Tiefschwarz - 10 Days Off - Ghent BE - Jul 2008

Biography of Tiefschwarz

BORN
Ali: 7 June ’67, Stuttgart, Germany
Basti: 28 Dec ’69, Stuttagart, Germany

FAMILY
Ali: “We have a very strong relationship with our family. We don’t have a musical background, but we have a big party background. My parents loved to party, especially my father. He was always bringing old records and tape machines to parties. He was such an entertainer. He was into all kinds of music: pop music at the time, from the 50s, the Beatles, the Stones, classic music, everything. They loved to dance and they’re very open-minded so that’s why they are also our biggest fans. Our father died last year and that’s still very sad. He was such a big influence and the most important person to us. He would often come touring with us and when we did really big parties, he’d be at the door hosting people. It’s really sad, we miss him terribly. But the same with my mother: when she comes out on tour with us, she’s always on the dancefloor or opening the dancefloor and it’s so sweet. She’s amazing.”

MUSICAL ROOTS
Ali: “I played piano when I was a young kid but when I became a teenager I was so much more interested in going out and meeting girls or whatever. I loved to play the piano but I didn’t want to spend as much time studying it. My teacher was amazing, he was playing in theaters and creating keyboards and synthesizers by himself, he was a genius. So actually today I do regret that I lost interest. I started to buy records when I was a teenager; I bought my first record when I was 13 or 14. It was an AC/DC record. And then I bought some Krautrock bands, like Schweissfuss and Amon Dul. I remember Uriah Heap, I bought a record with a snake on the cover that always stays in my mind - I think the title was “Innocent Victim.” Then Status Quo and some weird rock from Germany. My brother started a little bit later, with Deep Purple and all sorts of punk and rock. And I changed more into the pop music world – I was very much into David Bowie, ABC, all these new wave bands. When wave was big in the 80s, I was in the middle of it, and started going to wave clubs when I was about 15. It was a strong scene at the moment and I was one of the youngest involved. From rock, wave, pop…we were both very open-minded. A little bit later I started to specialize; I started to listen to Black music and electronic music like Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder. I had a friend who had a huge record collection, and a few of us would go to his house every bloody afternoon, 7 days a week. He would teach us; he knew all about so many rare bands, from electronic to Black music to eclectic left field music. He would teach us to listen to music more deeply. Not only on the surface, but to actually go deep into the structure of the music and learn what’s behind it all. That was the foundation for me, a very important part of my life musically. Basti meanwhile was really into punk rock, Dead Kennedys and all that. He was also drumming in several bands at the time, a crazy teen rock drummer. He was in many student bands that existed for a couple weeks and the next one came. Weird punk rock teenage bands.”

FIRST PROJECTS
Ali: “My first project musically was creating parties, between the ages of 17 and 20. First it was private parties in our flats (we had a huge flat at the time). We invited pretty much the whole city; no one could’ve expected over 300 people at a private house. We had a lot of occupying projects, squat projects, in the 80s. We also DJ’d at the time, but only with one turntable and tape decks! The music was important but it was more about the party vibe, getting crazy, costumes, celebrating ourselves. That was the beginning and from then on we started to do parties more professionally – rented spaces, did flyers and such. That was the first step towards the first club I opened. For Basti, he was more into drumming. He moved to Hamburg from Stuttgart to go to a drumming school, so he left Stuttgart for 2 years. Meanwhile, I opened the first club with a friend in 1990. That’s where we became our own resident DJs, with the help of our friend I mentioned before, who’d introduced us to all this kind of music. We had Rainer Trüby, who started his career with us. He’s now a world famous DJ, similar to Gilles Peterson. Several DJs started there. The first club was called On-U, like the On-U Sound System in London, because we loved this electronic, dub-influenced music at the time. On-U was like a playground for all kinds of different music, from free jazz to techno, from reggae to house, from acid jazz to hip hop – there were no boundaries. In the beginning we didn’t even mix; we just learned it by doing. The people were so open-minded, they just came to have a good time. It was all very art-related and conceptual. It was a crazy time. It was not only about dancing, it was also celebrating and partying with weird mottos. For instance, when the wall came down between east and west Germany, we had an “East Germany” party - we were building a wall all around the club and had weird furniture and decorations from East Germany. We had funny table tennis parties with a fog machine and a strobe light and we’d lock the door – people were running around the table tennis for hours and hours. The fog machine was so strong you couldn’t see anything and the strobe light exploded because it was on for hours. It was just ridiculous, performance parties. People would grab all the toilet paper and wrap everybody in the club with toilet paper… We once had a heaven and hell party with two levels, upstairs was the bar lounge and downstairs was the club and my father was on the door deciding who would go to heaven and who would go to hell. We have lots and lots of stories to tell. It was really different at that time, so special. I’ve never experienced that again.”

