Camea and Tim Xavier, the techno couple

Camea and Tim Xavier, the techno couple

1 September, 2009 | 2.33AM

• Written by: Terry Church
• Filed under: Music News: camea, clink, ltd-400, tim xavier

Two Americans share a studio in Berlin: he is the mastering engineer for some of techno’s biggest record labels. She is one of the most respected DJs on the minimal scene. Both run influential labels and produce underground music for dark nightclubs.

Together, they’re like a mini techno factory, an unconventional couple who share a passion for bleep-ridden beats, and a love for each other.

“Both of us are career minded, so we can co-exist quite happily,” says Camea Hoffman, the boss of Clink, who has been together with Tim Xavier for five years.

“We’re both obsessed with techno, and that’s great because we get to talk about it as much as we want,” continues Tim. “We’ll go to lunch and she’ll say, ‘so I read this thing on RA today’ and I’ll know exactly what she means. It’s not the kind of conversation you can have with just anyone.

“Although we try not to talk about music too much - after 8pm we’re not supposed to talk about music anyway.”

Camea and Tim Xavier are like any other normal couple, except they have a unique understanding of each other’s careers and needs because they are both globetrotting DJs. “We’ll sometimes argue about who will take the dog for a walk, and it’ll be settled by who has got the later flight to a gig,” says Tim, with a grin.

We are sitting in their studio in Kreuzberg, Berlin, a large white walled room with two sound-proofed booths. Camea’s area is a small, fully enclosed space, with just enough room for a mixing desk and a window to the leafy outside world.

Xavier’s space is large and full of curious equipment. In the corner sits a Scully vinyl cutting lathe, a clunky and archaic-looking machine with a microscope, that Xavier uses to cut acetate master plates for vinyl records.

There’s a rack of outboard sound equipment, mainly compressors and EQs, and a solitary turntable, as well as shelves full of vinyl. There’s an air of sophistication and science about the place, and if it were not for the box of an air pistol BB gun, the giant collection of beer bottles outside, and the cheeky smiles of its affable owners, it would be a little intimidating, for this is where the magic happens.

Camea, you have a classical music background?

I studied piano for 11 years and grew up with classical music and jazz. When I was younger I played clarinet, sax, trumpet and flute.

My dad was a classical music buff, and Beethoven had a profound effect on me. My neighbour used to have this jukebox with all these old rock n roll records, but I always used to ask them to change the music to Mozart or Beethoven instead.

Do you think that your background and love for classical music affects your music today?

People say that they can hear those dark undertones in my music, definitely. They can sense drama and anticipation, two things I’ve always admired about classical music.

But my music is more instinctual than intellectual, I don’t plan to make drama, it just happens naturally.

And how did you discover dance music?

I guess I have the generic rave story. I grew up on the east side of Seattle, and I started going out to raves. At first, I didn’t really get the music, and used to have arguments about it with my friends as I didn’t think it was proper music because it had no actual instruments.

It was so new back then, so people really argued about whether electronic music was “proper” music. We even laughed about it. And then one night, I became hooked on the crowd, and mesmerized by the music. I suddenly understood it.

Can you remember where that happened, and which DJ played?

Yeah, me and my friends drove up to Vancouver to this rave. It was a female DJ called Jackie Christie. I had never seen a female DJ before, and she made an impact the moment she started playing. I was amazed at her energy and the way the room changed when she began playing.

She played eight hours, and I was completely blown away. I just remember when I left thinking, “I want to do that”.

And then you moved to New York in 2002?

Yes, I moved there about six months after 9/11. I guess I wanted to get as close to Europe as I possibly could, as that’s where all the music was coming from that I liked.

I used to listen religiously to mix CDs from Europe. I started DJing locally and met a lot of cool people. I met Tim, and then Tony Rohr, Ambivalent, and Inside Out, who I run my label Clink with. They were all doing interesting projects.

So they were all doing interesting projects that you believed in, so you decided to launch Clink?

I felt like the next step was to launch a label, but back then I was so naive about it. I had no idea about the music industry, or what it meant to run a record label and compete with other labels.

I just really believed in what they were doing and my instincts told me that it was right to start a label. We connected artistically, I guess.

Tim Xavier: I think you’re being a bit modest. When Camea started Clink, it was pretty amazing as she had this serious determination. She told the boys - Elon, Alexi Delano and me - I’m really serious about this label. We’re going to do vinyl, digital, and every release will have unique artwork. We’re going to create something special.

All of us guys had released for years on so many labels, and we had heard the same promises made many times by other label owners. But Camea really brought Clink together, in the exact way that she promised. As a result, we as artists, became more serious about our work. I even said to her, “honey you’re the boss. I’ll be your puppet, just tell me what to do”, and she guided the whole thing.

