IT’s an unseasonably warm spring Sunday evening in London and the city’s hip and cosmopolitan Brick Lane district is even more vibrant and frenetic than usual. Amidst the hedonism and sitting opposite, the personification of laid-back calm itself, sipping appropriately and through choice on a Becks beer is an equally high-quality German product, the very latest house and techno wunderkind Langenberg.
Tousle-haired and dressed simply in a neat jacket over a grey hoodie, Max Heesen, to give him his real name, is fresh and alert despite a very late night following his British DJ debut playing at a label party for Sounderground, the up-and-coming and rather-fine London-based imprint.
Another day, another house starlet from Germany, perhaps? Except that on the form Heesen’s shown so far under various guises there is every reason to believe he’s the real deal. His thoughtful take on deep minimal grooves, smooth productions and an instinctive ear for memorable chords has found support from the likes of Steve Bug, Brothers’ Vibe, Jimspter and Sebo K, to name only a few, and suggests that he is no two-minute wonder.
Still only 26-years-old, Heesen has already put together an impressive CV since his first tentative steps into the music industry as a 17-year-old punk, somewhat perversely playing soul and funk at the parties he organised with friends in the squat-cum-co-operative he occupied in his hometown of Mülheim, a small middle-class town near the west German city of Essen. It wasn’t long though before Heesen, originally DJing and indeed recording under the name Brett Pitch (on Supercity), caught the attention of the region’s in-crowd and then finally accepted a residency five years ago at the then newly-opened Hotel Shanghai club in Essen, now his adopted home.
Then two years ago he launched his production career using the alias Langenberg, a name he adopted from a previous occupant of his flat, with a stunning EP that belied his relative inexperience as an artist, the mature and Detroit-influenced Mrs. Future on Resopal Red. It’s been followed by a string of equally impressive and well-crafted releases on the likes of Drumpoet Community, Sthlmaudio, Dessous and very soon liebe*detail too. Heesen confesses to being something of a perfectionist. It shows in his work.
Aside from his own productions he’s also provided top-notch remixes for Ajello (Rebirth), Art Bleek (Sounderground) and Homewreckers (Unique). There are also remixes for Moonpool [Marc Poppcke’s Beatitude] and Compost Black [Manuel Tur and Dplay’s Conchord] scheduled for July and August respectively. And lest we forget, he’s also providing his own spin on Two Armadillos’ excellent Tunnel of Light for volume three of Dessous’ remixed classics series. Not bad for a kid who admits that he had to be “kicked” to piano lessons by his parents.
And not content with impressive solo progress, last year Heesen decided to move his career up a gear, jacked in his job in export sales management and digital sales/distribution for Düsseldorf-based funk and hip-hop label Unique and teamed-up with deep house prodigy and friend Manuel Tur to record dub-tinged techno as Ribn for Styrax Leaves, its sub-label Millions of Moments, and most recently Freerange. Factor in too the Slow Club night the pair collaborate on with pal Dplay (aka Dirk Gottwald) at Goethe Bunker in Essen. The venture is a chance for the three to showcase not only their considerable talents behind the decks but also experiment with other projects and ideas such as the Ribn live act. And then there is the record label, Mild Pitch, that the three of them are launching later this year. With such a hectic schedule it’s clear that not only is Heesen in-demand but his career is unquestionably heading in the right direction.
So it was with relief as much as curiosity and interest that bringdownthewalls caught up with Heesen after a night on the town and just before he embarked on yet another.
Had you always planned to be a DJ?
I never wanted to be a DJ, it just happened by chance. It wasn’t my intention to do the parties [at the squat in Mülheim] to give myself a place to be a DJ. Because I was bored, I got together with some friends and we did that party. Then another friend invited some friends who played vinyl. I saw it and liked it and that’s how I became a DJ.
I was interested in music all my life but it was a year after we started that party night that I started playing records. Then I started to collect some records. There was Kompakt in Cologne, which is one-hour train ride from Essen, and this was the first record shop I went to regularly. As well as Groove Attack, which is just on the corner from the Kompakt store. It was there I first got in touch with stronger techno tunes. Then from there I got into this whole House thing.
So what were you playing back then?
Actually, when I started DJing it was some kind of wild-style, a mixture between hip-hop, funk and soul. Then I got into techno tunes and mixed it all up. Now I play straight electronic music, it’s just house and techno but I don’t like having doors closed where you are not allowed to be adventurous. So sometimes I still mix things up. Normally I try to play as deep as possible but I want to play honest.
