie Hawtin and all those guys built something true and exciting, and then it became popular, so people searched for something new because they saw it as commercial. But they don’t see the power behind it.

What’s the most important record that you’ve released?

My first solo album I think. I got the best reviews for it and it had the best response. I never expected that. Of course we sold a lot of copies too, which helped.

My first release on Cosmic Love was a killer one. Sven played that track four times in one night when I gave it to him.

When was that?

Sometime around 1990 or 1991.

Has your studio changed much since then?

Yes, I am more digital these days. I’m quite lazy now. I control everything using controllers. Of course I still have my old equipment. But I sample stuff a lot these days. Computers are powerful now, and with analogue to digital converters you can get some great samples.

For this album, about 30% of it was done through analogue sampling. I love to sample and play with samples. You can do so much with samples, much more than with just synth sounds.

Don’t you miss the hardware sessions?

I don’t feel bad about moving over to digital. I had a big discussion with Anthony Rother, and even he is going in that way now, and he was an analogue freak. Digital is just much more flexible.

What software do you use?

Ableton is killer for producton. Not sound wise, but for getting down ideas. Logic is great for sound. I use Spectrasonics for remixing. I want to have it easy when I’m in the studio. If I start a song, I don’t want to get confused about how things work, as that can kill an idea. Everything should be prepared and you have to know where your sounds are.

I’ve actually set up my own production school to help people learn how to produce.

What’s that like?

It’s a school in Frankfurt where we teach producers about sequencing. You can come to us if you want to know more about studio work. We teach you how to build a studio, what sort of rights you have as an artist, and how to release music.

I would have loved to have had some more experienced guys tell me in the early 90s how to do things, so that’s why we opened the school. To have someone tell you that it’s more important to spend your money on good speakers than on a controller is priceless advice. The young people we get are really thankful. It’s nice to be able to help.

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