Daniel Miller - Mute Records

Kevin Paul - Welcome to the Sound On Sound People & Music Industry podcast channel with me Kevin Paul. In this new episode of my Mixbus series, I talk to Daniel Miller. Daniel is the owner of Mute Records, a pioneering independent record label that started in the early 80s and Daniel is also a DJ and is one half of modular synth group Sunroof alongside his long term friend and musical partner Gareth Jones, who has been a previous guest on this podcast. I highly recommend Sunroof to you if you're into modular synths and electronic music and they've just completed the recording of their third album which should be available sometime in 2024. This interview was conducted in 2020, but I still think that most of what we spoke about is still relevant to today. I hope you enjoy the episode. Early Musical Influences Kevin Paul - Hello Daniel. Daniel Miller - Hi Kevin. Nice to see you again. KP - Let's talk about the studio and obviously your first record was The Normal. I don't necessarily want to go over Mute too much because it's well documented but I am quite interested in how you got to make that first record. Where did your love of music come from and what was that love, what was that music? DM - Well I was into music right from the beginning of my life, even before I remember. I mean, my parents used to say you know, I used to I mean, we had a radiogram as it was then, at home and I used to love listening to, like Three Blind Mice and I would just stand in front of the saying play it again, play it again, you know, so my teenage years were in the 60s, so it was an amazing time for music. KP - Definitely. DM - And I was into all the bands that people, everybody knows you know, like the Stones, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Kinks, you know, all those great bands and of course you move from one to the other, you know. At a certain point the Beatles were quite edgy and then all of a sudden they weren't edgy at the beginning and so you went on to the Stones and then the Stones became a bit mainstream and you went on to the Pretty Things or whatever, you know. But it was an incredibly exciting time if you imagine, just from the Beatles point of view, you know, 1962 I think it was, Please Please Me came out and that's what, that was their second single and within four years they’d done Sergeant Pepper and you just think of the progress and I suppose I just thought it was always going to be like that, the things would progress at all the time at that kind of speed but they didn't really, for me anyway, you know by the sort of mid to late 60s, so I was like 16, 17, I got kind of a little bit frustrated with that and music kind of got more self indulgent rather than moving forward to my ears. And then I really started to explore what was coming out of Germany by chance you know, I heard a couple of things from Germany. I heard Cans for the first time and Armand Duhl and I thought, this is really interesting and very different and isn't based on Anglo-American music really, it's coming from somewhere else. So that really excited me and so that's kind of how I got into electronic music in a way because they were using electronics. They weren't necessarily electronic bands, but they were using electronics in their music and of course then people like the Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze and then Kraftwerk a bit later on and Neu and all those bands. For me they were really taking things into a very different direction to what was going on in the UK. I mean there were exceptions. I mean you know, like Hawkwind, the early part of Hawkwind, who had a similar kind of spirit and people like Captain Beefheart in America and so forth and the Velvet Underground. But generally speaking, I was listening to pretty much exclusively German music and then I got very interested in the kind of electronic music side of it. First Encounter With Synths KP - What made you pick up a synthesizer? Where did that come from? DM - I went to art college at Guilford to do film. I studied film and TV and they had a little sound studio you know, which was basically had three quarter inch tape machines in it. Three Brenell quarter inch tape machines and I started sort of experimenting with tape loops and delays and a bit of tape manipulation and then we had visiting, we had like the regular teachers there, but they always had visiting people and there's a guy called Ron Geeson, who was like a sound artist and poet, he'd done work with Pink Floyd and he turned up to give a talk one day and he just bought an AKS Synthi, the little one, the suitcase one and he didn't really know how to use it, he hadn't learned how to use it yet and he just brought it in, so we all had a kind of a go and nothing much came out of it, because I mean you know, if you don't really know what a VCO is, or a VCF or a VCA, or an envelope generator, you're not really anyway, but that was my first actual physical hands-on experience with a synth and I was playing, I was in a band as well, but like a school band call it and you know. KP - OK, more traditional? DM - Yes, yeah traditional. I mean pretty yeah, I mean I basically played guitar and we started when we about 14 or 15, it was a school thing playing blues mostly and then got into a bit of other stuff. And I'd