And this all went down in New York?

Tim Xavier: I had been living in New York City for three years. Tony Rohr was actually a neighbour of mine, but we weren’t super tight or anything. And then one day, he came over for a coffee, which led to us making a track together in the studio - that’s where our name Afternoon Coffee Boys comes from.

And the track ended up being a bomb, something just clicked in the studio. Camea said she wanted the track to be the first Clink release. It ending up selling loads and it was the perfect start for the label.

Do all of the Clink artists share a similar vision?

Camea: We don’t all have the same vision or the same sound. Inside Out came from the IDM scene, Mark Henning is a true tech house guy, and Alexi Delano has always been in the middle of everything.

Tim Xavier: I came from hard techno, and so did Tony Rohr.

Camea: Everyone just has really neat and different ideas. I don’t push the artists. We don’t claim to be anything - terms like ‘innovative’ or ‘pushing the envelope’ I think add unnecessary pressure to artists, so we try to avoid those statements.

Tim, are your harder techno days behind you?

Yes definitely. I’ve been DJing for 15 years now and I began producing in 2000. I moved to Chicago from Houston, and really pushed myself to produce. I think I released 25 12-inches in a short space of time. I actually played in Seattle once, and Camea saw me there and was, I guess, smitten.

Camea: I don’t think everyone needs to know about that!

Tim Xavier: Why not? The truth is good. So anyway, I met Camea at this bar and was really gauche about it at the time. I didn’t really know much about her, other than she was just this local DJ.

We hooked up, and then one day she stayed over at my place, and left to go to work the next morning. She left her record bag at my house, so I remember digging through her recrods and finding some seriously cool music - early minimal stuff on Perlon, Studio Eins, Basic Channel. I thought, ‘Damn this girl knows her music!’

I was still making hard techno then, but Camea then sweetly suggested one day, ‘You know, this minimal stuff is the hot shit. Maybe you should just try slowing down your BPMs a bit? You know, not make the hard stuff?’. I thought, ok I’ll try that. So I made a track that was about 125 BPM, and I was hooked instantly on the vibe.

The track was called ‘Deception De Real’, and it was the first record I ever put out on my LTD-400 label - see the spray painted vinyl over there [indicating a row of different coloured vinyl sleeves on a shelf]. That’s my LTD-400 stuff. It ended up getting signed to Ricardo Villalobos’ ‘Green & Blue’ compilation and being a massive success. The success of that record got me seriously into minimal techno.

And how did you get into mastering?

When I lived in Chicago, I tried to find a vinyl cutting machine. I always admired the guys who would cut these super loud records at the end of the 1990s, and I wanted to learn how to do that.

I ended up understudying this man in New York, called Jack Biswell. I bought his studio from him. The deal was that I would bring him more techno and tech house business, in return for him teaching me how to cut vinyl.

We started cutting a lot of techno records, and then the success of Beatport skyrocketed the demand for digital mastering, so I got into that too.

What exactly does the mastering process involve?

Well as a label, you send me your music, and I make it ready for mass consumption. I’m in control of the volume and fidelity.

Is it complicated?

Well I only cut the vinyl master template, I don’t press vinyl. See this disk here [indicating a blank shiny black plastic disk] is acetate, see it smells. I use my cutting machine over there - I have a Scully - to cut the music onto acetate. That then goes to the pressing plant, and they use the acetate to press the actual vinyl.

That machine looks quite serious.

Cutting is something you don’t learn in school, that’s for sure. I learnt from Jack Biswell, and right now I have an apprentice Mike Grinser, who is learning off me. He has just graduated from the SAE institute and has released tracks on Alphahouse and Disko B, and he admitted that when it came to cutting, he didn’t know much.

A lot of people say that digital will kill vinyl, but a bigger threat to vinyl is the fact that there are now only six or seven people left in the world that can repair vinyl cutting machines

So it’s a rare science?

A lot of people say that digital will kill vinyl, but a bigger threat to vinyl is the fact that there are now only six or seven people left in the world that can repair vinyl cutting machines.

The vinyl cutter heads are like a finite tattoo gun and the coil forms have to be replaced every so often. They are extremely delicate. If these guys disappear, then so might vinyl.

Back in the late 90s a lot of drum & bass engineers used to press their records really loud, but they would bust a head every week. Now everyone is being really cautious to not break their heads, so records have actually gotten quieter.

Do you also control the final mixdown of tracks?

Sometimes clients like Minus ask me to mixdown tracks. For my typical mastering job, I use Pro Tools and some other studio tricks like multiband compression.

What other clients do you master for?

I do Minus, Wagon Repair, Bpitch Control, Spectral, Ghostly International. Also Barraca Music and Bar25.

