Interview: Listening to music with Mate

Mate played one of his first public gigs as a DJ at the legendary Bar 25, since than he has been performing in various clubs, mainly in Berlin, at open airs and festivals like Plötzlich am Bodden. Additionally, he is a resident at Rummels Bucht where he plays on a regular basis.

“My music isn’t meant to make people think, it’s meant to make them dance,” says Mate. In our interview, we have done some thinking as well, not about his music, but about songs by Michael Jackson, Die Ärzte, The Kills, Pachanga Boys and Freundeskreis. More after the jump.

Michael Jackson, Performance at MTV Award 95

Michael Jackson was an exceptional artist, no doubt about that. He was a real perfectionist, and he became a world star not only because of his music, but also because of his jaw-dropping choreographies (just like in this video) and his particular dance style. His album Thriller was published in the year I was born, and at the time I became aware of Michael he already was a world star. To be honest, I was not really interested in him for most of my life. Even though I enjoyed his music, he seemed very odd to me as a person; his yearning for transformation and his whole appearance was just so strange, and when he was then accused of being a child molester, I did not care about him any more.

However, when Michael Jackson died, which was at same time as the Fusion in 2009, I experienced the dismay and huge concern so many people had for him. I also realized that he played an important role for many musicians that are few years older than I am. And it seems that he was much more important than I thought he was. R.I.P. Michael.

Die Ärzte Junge

Die Ärzte – the best band in the world, if I may say so. Junge is not one of my favourites, though. I did not enjoy their music that much after Le Frisur, with Junge being a positive exception. Therefore I like the first ten years of Die Ärzte even better. From the beginning on (which means: from the time when I got my first Walkman), this band has accompanied me through my entire youth. Even today I still know many lyrics by heart.

If you enjoy listening to Die Ärzte as much as I do, this sometimes can have the same effects as listening to Techno. One time, my girlfriend and I were listening to Die Ärzte,we were playing the music quite loud, we danced and rocked to it, and we sang along to it rather loud as well – until a neighbour finally came to us to ask us to turn the bass down.

Freundeskreis Esperanto

Great! I have not been listening to this in a long time, and I really enjoyed singing along to it. By the end of the last century I was a real fan of Hip Hop music. I especially enjoyed German Hip Hop. For me, the message was important, and German lyrics are just more intensive and political to me. And all these guys from Stuttgart really created a nice mixture of Pop and politics by combining jazzy beats and critical lyrics. I enjoyed the album Die Quadratur des Kreises even more than Esperanto, it is probably one of the albums from my CD shelf that I listen to the most.

The Kills Last Goodbye

I like this song, but that’s about it. Generally, I am not a big fan of Indie rock, I do not listen to it at home, just when somebody else plays it. With this song, The Kills are celebrating their tenth birthday. Congratulations for that, but frankly I don’t really mind. Anyhow, the video is cool, it reminds me of some sessions at a particular photo booth – you know what I am talking about…

Pachanga Boys Time

For me, this is THE festival song of 2012. At one festival in the summer, I really had tears in my eyes when they were playing it. In the meantime this record was played almost too much in the clubs. But anyhow, this track is just ingenious. And you can really hear the Superpitcher part in it.

I came to know this song pretty early in 2012, because I already found Thanks for nothing, the first record on this label, pretty interesting. That was some kind of Electronica-Minimal-Pop, something like that. So because I liked that record, I also listened to the other one; I knew Superpitcher, so I also checked out Pachanga Boys. And if you listen to Rebolledo, then Pachanga Boys is the next logical step. Please continue!

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<a href="https://www.iheartberlin.de/author/jens/" target="_self">Jens</a>

Jens

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