always thought, well, it wouldn't be good if I could, you know, it was one thing to play cover versions of blues songs, but when you want to get a bit more creative KP - Do your own thing DM - Do your own thing and then all the band kind of you know, wants to do different things, it was kind of frustrating. So I thought it'd be wonderful, wouldn't it be great to be able to do everything yourself? And then punk happened and there was punk rock, which was music, which I got very excited about when that came out, but the whole punk ethic, the kind of do it yourself ethic. So I thought, well, you know, and I really wanted to get into, get a synth at that time. And it was also a time when synthesizers really came down in price. Because before that, you know, there was basically the Mini Moog or the ARP 2600. KP - And they were quite expensive, weren't they? DM - Extremely expensive. Yeah around the mid 70s you know, the first like Korg came out and the first Rolands came out. The Korg 700s KP - Do you remember what your first synth was? DM - Yeah, I still got it. KP - You still got it? Really? DM - Yeah, it’s a Korg 700s. KP - Wow, it’s not in here, is it? DM - No, it's at home. I got it secondhand from a shop in Shaftesbury Avenue. It was about 200 quid. KP - Wow, which in those days… DM - Which was quite a lot in those days. But for synth was really you know, reasonably priced. And I bought a secondhand, four track Teac, quarter inch. Not that there was two ones, there was a 3340, but I had the, I could only afford the cheaper one which was 2340, which only went at seven and a half IPS, but that was fine. And I just started messing around at home, you know, I was working during the day, I was like an assistant editor, freelance assistant film editor. I started doing as much overtime as I could, in order to be able to afford the synth and the machine. And I would just like come home and just get straight in, headphones on, in my bedroom literally and ended up… KP - Did the synthesiser have a sequencer on it? DM - No KP - So you were just literally just… DM - Well, it's hadn’t got a sequencer, but it's got a looping kind of envelope so you could do, you could go (makes repeating sound), that kind of, you know, or rather a gated envelope with a clock gated envelope. I just started exploring that synth and actually it looks quite innocuous the 700s and it's got weird terminology, it doesn't have things like filter, it's called a traveller. And you know, you got one switch to turn on the resonance and one switch, you know, it's quite, it's very basic, but it's, there's a lot of really amazing things on it that most synths even now don't have. You know, so it was, I could make drum sounds. I could play a drum part, do a kick and a snare of sorts and it had ring modulators and it was, it looked like it was designed to go on top of a home organ. KP - Okay, oh yes, yeah. The old brown ones, the old organs, cause it had keys on. DM - Exactly. And it had, it had two little things so you could put sheet music on it and so I, you know, maybe it was designed to do like a flute part or a clarinet part or something, or string part, but then it had all this weird stuff like ring modulation, white noise and all those kind of things, so it was a really interesting thing. Yeah so I was just doing stuff for my own pleasure at home and it was so liberating to have four tracks, to be able to do overdubs and then bounce down two tracks and to two tracks and then do, you know, it sounds crazy in this day and age but four tracks was, it was an amazing, to be able to do that, you know, because I mean really multitracks were just like generally, you know, big machines in studios. Setting Up The Label And The First Release I got to a point where I was actually thinking, you know, enjoying what I was doing and quite liking what I was doing. And as I said, you know, the DIY label thing started to come. I thought, wow, why not? I'll just do a single. KP - Just for the hell of it. DM - Just for the hell of it and I, you know, there was a few little articles about how to do it. It's very simple, really, the process. And that's what I did. I didn't have any effects or anything like that. I wasn't into effects. I liked really the clean, dry sound of synths. But I did hire a Space Echo for a day. KP - A Roland Space Echo? DM - A Roland Space Echo. But I could only afford it for a day so I had to finish the whole thing in 24 hours. Literally, I did it from like, in 24 hours. And I actually hardly used the Space Echo at all. But it was very good because it gave me the time limitation to finish the record. And I mixed it onto a, just, you know, had my four track and I mixed it onto a stereo machine. But the four track heads, I was also, I was using secondhand tape. I worked at ATV for a while at the studios up in Borehamwood and I got friendly with the guy who was responsible for dealing with the old, because they only ever used tape once and I would get tape from him. He would give me tape to use. KP - Bargain. DM - Yeah and so, but the heads were starting to, it was starting to shed the oxide. So I remember the final mix mix, it's a bit of a grand term, it's only four tracks, but I remember I had to keep my finger pressed onto the heads of the Teac so that it would, so it was contact. KP - So literally so