A lot is said about Berghain. From the door policy to the artwork to the infamous dark room – each aspect of the club (and it’s upstairs house-friendly sibling, Panoramabar) is cause for much discussion. Integral to the club’s unrivaled reputation though, is the music. We spoke with Ben via email to discuss the upcoming Berghain 04 compilation, his early days as a drum and bass DJ and sampling egg slicers on his childhood productions.

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I read somewhere that you are a classically trained pianist – how do you think that affects your approach to DJing and electronic music?

I took classical piano lessons when I was young but was always better in improvisation rather than playing from notes. I used to come home from school, sit down at the piano for two hours or so and just play improvisations to relieve stress. There was even a time when I wanted to study jazz piano at university, but eight hours of practicing per day made me lose my interest in trying to be perfect on one instrument.

I realized that I was more interested in new sounds, electronic sounds and composing in the sense of being able to use every sound that I wanted to. That really got me into electronic music – there is way more room for all kinds of ideas.

I don’t think my classical training still affects my music now very much. I worked hard on losing all those classical and jazzy influences, because that’s not what interests me in electronic music, to play a solo or something like that. It’s a totally different approach, it’s more about atmospherics and repetitiveness than music in a classical way. You could say that I always look for some soul, some human touch in the music even when it’s hard machine techno. Having said that, I think that it’s not a bad thing to be able to play the piano – it just helps you find the chords or notes that you have in your head more easily.




zum Interview bei Juno Plus