Still dreaming? Andre Lodemann hopes so.

Still dreaming? Andre Lodemann hopes so.

25 January, 2010 | 8.54AM

• Written by: Zack Rico
• Filed under: Music News: andre lodemann, best works recordings, new talent

Not many electronic music producers would admit they came from trance, such is the genre’s lack of credibility amongst the chin stroking classes.

There’s something about its overstatement and emotional righteousness that deems it unsuitable for serious consideration - woe betide, any DJ that directly asks you to dance or raise your hands in the air like you just don’t care.

Yet into the confessional walks Andre Lodemann, a Berliner who grew up in East Germany before the country’s reunification. “Trance music was an escape from daily life back then,” he says. “I use musical layers typical of trance to create distance, a distance metaphorically seen between reality and imagination. This is what I put into my music.”

When he was a teenager, Lodemann discovered new music mostly through West German radio stations, and pirated cassettes. “I remember there was a huge exchange of ‘hot’ tapes around that time, as there was no chance to get fresh records [in the GDR],” he says.

It was in 1994, that Lodemann discovered the house music section of his local record store in Cottbus. “The guys who worked there were big house music fans and they turned me onto it,” he says.

Rather than dump the evangelical principles of trance for a new beat rationale, as so often happens ‘post-enlightenment’, Lodemann decided to meld his love of trance with house grooves. The result was heavenly deep house, as defined by his recent EPs on Room With A View, Simple Records, and his own Best Works Recordings imprint, which he runs with fellow Berliner Daniel Best.

“Deep house was the next logical step for me after trance, as I was looking for elements in the music that I could use to transport some sort of spirituality,” he explains .

“Trance was maybe just the first encounter with club music that touched me emotionally. I truly felt the groove of deep house, and in a way, found my own groove through house music.”

That groove encompasses anything from the lazy lounge funk of ‘Searchin’’, remixed by Sheffield’s deep house supremo Charles Webster, to last year’s underground instrumental smash ‘Where Are You Now?’, and his brand new deep trance offering ‘Still Dreaming’ on Freerange (out this week).

What ties Lodemann’s deep house pieces together are strong emotions, multi-layered lines of melody, and clever, evolving arrangements, which musically puts him in the same carriage as DJ Koze and Henrik Schwarz. His influences are however, from the more classical period of house music.

“My greatest influences are Masters at Work, Matteo and Matos, Kerri Chandler, and François Kevorkian,” he says. During his DJ sets you’re just as likely to hear Blaze’s ‘Lovelee Dae’ as you are anything by Radio Slave.
 
Despite the intricate nature of his melodies, Andre Lodemann is not a trained musician, but he taught himself how to play bass and keys which “is enough for my productions.”

Lodemann particularly likes to explore the relationship between different states of mind, as can be heard on the fluid-like ‘Where Are You Now?’.

“[The track] is all about opposites attracting each other, and belonging together,” he says. “If there is no evil there is no good, and the track depicts long hard periods in life crossed by short gleams of hope.

“The strain at the end of a dark phase can be unbearable, but afterwards the light can embrace you. Other listeners might be touched subconsciously by all those ups and downs, and have similar feelings about the track.

“I still get amazing feedback. It’s pretty touching and I am very thankful for that.”

He also has something to say about the drudgery of modern life, which he recently abandoned for life as a full-time bohemian producer of Berlin.

On his new single ‘Still Dreaming’, “I artistically wanted to ask the listener if he is still able to think freely when leaving daily life behind,” says Lodemann. “It is difficult to keep this ability functioning.”

Is he spiritual? “I am a spiritual person in my own special way. I do think there is more to life then our daily business, and I feel that I can reach others spiritually through my music.”

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• Check out Andre Lodemann on Beatport