it would keep recording. DM - Yes, well yes. And then I mastered it and got some test pressings you know, went to pressing plant, got some test pressings, took it around to a couple of indie shops to see if they were, I knew nothing about the music business at all, I had no experience or training or anything and I just thought, well, what you do is you go around to some shops and then you see if they want to buy some. So I had to press 500 because it's a minimum. I thought I'd never sell them, but I thought, well, you know, here we go. I went to a couple of shops and I ended up at the Rough Trade shop, the original Rough Trade shop in Kensington Park Road. Asked if they were interested in buying it, and they listened to it and they seemed to really like it and they said we'll distribute it for you. And you should press 2000 not 500. And yeah, I was very lucky and then it got reviewed, and got really good reviews and John Peel played it and basically that's how it started. Off you go. KP - How did you come up with the name and why did you come up with the name Mute? It's always been a thing that I've always wanted to ask you. DM - Well I had lists of names, artist names, so called artist names, and label names. When you work in a cutting room in the old days with film, there's some film that's shot with sound and there's some film that's shot without sound and that's called mute film. And every day I was dealing with these film cans that said mute film and I just thought it sounds like a really good name. So that was on the list. And that's really, of course, it's slightly ironic. I had to make a decision quite, because I had to go to get the label and the sleeve printed so I actually had to make a decision. So I thought Mute, that'll do. How To Choose Artists To Sign KP - That’ll do. In the history of mute, you've signed lots and lots of artists. Your musical taste is very broad, you know, from the Beach Boys right the way to like Neubauten and everything else in between. What do you look for when you're signing an artist? DM - First of all it has to have some kind of emotional connection. I have to feel something from the music, which is a bit vague, but that's how people really respond to music. I like to work with things that are really, that to me sound original and that haven't been done before. And then it's about the relationship with the artist, it’s really important because we were always work, would like to work long term with an artist, not just putting out a single and seeing what happens. So there has to be kind of a creative relationship between me and the artist and a shared vision of where they want to go, because I mean, if somebody's making a noise record and wants to be number one in the charts, that's kind of unlikely. I'm not going to say it would never happen, but it's kind of unlikely. And then if your vision isn't shared about where that artist is going to go, then it probably wouldn't work, probably won't work in the long term. So that's really important, you know. KP - As you said, you take a really active role in that artist, don't you? DM - Yeah. I mean it's not just me now. I mean, in the beginning it was just me, for many years actually it was just me, but now you know we've got a team here. KP - Yeah of course. Is there an artist that you'd wish you had signed that you didn’t, one that got away? DM - Well, there are a few that we tried to sign over the years that got away. The one that I probably regret the most, partly because it was very good and also because it's hugely successful was the soundtrack to The Piano by Michael Nyman and he really wanted to put it out on Mute. Because I knew him a little bit, I don't think he was interested in being signed as an artist because he would make music for all sorts of commissions and things but that particular project, we just kind of had done a few soundtrack releases and kind of got burnt on them a bit, various ways and I thought, I don't wanna go through all that again, that was really bad, that was a bad decision. Because first of all it's a great record and I'm a big, huge fan of Michael Nyman and it went on to be massively successful. So I suppose that's the one that kind of bugs me the most. The Music Business KP - Right, OK. What do you think of the music industry today? What sort of a shape is it in? DM - I try and stay out of music industry stuff. I'm not that, I'm not particularly like the music, I never liked the music business very much. It's kind of, it's something that you have to do to put out music that you like. You have to be part of that process, but I've never been into the business really, in a general sense. I mean, it depends, there’s so many different parts of the business. So I mean, I think the major labels are doing well now because of streaming and pop. The kind of music they're putting out is very streaming friendly. A lot of the things we do are not very streaming friendly, but very physical, you know, friendly. Vinyl especially, CD. I don't really think about the music business that much. KP - You've never thought about it, have you? DM - No, I just think about what we're doing and how we best fit into what's going on, you know, in terms of, you know, all those things are about distribution and consuming and that's all extremely important. But what we, our job