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Ellen Allien: (Auto-biography)
/// BERLIN BERLIN /// Berlin I grew up feeling surrounded by the Wall. I lived on the small island of West Berlin. Border controls on Sunday excursions, the rummaging through bags, the military. It was scary. But the quote All quiet on the western front still didnt really apply, as lots of things were happening that wouldnt have been possible anywhere else. The island of West Berlin was a destination for creative minds in search of alternatives. Music was and still is my outlet. Alongside tinkling on the electric organ, teaching myself how to read notes and my jukebox with a collection of singles in my room, my ears were first intrigued by the revolution of Neue Deutsche Welle. It was fantastic! For the first time people were singing in the language you could hear out on the street: Ideal, Grauzone, Nina Hagen pop meets punk. Things happened so fast. Minimal sounds made from machines entered the charts. For me it was Kraftwerks Model that changed everything. I discovered that pop also worked without any frills. My side of Berlin provided a home for the curious, those who were going against the flow. However, it was only when the Wall came down that Berlin became Berlin again the city that lets me breathe. After spending a whole year in London I realized that despite the acid jazzhouse euphoria there, only one place felt like home Berlin, the city of possibilities. Being able to breathe, to drive and walk wherever and with whoever I wanted. And no more borders. I was immediately fascinated by East Berlin, by this atmosphere of curiosity and get-up-and-go. There was room for experiments. Electronic music united East and West. I started to focus on music and art. At first that meant playing the saxophone, learning about fashion, hanging out in rehearsal rooms and taking classes in acrobatics. To finance it all, I worked behind the bar in the Fischlabor, which happened to be the meeting point of the up-and-coming music network. I mixed my first tapes and suddenly became part of the emerging Berlin techno scene, which started out in empty industrial buildings, houses and cellars. Ellen became Ellen Allien. Courage Berlin nightlife. I had my own radio show on KISS FM, worked at the Delirium record store and finally founded my first label Braincandy. It felt as if music had swallowed me whole. With Braincandy I made a serious attempt at releasing the kind of abstract techno I liked best. Id had enough of compromising. Some of it was just the courage to pave my own way. The closing down of the first big Berlin techno clubs was a setback for the scene, though I interpreted it as a sign to get something new going in the midst of disorientation. The party series BPitch Control was a good start. I wanted to hang on to the music, to materialize it, so I founded BPitch Control Records. The parties were no longer just memories, now people could take them home, too. The label was mainly an organ for me and other people who I found talented and worth supporting. To me, BPitch control is glamour, community and exchange platform all at the same time. Productive As a DJ I have always tried to connect genres, styles and audiences. I want to feed people new music and capture their interest. I want to fill the room with sound. And I have always been searching for an acceptance of what exists. We all live in the here and now! And it was that common thread that I wanted to share with the audience. When I DJ, body and music become one, they become brainy. To me, music was always the only way to soar through epic parallel worlds, to relax, to experience excess, to find myself. Music is both my motor and my outlet. As a producer, music is a playback of my emotions and moods. I tease them out of me with alternating technical devices. Music becomes a chronicle, each album is a work from a period of my life, which grounds me after the stress of DJ-jetting. Albums are like diaries. With my first album Stadtkind I wanted to express my close relationship with the city I live in. It was like an explosion. Stadtkind is my homage to Berlin. The testing, work and experimentation with the structures and the sound spectrum of electronic music then became more and more crucial for me. I used my various compilations and remixes to beam myself into the musical cosmos. With my next album Berlinette I processed what I had experienced after the release of Stadtkind. It was like a flash of lightning, I was everywhere and everyone around me was euphoric and supportive. Berlinette illustrates all that and it is also my very personal discourse on what is possible in the world of pop music and abstract sounds. Then I released my third album Thrills. It moves back and forth between constant excitement and playing the ARP 2600 and other analogue instruments. Changing studio equipment keeps the productions flowing. Techno is still what Im about. Its minimal, reduced, deep and rough at the same time. I would say that techno and I have developed together. Sensual In my work, graphics, music, artwork, visuals and fashion merge. Body Dance, space and lust for life overspill. I search for the fulfilling dance. Body, belly and brain start to swing and uplift me/us. Music is the drug nothing else! Travel Travelling with my record case, living out of the suitcase. The hotel is my home. Experiencing new worlds and cultures and accepting them; understanding, how things work in other places. Sharing views and politics. A club unites people without words. Its the music that speaks. Recognizing the beauty of the world and absorbing the otherness. Home is far away and not important. Its the unknown that attracts my attention, and I want to know it! The mix The mix is everything. I push myself to the absolute limit, sweating, and the thrill is that the room will become our room.