Is it particularly important for you then as a DJ that you can play what you want?
I always want DJs to play really honest, so that they play exactly what they want to play. Patrice Scott was playing at Hotel Shanghai and I was really nervous because I really love his sound and I wanted him to play honest. He asked me if it was ok to play these hard Detroit techno tunes. And for me that’s why he was there, to go for it and do just what he wanted to do. He said the booking agency had said it was a really housey place so better that he should play a bit deeper. I really liked him as a DJ and also his label [Sistrum Recordings]. At the end of the night we played a ping-pong set together. It was a really nice night, not too many people, but I really enjoyed the night. It was good.
What did the crowd make of it?
Sometimes it is not always easy in Essen. The people sometimes have really huge question marks above their heads. But there are only two options. You can give them what they want maybe, something that you can get really fast, or maybe be honest [play what you want] and maybe they’ll come back, give it a chance and listen to some styles of music they haven’t heard before. After a few times they get into it and feel it.
As someone who’s organised parties, DJs and now runs a club night, you must have a better idea than most what makes a good night.
Definitely good people and a good sound system. Open-minded people, so that they give the DJ a chance. What I don’t like is big spots, three different rooms where the people are moving around the whole time and do not stay on the floor. I prefer smaller venues. For me as a DJ, I really need the feeling to come into the sound. So I really love to play at the beginning and play for the whole night. That’s what I like most.
When there are people I know or who play a similar sound to me, that’s alright, but I’m not that peak-time DJ who gets into the DJ booth at two o’clock, plays for two hours and then goes. Normally I try to get them [the crowd] into the groove and build it up really carefully with a really deep beginning and then it could be harder. There’s enough time at a club night so you can really play different styles and sounds and you can become a bit harder, or a bit faster in the later hours. And then try to build it up again. But it has to be one flow.
It’s not only the club, it’s the crowd and the feeling around. I really feel at home at Hotel Shanghai because that’s been my residency now for years. What feels best as a DJ right now though are the parties I run together with Manuel and Dplay, the Slow Club thing. We only did a couple of parties and we did the first Ribn live act there. It’s a really good playground to try a couple of things out and invite the people we really want to invite. We’ve had really good DJs there including Gerd Janson [Running Back] last time.
Tell me a bit more then about Essen club-wise?
Essen is a boring city and we only had one good club and I never felt really comfortable because I wasn’t sure if the people in this city had the same understanding of music that I have. There’s only one huge club in Essen and not everybody likes Hotel Shanghai. It [Hotel Shanghai] is now about five years old and I was there from the beginning. And it’s a really good place, a really nice club. It has grown in the last few years and I think I have grown with it kind of. It’s quite housey so you can play really, really deep on a nice sound system, a warm-sounding system, and really nice people.
So it was definitely a big step launching Slow Club. I met Manuel and Dplay because I played together with Dplay at Hotel Shanghai. That’s where we met and then I met Manuel as well. And then we [Manuel Tur and Heesen] started to share a studio and became friends, but we actually met in a club.
Then you and Manuel decided to start working together as Ribn, right?
Yeah. When I met Manuel he was searching for a new studio and a friend of mine had this venue, where we do Slow Club. It’s a bunker, an old bunker from the Second World War, which is now the party location. On the first floor there are some really small rooms, you know, the size of a car-parking space with no windows at all and really dark. It was there I went in with Manuel and we shared a studio for just 50 Euros a month.
My first output was actually produced at home but the Drumpoet and newer stuff came from that studio as well as the Ribn tracks. If we had a studio with windows we are not sure the sound of Ribn would be that dark. It’s funny because we never thought when we started to do tracks that we would come together on these dubby techno tunes. We just had some sessions and tried a couple of things out. When we discovered we both really liked that sound it was all really, really fast. The workflow was really good. All the Ribn tracks have been produced in about two weeks, just a track a day.
Tell me more about the project and how the pair of you work together?
Sometimes he’s [Manuel] in front of the computer and I’m at the hardware and sometimes it’s different. It’s 50/50. Maybe if I’m first to come into the room and sit down at the computer I’ll start making some beats maybe and Manuel will just jam a bit on the groove box we do all the synth stuff with. It’s a Yamaha synth with RS7000 sequencer. It’s a rhythm machine and all the sounds are from this synth.