is creating or help… KP - Content. DM - I hate that word. But yes, content, creating, helping artists create great music and then whatever the sort of the you know, whatever the picture is at that time, industry wise, whether it's like MySpace, as it was, or if it's Spotify or Apple, you just make it work in those contexts, you know. KP - How have you managed to separate that, those two sides because they don't always work alongside each other, the business and music I mean, you've done that very successfully and it's not by chance. DM - What I say is like we're in the music business and on one end of the scale you've got the music and on the other end of the scale you've got the business and if you're in the music business you kind of either by your decision or by default you end up somewhere on that scale. You know, we're pretty much on the music end of that scale. But the business is important as well because you know, you have to you know, pay the rent, you have to, you know, have enough money to put people in the studio, to you know so, you know, there's no question the business side of it is very important. I don't really know. I mean, you know, over the years I've made mistakes where the business side hasn't been as strong as the music side, shall we say. KP - Right. You've always been dedicated to the music more than the business. DM - Yeah and that's caused problems in the past at various times, but I don't really know how. I, you know, it's more like, I think I'm a bit more sensible now than I was. You know, we went through a period of, you know, huge success, especially sort of 90s, late 80s, 90s and we had a huge staff. Compared to now we're like over, you know, 60 people in the UK, we had people in Germany, France, America. And that's fine but you'd make one misstep and all of a sudden you're looking at a huge bill to pay every every week. And a lot of those people were dealing with things in the music business that don't exist anymore, like shipping parts. So, you know, we would work with like 35 different countries and each you'd have to physically send everything physically to all those 35 different licensees. KP - Yeah because you used to do your own distribution as well didn’t you? DM - Yeah, and so you know, there's a lot of stuff, work that just doesn't exist anymore. Which is a shame because it means that people aren't working, but they're just, you know, I just try and find a way to make it work somehow. As I said, I've made, you know, there have been times when it hasn't worked. A More Relaxed Atmosphere KP - When you were signing the artists, you know, such as Depeche Mode, did you have any inkling that they would be as successful as they became? DM - Well first of all I didn't sign them. There was no contract. KP - No, that's right. I was going to ask you about that. DM - So there was, so technically they weren't signed. They were signed with a handshake, as were all the bands, especially in the early days. You know Mute had been going for a couple of years and sort of, had been sort of established as a kind of left field alternative label but, you know, I loved what they were doing, you know and I loved the way they did it. Very minimal, it was incredibly well arranged, like three mono synths and a little drum machine. When I thought, you know, and great pop songs, I, you know I was a pop, I still am a pop fan. From, you know, that goes back to those days in the, you know, of the Kinks and the Stones and people like that but I don't think anybody looked that, 40 years into the future, let alone four years into the future. It was about the next record, you know. KP - And it just sort of took off. DM - And it took off, yeah. KP - At some point you were just managing this huge, driving this huge vehicle. DM - Yeah and you know, the most important thing was to make sure we did a great job and all the things we had to do. KP - You did that very well. DM - Me and the people around me were all learning, we didn’t, you know, it's one thing to put out a nice 7 inch but when you got a band on, you know and then he has it, when Vince left he started Yazoo and that was like so I had two bands at that level really, you know, not knowing what we were doing, but somehow doing it in the right way, you know. What Makes A Good Producer KP - That’s amazing. You said you like working in the studio. What does a good producer do in your eyes? What are you doing if you're producing a record? DM - Well, the word producer is a very, it's really changed over the last few years. I mean, a lot of people who make records as artists are called producers now, especially in dance music or electronic music, you know, they're the artist, but they're also, but they're known as a producer and that's a very different situation. But in the more sort of, you know, traditional sense, what I think a producer is there to do is to help the artists realise their vision in the recorded medium. I mean, it's pretty simple for my point of view it’s to make the artist's record. It's not for me to go, we need three hits and whatever you need to do, do it. It's saying, OK well, whichever artist it is like, how do we, you know, realise their vision, maybe contribute to their vision, enhance the vision. But in the end it's the artist's record and the producer is there to help. And that could