So a lot of today’s big techno and minimal records go through you?

Camea: Tim does a lot, but he’s really only a boutique as he’s an artist too, so can’t commit to it full time.

Tim: I probably do between eight and 12 records a week. That’s not loads, there’s some guys down the road who master probably 30 to 40 records a week.

Ok, but as one of the main mastering engineers of techno, you must be appalled by the fact that a lot of techno and minimal comes out today that isn’t mastered. The explosion of digital music and record labels in recent years has led a lot of people to ignore mastering altogether.

Tim Xavier: A lot of music comes out now that isn’t mastered. But that’s fine, as the music has become accessible to a lot of younger people. That’s a good thing. I don’t sit around governing quality control for the scene, so it doesn’t upset me if a lot of music isn’t mastered. Every artist or label out there tries to do the best that they can.

At the end of the day, it’s up to the individual artist if they feel their music is of a good enough quality to be consumed. You know, mastering and finalising has actually gotten a lot better in the last few years as studios have improved, so it’s not as bad as you would think.

For artists who are thinking of using a mastering engineer, what’s the most important thing for them to know?

The most important thing is that the client leaves me headroom. Do not maximise or over compress your track before it comes to me. That way, I can mould the track in different ways, like Play-Doh.

One of the things that Clink is known for is its high quality sound. Does that all come down to Tim as the mastering engineer?

Camea: It always excites me when people say that they think Clink releases sounds great, as we do take great care when it comes to the audio.

Several of us are newer producers, so Tim often does the full mixdowns for us. Some of the others like Alexi Delano are seasoned producers though, so Tim only masters their tracks.

As a third ear, his input is indespensible.

Tim Xavier: Oh, that’s nice.

Camea: But it’s true, we love you!

Tim Xavier: Yeah well, they buy me a lot of beer, in fact so much I’m building a beer island. Did you see it when you came in? [There was a huge collection of beer bottles by the front door].

Minimal techno, in recent years, exploded in popularity. That led to a lot of people copying sounds and styles, which can makes a genre sound stale. As the owner of Clink, one of minimal techno’s foremost labels, does that bother you?

Camea: I don’t like to use words like ‘bandwagon’. I think it’s perfectly acceptable that people are influenced by others.

Obviously whenever there is an explosion in the popularity of one genre, we get overexposed to certain sounds which can get tiring. But that’s just the cycle of electronic music.

One year, people will get tired of minimal sounds, and will start using more housey sounds. Then house will get overexposed, and people will move back towards techno.

To look down on people for copying sounds is not really fair, as every track has to work within some boundaries that were set by others before it.

Tim Xavier: For a while, stripped back drums and minimal techno was cool, and now conga house is back. I saw the conga come and go in hard techno.

People are now experimenting with disco also, with live drums getting more and more popular. That’s great. On the minimal side of things, early minimal was quite, how should I say, kiddy in sound, with lots of childish synths. Now it’s got pretty dark.

Camea: I wouldn’t call minimal techno kiddy.

Tim Xavier: It was a little bit, all those childish synth noises - not in a bad way, it was just playful.

Camea: Well, minimal techno for me, goes back to the early Perlon stuff and that was pretty serious.

Tim Xavier: Yeah I suppose so.

Tim, you mentioned disco coming back. I noticed that your latest LTD-400 release ‘Perfect Naturalism’ is quite disco in style.

Tim Xavier: Ha! I’m glad you mentioned that. I actually made those tracks way back in Chicago in about 2003. Originally they were about 133 BPM.

I can’t believe that I used to produce music that fast now. When people started sending me housier stuff to master, I remembered I had these three unreleased tracks.

Then Barem [the Argentinean producer signed to Minus] was at my studio, as I was doing a mixdown for him, and I played him the tracks by slowing them down in Traktor. I asked him for a brutally honest opinion, and he said he liked them. Now when I listen to those tracks at 133, it sounds like Mickey Mouse to me!

Camea, how did you get into production?

I’ve been producing now, for about five years. Fot the first couple of years, I was just learning the gear and trying to find my sound.

I’m a very moody person, so one week I’ll love big room techno and then the next week, I’ll love conga house. I’m all over the place, and that’s why I don’t really have a sound.

Tim Xavier: That’s not true. I was just speaking to Inside Out about your music, and we both recognised that you have a rhythm method. There is this common-sequenced thing in most of your tracks.

Camea: Really? That’s interesting. I never really noticed.

Camea, DJing wise, which tracks and artists are you digging currently?

I love what Christian Burkhardt is doing at the moment. Mark Henning is producing some crazy sunrise party style music at the moment.

For big room stuff, Paul Ritch, Nick Curly, and SIS are doing good stuff. I like the fact that for a while minimal was the dominant sound, but now you can play both house and techno. It keeps things interesting for us DJs.

