From minimal to music: Mathias Kaden

From minimal to music: Mathias Kaden

12 October, 2009 | 5.13AM

• Written by: Terry Church
• Filed under: Music News: mathias kaden, vakant

German producer Mathias Kaden once joked that his music was “minimal samba”. There was more than a grain of truth behind the quip - his debut album ‘Studio 10’ combines the seemingly incompatible elements of traditional Latin and African rhythms, with the electronic grooves and scatty focused intelligence of the Berlin-centric minimal techno movement.

However the 12-track LP on Kaden’s home-from-home imprint Vakant, is also so much more. Rhodes-driven jazz, funky flugelhorns, sad violins, and sweetly soft lyrics push ‘Studio 10’ into the category of modern world music, a matured sound for the globalised club generation. In the end, it plays like a particularly thoughtful deep house record.

“The plan was to have no geographical location for my album, and it is intended to be timeless and honest,” says Kaden from his home in Gera, a small city on the river Weiße Elster. “For me it was important to give each track a real song-characteristic. I wanted to show my other side on this album and to give it a much more musical approach. It was important to work with a variety of vocalists and plenty of musicians.”

From minimal to music

Kaden is perhaps only doing what is to be expected. After years of computerized bleeps and synthetic rhythms dominating the landscape, the beauty that lies within was likely to shift to that what was missing - a touch of human. And it seems that in today’s increasingly powerful studios, sampling is no longer enough. Authenticity demands that producers go the extra mile, be it via field recordings, jam sessions with live musicians, or playing instruments themselves.

“In these days, where everybody seems to only sample and loop parts of other tracks, I wanted to create something completely different,” says Kaden, a statement that many in the techno sphere will agree with in 2009.

Kaden is not alone. Other former minimalists to have expanded their horizons to instrumentals and composition includes Dinky, Onur Ozer, Italoboyz, Luciano, and Marek Hemmann.

“It was very important for me to choose another approach to creating music, closer to classic song production and composition,” explains Kaden. “This new way of working brought me one step further in music creation and I hope that people won’t forget this album already after a month.”

For producers like Mathias Kaden, who operate at the forefront of sonic manipulation, there may be a growing sense of studio ennui, a void that can only be filled with musical instruments, and traditional music creation. The producers are indeed becoming real musicians.

The fear behind the shift?

Being lost in an ever expanding sea of releases, is the producer’s fear. It could be at the heart of the shift. As Ableton Live, plug ins, and samplers have improved, and made easier the creation of good club music, technological know-how and command over machines, has become less valued.

For producers like Mathias Kaden, who operate at the forefront of sonic manipulation, there may be a growing sense of studio ennui, a void that can only be filled with musical instruments, and traditional music creation. The producers are indeed becoming real musicians.

“I’m really interested in different music influences and working with other artists,” says Kaden, who enlisted a number of lyricists, musicians, and vocalists for ‘Studio 10’. “I worked with Tomomi Ukumori, a Japanese pop singer, and we did a wonderful dub track which tells an old story from Japan about the Kawaba Mountain.

“I worked with jazz musican Ian Simmonds, and we created a funky song called ‘Panic Stricken’. With Florian Schirmacher we did two songs together - on ‘Lowrey’, Florian played an old Lowrey organ and different synthesizers and I created the beat around his melodies; on another track ‘Re Menor’, we created the smoothest song on the album with Florian on vocals.”

A story behind the music

One of the results of working in songs, is the addition of a back story. Behind every track on ‘Studio 10’ is an individual message that co-exists with its main dancing impetus.

“The track ‘1981’ is a memorial song to the old house sound,” says Kaden. The year is significant, as it was the birth of the most important instrument in his studio, the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer, which lurks behind much of the music on the album. The percussive flourishes were played by Michael Nagler.

There is darkness on ‘Studio 10’ too, for with songwriting comes reflection. “‘State of Stasis’, the second track with Gjaezon, is a song about “the black hearted stasis” and it may be the darkest song on the album,” says Kaden, who admits that whilst a positioned message is quite new for him, it won’t stretch to the political.

“For me it was really important that the songs on the album each had a little message for the people, as there is so much music out there that has no sense or feeling, but whilst ‘Panic Stricken’ and ‘State of Stasis’ drifts towards it, I don’t think producers should get directly involved in politics.”

Experiments and the tyranny of categorization

Kaden also enjoyed experimenting with recording his own sounds for his debut long-player. “Field recordings are very interesting to me, as I think it’s one of the most direct ways to work with sound. To be able to create a song using just the sounds of water, stones, doors and bikes is very fun, and quite often I´m surprised by the results,” he says.

Like many producers, Kaden has suffered somewhat from categorization - he’s more often than not, been called a minimal techno producer - so some of his fans may be surprised to hear ‘Studio 10’ flirt proudly with house and deep house, even if his music does retain some of the electronic tweaks and sonic preludes associated with the minimal genre.

“I don’t think that I can go towards minimal again because I’ve learnt a lot in the last few years,” he says. “My own requirements for my sound are much more than two years ago. The worst thing is when the people put you in one category. It happened to me and I want to be free of that.”

‘Studio 10’ then, is the sound of a producer breaking free, on a quest to become a musician.

5 dancefloor highlights from ‘Studio 10’

‘Ikenga’

The most club friendly cut on ‘Studio 10’. An uptempo old skool acid groove over layers and layers of minimal tribal rhythms.

‘Chazz’

Solid tech house grooves combine with vocal snippets and warped trumpets, to provide an endearing late night grower.

‘Panic Stricken’ feat. Ian Simmonds

A laid back, deep house track with soulful vocals and subtle melodies, led by a sleazy flugelhorn from Martin Rudloff.

‘1981 feat. Gjaezon’

Kaden’s tribute to the 808 sounds like an early techno and house hybrid, with Gjaezon performing classic US house mutterings, wrapped up in heady, end-of-night synths.

‘Mascleta’

Fractured percussion, soaring synths, and deep trance chords create a wall of sound, that will envelope dancefloors magnificently, albeit, melancholically. 

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