mean lots of different things of course. But that's the basic, the overview, what I think a good producer is, you know. KP - That's quite different to a lot of other labels though, because a lot of other labels do say, I need some hits. DM - Yeah and I mean, you know, listen, if you're working with a band who make hit songs and they want hits, so you know, but that might come after the, you'd have the definitive version of a track and then you would, maybe you do a single version or a radio version, which might be, which probably would be edited, maybe mixed in a different way. But the song had to be there in the first place, but you know, unless you have a producer as a songwriter which many are, you know, it's down to the artist to create the song. Getting Started With Modular Synths KP - Obviously, we spoke about your love of synths and you have a huge synth collection. DM - It's not as huge as some people's I know. KP - Really? Who do you think has bigger? DM - Well, definitely one or two of my artists, I won't name names, who are known for making electronic music, have remarkable collections. KP - You said to me before the interview that you're really into modular. Can you explain what that means, what you mean by that? DM - Rewind slightly. My second synth, well after I made a bit of money, was a second hand ARP 2600. It was owned by Elton John, or at least owned by his touring crew and they were selling off, he'd just done like some massive world tour and they were selling off all the equipment. At the end of the tour, there was two of everything. So there was an advert in the Melody Maker, blah, whatever, selling all this equipment. I went down this warehouse and there was two of everything, two Hammonds, two Mellotrons, two ARP 2600s. And I bought one of them and it was, it was a pretty good deal because it was quite beaten up, but it worked really well. And the ARP 2600 is a semi modular synth. That means that you don't actually have to patch anything in to make it work. It's got a routing, internal routing, but it's also got lots of patch points if you want to put your own patch in place. And that's, I then, at that point I was thinking this is a really exciting way of creating sounds and over the years I got a couple of big old modular synths. There was a period in the 80s after, you know, when digital really started to take off, people were pretty much throwing away amazing equipment. I was very lucky to be able to pick up some things for literally almost nothing. And I got into the whole modular thing and the Roland System 700, EMS Synthi 100, which is a very rare thing. It's about the size of this room. KP - Yeah. That's the long one that you got from the university, was it? DM - That's right, it was from the university of East Anglia and I heard through various people that they were basically throwing out and they said give us 500 quid and take it away, and it's yours. I mean, it doesn't matter what it's worth now. KP - It's priceless to you isn't it? DM - It’s priceless to me, I'm never gonna sell it. It's probably, I've seen them go for like a hundred grand or something ridiculous Well, they only made a few of them, you know. KP - And obviously the size of it. DM - And the size of it yeah. So I was getting very into the modular thing and then I kind of got diverted when software synths started to get really good and then I got kind of obsessed by software synths, partly because I travel a lot in my work and so I'm not actually in my studio at home. And I had almost kind of a software version of my studio in my laptop. Well, you know, sitting on a plane like with an R2600 Arturia or whatever Moog, Mini Moog or something like that. And I was kind of obsessed by it, but I realised after a while I didn't enjoy doing it, I didn't find it very creative, because so much of it, what you realise is the sound of those instruments is amazing. But the thing that really kind of brings the artist or the musician close to those instruments is not just the sound, it's the interface KP - The touching. DM - Well yeah and how it all you know, I mean an ARP 2600 is a completely different interface to a Minimoog or completely different to a Roland System 100 or something and how you relate to the interface is really the almost the most important thing. The sound is extremely important, but how you relate to the interface - it's like, imagine having a guitar and trying to play it on a laptop. Do you know what I mean? You know and so I sort of gradually got back into it and then… Discovering Eurorack The kind of, biggest mistake of my life is I discovered Eurorack. And it was up or downhill depending on which way you look at it ever since then. KP - Let's take it as uphill. DM - And actually it was Bon Harris from Nitzer Ebb had, he's also you know, like nerdy if you want to call it that. And he just bought a Cwejman S1 Mark II I think they were called. And he was telling me, oh this is amazing. And it was like a semi-modular synth but very portable. It wasn't Eurorack but it was a great synth and very small and I thought, and he said, yeah, they also do modular. I said, well, that's interesting. There's an amazing place in Berlin. It's grown and grown ever since those days called Schneidersbuero or Schneidersladen, which is a modular synth shop. And so I bought this