We started with a Millions of Moments release [Mined EP], which is a sub-label of Styrax Leaves, and now there’s the Styrax record [Shift/Ctrl EP]. Then we will drop a 12” on Ovum in July, then three tracks on Mule Electronic.
Is there much difference between your individual productions and those collectively as Ribn?
It’s totally different. We never thought we’d come together on these dub house-influenced and dubby techno tunes. I don’t know, it’s just totally new because Ribn have nothing in it from the normal Langenberg sound and nothing from the typical Manuel Tur sound. These tracks are like nothing I tried to produce before I came together with Manuel. It’s just a result of sessions together at the studio where we tried to get to know each other better, while jamming around and then coming together on that sound.
How do you analyse your own sound as Langenberg? It’s certainly influenced by Detroit, isn’t it?
I’m not the best at reflecting on my music but, yeah, I’m definitely influenced by the Detroit sound. Sometimes I make tracks and play them to my friends and they say, “oh, that sounds like an old record”. I don’t know.
But your first EP included a track called Black In Black, which featured a Gil Scott-Heron sample, a very Detroit-esque touch.
It was my first record and actually it should have been a remix for a friend of mine. I heard that vocal and said “I really like that can I do a remix for you?”. The remix became totally different, really deep and he didn’t like it so then I asked him if I could release it as Langenberg. So it became my own track. I signed it to Resopal and it was my first 12”. It’s my favorite release now, but it just takes some time before I’ll drop my own singles. I don’t play my own tracks too often. Sometimes I try it out. I like what I do but I’m not so good at playing my own tracks. But when they rest for a few years, like the Resopal release, then I’m able to play them.
Detroit and Chicago are obvious influences but which artists, DJs and producers are you currently into?
There are so many artists I really like. I’m really into Moodymann for example or Patrice Scott. As a DJ now I’m more interested in the older tunes than the new tunes. I don’t shop for new music too much. I try to get older records. So I’m going to the past, not really to the future but I think that goes hand-in-hand. I try to get them together in some way.
I really like Tobias. I also really like the stuff of Dplay and Manuel of course. I don’t know, mostly I get to know people better when I play alongside them so I really enjoy playing together with Prosumer from Ostgut Ton, Cassy and Tobias, like I said. I played with Baaz [Quintessentials/Sthlmaudio] recently. I really like what Baaz is doing and Agnès [Sthlmaudio] too. I really like their sound.
I hear you are now setting up a label with Manuel and Dplay.
We are just shaping the outlines for our own label. We’ll drop some things on different labels but we plan to do our own label as well. We had the working title r12v but we switched a few weeks ago. We now want to call it Mild Pitch. We’re going to release our tracks on Mild Pitch and it will be a bit deeper. We’re not really sure which direction it will go but we have Manuel, we have Dplay, we have me and we have the Ribn stuff, so we have enough projects to make something happen. In the beginning we’re not sure if we want to sign any artists, but it could be because we are just interested in releasing good music. But there’s nothing planned or anything.
It could be we still release on other labels as well. I like Manuel’s work and he likes mine but it’s not every track that we have to release on our label. With every new track first of all we’ll sit together and discuss if it could be a Mild Pitch release and if not we’ll maybe send it to other labels.
When will it be up and running?
Good question. We hope late summer. Late August or September. The release sheet is not decided yet but right now the first release will probably be a Ribn single [This Feeling EP] and the second will be a Langenberg single [Times], with Manuel doing a remix for that.
Earlier on you said that Essen was a “boring city”. But it seems to me that actually, beneath the surface, there’s a lot of creativity and activity going on.
There are some other guys like Marcus Sur, he released some tracks on Highgrade Records, he’s a bit housey but not the kind of house we do, for example. There are a couple of guys making different sounds. Then there’s Urban Absolutes and Modern Walker. They’re funny. I think Modern Walker just made the first one-sided digital track label. He’s a crazy guy.
Nobody knows Essen. The thing that makes me really happy right now, and the fact that I want to stay in Essen, is that I met these guys that I have the project with [Manuel and Dplay], that I feel really good with them and that we have plans for the future. We can push forward our city.
Check out:
http://www.myspace.com/langenbergmusic
http://www.myspace.com/ribnmusic
Langenberg DJ Mix May 2009
May 2009