[align=right] (Source: http://www.myspace.com/ellenallienbpc)[/align]
Apparat
This apparat is one with flexible functions, and its sound is as eclectic as its musical horizon is broad. Its emotional chip features an option on happiness and its sound waves are able to tear your heart apart. While sensitively orchestrating his chamber musical qualities on his records or in his studio, his live performances are known for kicking some ass! He can also proudly refer to a John-Peel-Session and is sporadically working with Gianna Nannini on a Rock Opera.
Sascha Ring, aka Apparat, regards his moving out of the east German provincial backwater to Berlin in 1997 as one of his best decisions ever made. Since 1999 he runs, together with T.Raumschmiere, the Berlin based record label Shitkatapult a venturous music catapult that dashes a wild mixture of intentional great music onto the turntables of the world. Apparat is the bridge over the German gap of melancholic glitch between Manchester and Laptop-USA. His smart wiring of emotions produces a virtual musical reality, which is based upon different genres, depending on the surrounding of the apparat. In his studio, dense, dark and majestic clouds of elegiac pop and heavy Electronica built up to a coherent and emotionally charged atmosphere. Live, on the other hand, the dance floor seems to be repelled to rave from the Bermuda Triangle with its axes Techno, IDM and Elektro. Those styles cannot necessarily be distinguished and heard on every of his releases, but since he started out with a much harder pace of electronic music in the early nineties, his influences are definitely Techno and Elektro as well.
The intensity in Apparats tracks seems to grow with his own pleasure in experimenting. The charming breaking-up of the mechanical walkover of his Elektronica compositions first being subtle clicks and accidental sound mistakes, this is now being done by veritable musicians and singers, by classical instruments like violin and cello, saxophone and clarinet, which are then masterly orchestrated by Apparat as the Maestro of his computer.
[align=right](Source: http://www.myspace.com/apparat) [/align]
Discography:
Ellen Allien & Apparat Orchestra Of Bubbles
01 .: Turbo Dreams :.
02 .: Way Out :.
03 .: Retina :.
04 .: Rotary :.
05 .: Jet :.
:shock:
06 .: Sleepless :.
07 .: Metric
08 .: Floating Points :.
09 .: Under :.
10 .: Do Not Break :.
11 .: Leave Me Alone :.
12 .: Edison :.
13 .: Bubbles :.
An Album!! Ellen Alian’s minimal at it’s best, mixed with Apparat’s Teknish Electro/house. Even thou the tempo is quite “down”, the music is danceable, yet nuanced.
Tracks 4 to 10 are simply incredible!! I kept my eyes popped the whole time!!
The low points of the album are track 2 and 11, with some odd vocals and a cheesy melody. “Edisson” is a crackly minimal track that seems to lead nowhere, I can’t really explain why I got so attached to it after a couple of listen..
Sets:
Ellen Alien & Apparat Summer Mix on Soundlab 17.12.2006
http://rapidshare.com/files/7902236/ell ... 6.rar.html
PW: stepfunk
Ellen Allien & Apparat live @ 10 days off 14.07.2006
http://rapidshare.de/files/25885539/ell ... 6.mp3.html
Video:
Ellen Allien & Apparat live @ I Love Techno 21-10-2006
Length: 30:02 Size:148 Mb
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SER6F9PP
01 Ellen Allien - Stadtkind
02 Ellen Allien & Apparat - Jet
03 ID
04 Ellen Allien & Apparat - Under
05 Ellen Allien & Apparat - Way Out
06 ID
07 Apparat - Montreal
08 Ellen Allien & Apparat - Sleepless
09 Ellen Allien – Magma
(the cd..)