Cwejman and I loved it, it’s really great. But I thought you know, I really need another LFO so I went back to Schneider said what can I just, well there's this format called Eurorack and they, you know and in those days, I guess that was was well over 10 years ago now. There were like five or six companies who made, Dieter Doepfer of Doepfer. KP - Yeah, Doepfer. DM - He kind of defined the format. Before that, if you had a modular synth, basically you, it was a Roland modular, or it was a Moog modular or whatever, because they had different sizes. But Eurorack was a kind of universal size. KP - Like the 500 racks. DM - Like the 500, yeah, like the 500 racks. And then so I got one rack and I bought a couple of extra bits for it and then it just grew from there. And I mean, over the last, over the years, I think there's, if you go, there's a very, if you're into modular or you want to learn about modular, there's a very good website called Modular Grid and they have every single module pretty much that's made at the moment. And if you scroll through this, I think there's hundreds of manufacturers now and most of them are one or two people companies, like working in their kitchen making these little modules that are very specific and special. It’s very exciting but I’m trying to you know, I’m also very into limitation. I think limitation in music is really important from a creative point of view, not to have endless choices. KP - Well endless choices doesn't always work, in fact nine times out of ten it doesn't work at all. DM - Exactly and you know I remember the first synth with presets that we bought, I say we, I can't remember whether it was for Depeche or me. It was like it was a PPG, which is a very interesting sounding synth. It had presets and I'd never seen presets before. I remember spending a day going through the presets, looking for bass sounds or string sound. I said, this is so boring, I'm going to ban presets, so we banned presets. KP - From the album. DM - From the, well, the five albums that I worked with and I think that continues today. I think presets, I mean they're very useful if you're under a like strict time limit, you've got to do a 30 second commercial by tomorrow. I understand it, I'm not, but I think if you're making creative electronic music, I think it's really important to make your own sounds, you know, your own kick drum, your own bass, your own whatever it is, you know. KP - You've always thought like that, haven't you? DM - Yeah. And so anyway, so the modular, the Eurorack modular system grew and… KP - How big is it now? DM - It's not ridiculous. I mean… KP - Define ridiculous. 100 modules? DM - I don't know how many modules. It's not, it's more about the size of the modules because I've got a live rig, which is quite small, relatively small. It's 7u, 104 HP and I've got a couple of extra little pods that go along with that, so, but then at home and so that, well I'm just redesigning my studio at the moment, but that'll slot into a slightly bigger system at home. And I've also got, because I live half in Berlin and half in London, I’ve also got a system in Berlin as well, but it's not one of those ridiculous, it's not, it's big enough. It's definitely, I don't want it to be any bigger and now it's a bit of bit like one in one out. If I want to get a new module, one's got to go. KP - Yeah, you sort of streamline, you've got to set yourself a discipline. DM - Yeah discipline because you also, when it's huge, it becomes kind of a bit impractical because you're all, you know, you want it to be enough so it's all in front of you at one time rather than having to plug things in. The thing about modular or Eurorack is that you build it for your own needs, you know? KP - Yeah. Well, that's the purpose of it isn’t it. DM - Yeah. And you can mix and match all the different makes of course, because it's a universal format. Modular Live Performances KP - That's a great idea. Do you encompass any of the modular ideas into your DJing? DM - Well I play, yes, in terms of performance, because I DJ and I also do a few modular live performances. Of course, the DJing kind of informs the live performance a bit in terms of, I mean, I DJ for like two to five hours, for instance, the modular sets are about 45 minutes, but somehow the way a modular set is structured, they're not dance. I'm not doing, a lot of people do techno, modular techno sets. That's not really what I'm into because I DJ, what I play as a DJ is techno. So I'm doing something different, but I'm structuring, even though it's improvised, there's like, it's structured a bit like a set. KP - Okay. Like a journey? DM - Yeah, a journey, but you know. KP - Do you have a definitive idea of what you're doing before you do it, or… DM - Yeah I have, I mean I set, you know, it's quite challenging to do 45 minutes. KP - Live performance, yeah. DM - Live performance because I'm not really doing ambient, you know, with you doing more ambient things, you can let, you know, I mean, there, it's a mixture of sort of droney and rhythmic and arrhythmic, but you know, most of it, a lot of it's not, it’s rhythmic but it's not… KP - Yeah. I watched you online, there is a couple online and it's, yeah, it starts out quite slow but builds to a crescendo doesn't it? And then it’s just amazing. DM - Yeah and then, I