And I’m a big supporter of Ambivalent, he’s doing his first solo work after a two year hiatus, and it sounds great. He’s doing a remix for Tim’s next LTD-400 actually. Paul Brtschitsch is doing great stuff too.

Tim Xavier: I’ve recently starting buying more vinyl. Both of us are Traktor users.

Camea: Yeah, I’m pretty much all digital.

Tim Xavier: I’m completely internal now, and only use my laptop and a controller. It’s so much fun. Because I play 80% of my own material, I can really have fun whilst mixing.

I get booked to play live all the time, which is pretty annoying as I would prefer to DJ, but now I’m just going to play off Traktor for my live shows. I have a playlist with all my tracks cut up into loops, and I make grooves and new tracks out of them using Traktor’s loop functionality.

DJing wise, do you ever play together?

Tim Xavier: We get booked to play a lot together, but we never tag team as we have different sounds.

Why did you two move to Berlin?

Tim Xavier: We both got booked at Watergate, and as soon as we got to Berlin, within three hours, we both said we wanted to move here.

Camea: I think it was as soon as I stepped off the plane. The air was just different, it was crispy. The city had an instant vibe.

Tim Xavier: Because we share brains, we both knew what the other was thinking. I remember we were at dinner, and John Selway said “So you guys gonna more here then?”, and immediately we both said, “Yep.”

For me personally, I just wanted more pressure and more influence. Berlin is the Hollywood of techno afterall. It is Technowood

What is it about Berlin that is so special?

Tim Xavier: For me personally, I just wanted more pressure and more influence. Berlin is the Hollywood of techno afterall. It is Technowood.

Do you call it that?

Yep, I call it Technowood.

Camea: I was just ready for a change. Here in Berlin, parties don’t get going until 4am. After two years, I’ve fallen in love with the city. Plus for traveling, it’s great as it’s centrally located. Clink has become such a good international business card for me, and I think that’s in large part due to Beatport.

There are places where Clink is known, which never would have had access to the vinyl, and that’s really important.

You mention travel. I noticed that you played a gig recently in New York, and they billed you as from both Berlin and New York.

Well pretty much most people know that I come out of NYC, but now I’m in Berlin I feel it’s important to say where I’m living now.

It would be wrong to say I’m from New York or from just Berlin. Plus both cities are cool, and I’m proud to say I’m from both.

Do you ever make it back to Seattle?

Seattle is my sanctuary. It’s where all my family and old friends are, and I go there to take a break. Berlin is non stop, and it’s constantly full of energy and excitement. But sometimes it can get too much, as there’s always something cool happening.

Tim Xavier: Yeah, Berlin helps build discipline. You have to choose your battles here.

As a couple, do you ever find the time to collaborate on tracks together?

Tim and I have been working on a project. Our remix of Sascha Kron ‘A Tree Is A Tree’ is No.7 on the techno Top 10 chart on Beatport currently. Dubfire charted it, which is always nice.

Can we hear it now?

Tim Xavier: For sure. [He puts on their remix, which is a dark and repetitive techno throbber that fills the studio with gut wrenching bass].

The sound in here is simply amazing.

Tim Xavier: Yeah those speakers are just JBLs but they sound great, don’t they? Plus see in the corner, I have bass traps. They bounce the bass right back into the centre of the room.

Camea: This remix is our first remix together isn’t it dear?

Tim Xavier: No, actually didn’t we do one together on Minus?

Camea: Oh yeah.

Tim Xavier: That was fun!

Camea: Our new stuff is a lot deeper and sexier than we’ve done in the past. We’re working on a new EP at the moment.

Five recent Camea and Tim Xavier cuts

Camea ‘Dub Me Tender’ [Clink]

Camea’s new cut on Clink is a low-slung tech house cut, with some sinister vocals and plenty of mainroom FX.

Sebastian Cohen, Pablo Denegri ‘Edaroth’ (Camea Remix)

Camea’s remix of Sebastian Cohen and Pablo Denegri’s haunting original, is turned into a floor filling rolling minimal cut with plenty of groove and bounce.

Tim Xavier ‘Chicago Love Shack’

The second track on Tim Xavier’s recent house-tinted EP ‘Perfect Naturalism’ on his LTD-400 label, ‘Chicago Love Shack’ is a tripped out techno and house hybrid, with floating chords and warped vocals.

Tim Xavier ‘No Day Like Thursday’

Scratchy and bleepy minimal sounds collide with stripped back drums on Xavier’s wacky ‘No Day Like Thursday’. It’s a weird trip.

Mark Henning ‘Jilted Love’ (Tim Xavier Remix)

Warm and groovy minimal with wonky space synths and a tick-tocking drum set.

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