Trickski: Marching to the beat of a deeper drummer

Trickski: Marching to the beat of a deeper drummer

29 June, 2011 | 12.01AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: suol, trickski

It’s been a great year for those of us whose hearts beat at a slightly slower tempo. After a few rigid years where kick drums hammered away at 128 beats per minute all night long, more and more DJs and producers are exploring a wider range of tempos. As deep house has come back into vogue, 120 is the new 128—and for a few intrepid souls, 110 is the new 120.

Of course, there have been plenty of artists exploring the slower limits of house and techno for years—among them Trickski, who honed their command of the pitch fader as longtime residents at Berlin’s Cookies nightclub. Stalwart defenders of the deeper side of house—even when the style was deeply uncool—Trickski have spent the past six years exploring an unusually wide range of tempos and emotions on singles for the likes of Sonar Kollektiv, Compost, and Future Classic. Now, at last, they bring us their debut album, Unreality, a masterful exploration of the duskier side of house music, from downbeat toe-scuffers to heads-down groovers for the wee hours.

We caught up with the duo to find out more about their top-heavy metronome settings, the lessons learned from their Cookies residency, and their thoughts on the Berlin scene. Read on for the full interview. And if you’re in London this weekend, join them for their album launch party with the aptly named Slowpoke crew.

How did the release party at Watergate go?

The release party was the bomb! Really packed, lots of old friends and supporters, the Suol crew, Genius Of Time played a monster live set, Zander VT pumped the isht out of the speakers and we… well, we had lots of fun. The vibe was really, really great! It feels great that Unreality is finally out! The day after, there was a little hidden gig in Warsaw at 6:00 in the morning for one of us. So we really did celebrate the release properly.

Obviously one of the most striking aspects of the album is the range of tempos you explore. When did you first start thinking consciously about using tempo as a creative tool? And what do you think can be achieved by taking house music down below the typical 120 BPM?

Tempo is not really a creative tool. It’s a given fact. You know, once you decide to set your sequencer to a certain amount of BPM, you will start tweaking your stuff in order that it fits. Who tells you that 120-130 bpm is the standard and must be applied? This might be the case if you wanna produce straight functional dancefloor material. It has never been like that for us. For us house music was always music. Sometimes with a greater focus on “house” as the functional dancefloor genre and sometimes with a greater focus on “music.” With music you can do everything. Different tempi simply need you to arrange your beats differently. Every tempo requires a certain treatment of its elements and has advantages and disadvantages soundwise. Different tempi also let you express things differently—better, it lets you express different things.

To us, slower tracks have two main features that have a lot to do with the fact that, at a slower tempo, you have lots of space between the bass drums: First, you can add much more melody and musicality without losing the dancefloor and without appearing to be too headstrong. And second, you can savor the beats in their full length. Every sound can breathe, which is very important. You’re less likely to shorten a bassdrum, you can let hats shuffle in crooked ways… Just stuff that would seem off and odd at higher tempos—or simply disappears due to the fact that there is no space for the sounds. And all this is good for one thing: Sexiness in music, groove, soul and the certain oooompf!

To turn that question on its head, what are some of the risks or pitfalls of attempting slower house? Because there’s tons of “slow-motion” house around at the moment, but not all of it is so successful.

Hmmm… Basically you could turn the previous answer on its head as well: if you enter the realm of the slow, it won’t be enough to just pitch down your still unreleased 126 BPM production to 105. You really have to think about the ingredients. And these will always be musicality and beats that almost dissolve (which makes up for a good part of this special slo-mo groove). We have always been producing slo-mo stuff. So for us, it’s a natural approach. Most likely it is like with many other things in music. Music is no science. You need to feel it. And things feel different when they are slower. Maybe it takes some time and experience but also some risk and sensitivity to do it properly. There is no formula to it but a lot of soul and emotions.

You used to have a residency at Cookies, right? What influence did that venue have on your style of DJing and production?

Definitely a lot. Cookies was the place where we were able to play long sets with slow beginnings and pumping peaktimes later on… We played there all night long. Sometimes with special guests and sometimes without them. It was the most inspiring time DJ-wise. Being a Cookies resident also had an impact in terms of production: Cookies (or at least our nights there) has a certain sound and a very specific feeling to it. It’s with this inspiration that we wrote tracks like “The Warm up” or “Pill Collins.” When you play abroad you don’t get to play the warm up too. Unfortunately, many times there are unexperienced warm up DJs around, that simply don’t get what the warm up is about. It is about setting a mood, creating a vibe and a tension. You can actually play stuff without having the goal to get people going crazy on the dancefloor. You need to prepare the club for the peaktime. By prepare we mean “excited” and not cooking. If you do it right, the night can turn out magic and the main act can do whatever. Unfortunately, many warm up DJs feel like they have to prove something, like they have to bang it right away. But who wants to enter a club and gets slapped in the face soundwise? Full-on techno at 11:30 is not what we want to hear when I get to a half-crowded club. We want to feel comfortable, get in the mood and start by nodding our heads. And that’s what we had all the time we wanted for at Cookies. This way we could turn out things interesting later on. When the warm up DJ bangs it too much, the main act’s possibilities stay very, very limited.