mean in theory, I'd like to have a lot of small modular to work with when I'm DJing but that's just theory. I mean there's all sorts of weird, you know, non musical reasons not to do that, like because everything I, you know, I wouldn't never check like, you know with DJing I'm traveling around quite a lot, flying. Sorry environment. But, you know, for the moment, that's the way I do it mostly, I like to travel by train as well. But you're restricted with hand luggage. I would never check in, I would never check in my DJ stuff or my modular, because if you've got a gig the next day and it doesn't show up, or it shows up broken. So I quite like that limitation. So you're restricted by the airlines about how much you can take. And also I don't DJ often enough to really practice, I don't have that much time to practice. I think to integrate a modular into a DJ set, you have to practice. I mean, I know a lot of people who do, you know, artists that we work with like Terence Fixmer and Nicolas Bougaïeff who play dance techno sets. But we're using… KP - Like they play them live do they, like from a modular setup? DM - Yeah, they're both DJs as well but they but they'd also do modular setup, you know. KP - So it's almost like the live, sort of like underworld or something would have been like years ago with the mixers and all the synths and stuff. DM - Yes, except for it's all like that size, you know, it has to fit into a DJ booth and they're usually using a combination of modular and things like electronics and hardware stuff as well. Working As A DJ KP - When you DJ, let's talk about maybe when you DJ because that's fairly new for you, isn't it? I would say fairly, you've been doing it for a good few years. DM - I’ve been doing it for yeah, I mean, I've had three different DJ careers. KP - Oh, really? Let's start with number one. DM - I wouldn't say actually careers, it's a bit of a, it sounds a bit pompous. Phases. KP - Three different DJ phases. DM - Three different DJ phases. One was when I was in my early twenties, in a ski resort in Switzerland playing chart music. KP - Yeah. Pop DJ. DM - Pop DJ for the tourists. I did that for a couple of years and I learnt a lot from that. I mean I did, there was a lot of the music that I played I didn't really like. But it was functional because you know, it was a very mainstream crowd you know, so it was chart music. And the chart music then, it was all over the place. So it wasn't, you know, so you'd play ABBA, then you play, you know, and then you play Status Quo and then you play The Commodores and it was pre, just before Disco. Disco was just coming in as I finished, but I enjoyed it you know, and I love you know, I love the mountains. The mountains for me is like where I love to be most when I'm not in the studio. And what's great now is like, I still go to the mountains and I take a little modular system with me, so there's, it's in my hotel room. So when I'm knackered from walking or skiing, I just go and mess around and… KP - Put the headphones on. DM - Put the headphones on, yeah. KP - And phase two? DM - Phase two, the Sonar Festival in Spain, which I'm sure used to be in Barcelona, they had an event every year where there was a tent and it was called Sonar Lab I think, or something like that. As a label you would go in and you would just play some music from your, from the label or DJ music from the label. And they asked me to do that and I thought it was kind of, it would be a bit weird, you know, just DJing like a Nick Cave track and then a Moby track and then a Depeche track, it didn't feel very creative to me. And it's just around that time that people were using loops on vinyl, like dub plates with loops on them. And a friend of mine, the famous, well, not so famous but extremely good electronic musician Thomas Fehlmann, he told me about these lock groove records. I thought that sounds interesting, I could, cause then I could mix a Diamanda Galas record, cause they're all the same tempo and all the same length, not all the same key but I'm not so worried about that. So like, if I made up lots of loops and cut them onto vinyl I could have like three decks and just mix the different loops in together and cause they'd all be in time all the time. And Seth Hodder, who ran NovaMute for many years, discovered Ritchie Hawtin and Speedy J, all those great techno artists. We did it together. And we did it once at Sonar, and it was really good fun. So we started to do that a bit more. We did a few sets around, so it wasn't DJing in that sense, but it was playing vinyl loops, dub from dub plates. KP - Amazing. I’d have love to have heard that. DM - And that was sort of I guess that was the early nineties maybe. Yeah it must've been like early to mid 90s, I can't remember. We both got kind of bored with that because we always ended up being in ambient rooms. They put us basically the let, everybody was just talking, it was like a bar basically. It's like, what's the point? And then like, six, seven, eight years ago now, a friend of mine, Karl O'Connor, who's known as Regis, techno DJ, he’s very enthusiastic and very encouraging. He was based in Berlin at the time and I was spending a lot of time in Berlin. And he had a party, he had a label called Sandwell District and they had a party, they did a party at Berghain, which