How long have you lived in Berlin, and what would you say have been the biggest changes in the music/club scene that you’ve witnessed since you’ve been here—for better and for worse?

We both lived in Berlin for more than 10 years now. And soooo much has happened: From Jazzanova’s freestyle nights to electroclash to minimal to tech house to the rebirth of deep house, disco, and the mixture of it all in between. Overall, we must say that there were times when we felt a bit uprooted with what was “the sh*t” for a certain period of time. At others we felt OK. But lately the musical vibe has changed into being more soulful, more deep, more slow and more sexy. After all these hyperfunctional types of music, people wanted to feel human again, people wanted to have emotions and have that expressed in music too. Pure functionality has reigned long enough. Which we like. Things got boring due to the pure functionality. At certain times it almost felt like one could enter a club at any time at any day of the year and experience the same vibe or sound. This couldn’t go on forever…

On the other hand, Sonar Kollektiv, maybe one of the best labels of the last decade, has gone to sleep. And that’s sad, because even though the vibe is getting more and more soulful, such a label is missing. You know, Sonar Kollektiv was an extremely versatile platform. And just… good in so many ways!

The many short sketches on the album reminded me a bit of hip-hop from the early ‘80s and ‘90s. Is that an influence on your own music?

Hmmm, tricky one… Hip hop definitely isn’t a major influence for Trickski. But we have been influenced by hip hop. Got it? We have grown up with hip hop, of course, and, yes, some skits on the album use some hip hop drum patterns. But an influence that is much more important for Trickski (and that was an influence for hip hop too) is all that funk/soul/jazz/rare-groove stuff that came before hip hop and is pretty much the basement of hip hop. So, somehow hip hop and Trickski have similar roots. That may be a good way to put it.

How important is sampling in your music? Where do you get your samples from, and how do you use them?

Sampling is often helpful to get a track started. And then, quite often, the track circles around the sample. We get our samples from the records we used to collect at flea markets and secondhand shops. Digging was a big thing in our early days. Now we benefit from that. For some time, we thought that having super-rare and secret tunes that nobody else used before was the only way to do it. By now it is more about the sound, the hook, the feel, even when the sample comes from a major hit. There are still one million ways to use a sample creatively. What we don’t like is straight re-dos of a sample: a loop, a filter, an up-to-date bass drum, done. There needs to be a creative process which includes an idea and your own attitude. Otherwise the best sample turns into straight functionality itself and loses its soul, even though it might be super-soulful, originally. Sampling is important for us, because we grew up with it. It will always be part of the Trickski sound. You know, the “old” school of Compost Records, Talking Loud, but also Theo Parrish and the Detroit and Chicago house thing. House came from sampling disco. It was all about sampling. Also for us.

Back to the release party… Genius of Time played that with you, and you also invited them to remix “Wilderness.” How did you hook up with them?

We have known each other for quite some time. Daniel has been friends with Alex Berg’s brother Chirstoffer, who is actually an amazing producer and involved in many big projects like, The Knife, Fever Ray, Jose Gonzalez, Little Dragon in certain ways and has remixed Massive Attack and Shakira. Through him we always knew what Alex was up to. A few years back Alex lived in Berlin and came to join us many times for our “Members of the Trick” nights at Cookies. We share the same spirit when it comes to slow house music and connected right away. Actually we were also the ones that brought Genius Of Time to Germany for the first time. That’s when we met Nils Krogh, Alex’s partner in crime. I think their first single was just out on vinyl and they played an amazing live set at About:Blank. So we felt like it is about time to join forces on another level. Their live set evolved super-impressive. They carry around tons of equipment for it, and it sounds dope. Actually they do fit to our Suol family quite nicely too. We will see if they join us and are pretty sure that our ways will cross again in many ways in the future.

Finally, what’s next for Trickski?

Right now we are DJing here and there. Up next is our release party in London on July 1 with the amazing Slowpoke crew, who had us over in January already. They are also organizing a night with Andrew Weatherall and us in Berlin. On August 4 we are celebrating seven years of Trickski at Cookies with a revival of our all-night long sessions. And on August 27 we will debut our Trickski live experience at the Suol label night at Watergate. There is also a Trickski & Soul Clap track on Permanent Vacation to be released and a remix we did for the french band Outlines. Irfane, the singer of Outlines, is also singing “Love’s a Beat” on our album. Another remix that is supposed to finally be released is for Hell feat. Diddy “The DJ.” Actually we don’t know when that one is coming out. In fall and winter we wanna promote the album more, since we were too late for the summer festival season. We are pretty sure that our new booking agency Four Artists, which is taking care of the whole Suol family, is gonna make it happen. And we wanna produce new stuff. You see, our lives stay busy—even though we would not mind some rest.

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