is a famous, still probably the most famous techno club in the world, I guess. And he said to me in his Birmingham, his Midlands drawl, I can't, I'm not going to do it. He said oh you've got to play, you've got to play at our party. I said come on, I haven't, you know, I haven’t, at Berghain, it's a bit like playing your first football match at Wembley. And he said no no, it’ll be fine, don't worry. We'll put you on first, there's no pressure. And I did it and you know, you know, you go in at midnight on Saturday, it's you know, it's not crazy then at that time, it gets crazier, but I enjoyed it because I’d been doing a radio show of quite… KP - Yeah, Radio Ines. DM - “Radio Ines. I did a radio show in Berlin for many years, electronic music radio, so I had quite a lot of music and I used quite a lot of the music from radio show and it worked okay. I don't know really what it sounded like. And I thought, I really want to do this you know, I really, this, I enjoyed this so much I can't not do it. And so a friend of mine, Susanna Gostimirovic, she's an agent, a DJ agent you know, working with people like Miss Kitten, Lauren Garnier, people like that. She's a good friend. I said, would you get us a few gigs? I can't do many gigs, I'm not gonna be a big money earner for you, cause I can't you know, I'm running, I've got a day job. And we started getting gigs. I did play Ibiza. It's not my favourite place to play, but no, I'm more into Berlin. KP - Hardcore, sweaty. DM - Yeah and so I started getting gigs and I started really enjoying it. And I still really enjoying it. I'm cutting, I’m trying to cut down a bit because I want to do more modular stuff. KP - The live stuff performance wise you want to do performing. DM - Yeah, I want to do more of that. But I'm still DJing, I still love it. KP - What are you trying to do when you DJ, are you just you trying to take your audience to a place or you just playing what you love? DM - As I said before I'm a techno DJ which I love, I've loved for years. I love the idea of techno and because it's got to be functional first of all, it's good. You know, people are paying to have a dance. But within the sort of fairly strict kind of techno route, you know, unwritten rules of techno to be creative within those in that limitation against that limitations, I think really forces creativity. KP - Are you just using two turntables? DM - I use Traktor. KP - Have you got other bits and bobs like filter pads? DM - Well I use Traktor and I use a Traktor controller and the controller has got filters on it and Traktor’s got effects on it, so quite versatile. I enjoy, I like that it's kind of nearly all DJs now use USB sticks with CDJs and I turn up with my case with my laptop and my controller and everything and they just turn up with a USB stick and it's much more practical but I feel very at home with Traktor and I don't really have the time or that much desire to learn a different way of doing it, you know. I'm using the four decks on Traktor a lot at the same time, you know, like with loops, mixing loops. It's not really about for me playing one record beginning to end and then playing another record. I do that as well. But also it's like mixing like three or four tracks at once. KP - You want to spice it up a little bit. It's not just like you say, it’s… DM - It’s a bit of performance involved. And as I said, you asked me what I'm trying to achieve, well it's functional. You make sure people are dancing. Once you've got them, you know, there's some techno, which is a lot weirder than other techno let's say and a lot more experimental or interesting and so you try maybe try and take them down those roads and bring them back and I find that like four hours is a good time for me to play. KP - So you get, you can you can introduce them to, you sort of and then you can take them down and you bring them back out again and leave somewhere for the other DJs to go. DM - Exactly, I mean an hour which I’ve done, you know, a couple of times at festivals is kind of impossible. It's not interesting, really. I'm not going to do that anymore. For now, it's just like, you can't do anything in an hour, you know. Two hours is a bit, it's okay. But four hours, when I play Berghain regularly now, well, regularly, a couple of times a year and that's a four hour set. There's another club in Berlin which I really like called Sisyphos, that's a four hour set and it, you know, if it's working, it's amazing. KP - I’d love to hear that. Daniel, thank you very much. DM - That was very enjoyable. KP - Absolutely. DM - We worked together for many years at the Mute Studio in Harrow Road. KP - Very many years. A lot of my life was spent in and around Mute and yourself. DM - Your well spent youth. KP - Kept me off, kept me off the streets, as they say. Kept me out of trouble. DM - Yeah, good. KP - Thank you anyway. Thanks again. DM - Okay, thanks. Good to see you mate. Outro Thank you for listening, and be sure to check out the show notes page for this episode, where you'll find further information along with web links and details of all our other episodes. And just before you go, let me point you to the SoundOnSound/podcasts website page where you can explore what's playing on our other channels. This has been a Mixbus production by me, Kevin Paul, for Sound On Sound.