LABELS AND PRODUCTIONS
Ali: “We’ve started our own label and that’s something that really excites us right now a lot. It will be called Souvenir. We’re just starting right now, creating all the structures and preparing the first three releases. So most of the time these days, that’s the only label we’re thinking about! I don’t want to talk about the releases right now, it’s more like a surprise, but we’re looking to promote our idea of dance music for me and my brother - what we like, what we play in the clubs…and any future friends and new talents we meet, that’s kind of the idea. In the beginning it’ll only be 12” club tunes and then we’ll see how it develops. It’s just another platform next to DJing and producing, it completes the triangle. For us, it’s something important.”

DJING
Ali: “I started DJing in 1990, only in our own club without travelling. We’d built our own crowd and posse in Stuttgart. We opened the second club in ’93, which was not the same A-Z, anything goes music policy – it was only deep house. The first club was into so many different niches and categories of music, we decided we’d focus on only one. We were so infected by New Groove and early Strictly Rhythm, and we felt so close to the 4 to the floor bass drum and the musical structure of house and deep house…we were so passionate, we dedicated our second club, Red Dog, to becoming a pure underground house club. It was really small, but we had amazing guests – Masters at Work, Tony Humphries, all these US legends. Actually we couldn’t afford them but we were so into it, we weren’t doing it for the money, just strictly passion. From there, we got more connected to the scene so at that point – ’95 or ’96 – we were able to travel outside of Stuttgart, all over Germany, Austria, Switzerland…we closed down the club in ’97 when we had our own profile beyond Stuttgart so we had the chance to travel more and more. This was the point where we started to produce. Together with the profile we had with the club and our first productions, it started growing. And the Tiefschwarz story really began, in ’96. It’s a totally different story these days, a different level. If we didn’t enjoy it then we wouldn’t do it, it’s as simple as that. But at the same time, it became a professional job and it’s not just a job, it’s our job. We take it serious and we love it, but it’s also a job which we do on a high level and it takes us all around the world. That’s the motivation on one side because we are so blessed to see the world through these special eyes. We always come into a city where we’re invited, where we’re a guest. I created this term for a German interview – “inner-circle tourism.” You’re not coming as a tourist, you don’t have to grab a book and read about the nice hotels, restaurants and museums…you come and people take you inside the scene, and that’s something you never discover as a normal tourist. We have the chance to see the whole world through a different perspective. It’s kind of a social study as well, I really love travelling so for me it’s double the pleasure. Our favourite gigs are festival gigs – big festivals with a good lineup. And also small, intimate clubs. It’s hard to tell. You can have an amazing night in a big club when the crowd is into you but it’s almost a little more special when you have a smaller, crazy venue. It’s always a mixture of everything.”

FABRIC
“The first gig we played was 3 or 4 years ago, we started in Room 3. It happened when we were still working at Classic, and that was really the door opener to the British scene. We were so excited to play at Fabric. We played in Room 3 two or three times and from then on, it changed into Room 1. Fabric, for me, is one of the best clubs in the world with by far the best lineups. There is no other club in the world that has the same quality of lineups as Fabric, especially when compared to its size. It’s really remarkable and outstanding. Fabric teaches the crowd to accept new perspectives and new visions of music. For the size of it, you’d expect the lineups to be much more cheesy, to get the crowds and money. And that’s the big difference between Fabric and other big clubs. We’re always super pleased and super happy to play, and it’s an honour for us to do the Fabric compilation as well.”

THE MIX
Ali: “For us, we wanted to give a perspective of a Tiefschwarz DJ mix in one hour. For us, it was not about making an eclectic mix through the musical worlds that we like, we were much more interested in showing what interests us as a DJ team. That was the idea and how we selected the tracks. We thought it made most sense to do a DJ mix, because that’s why we’re at Fabric, that’s why people hear us in Fabric, so we figured we’d follow that. It’s out of the stomach.”

THE FUTURE
Ali: “Well, hopefully it’s a bright future. We’re super excited about the label, which is the newest step for us. We’re working on some new material; we just finished the remixes for Madonna and Depeche Mode. And Roxy music, something old school, which was also an honour. This summer we’ll be in Ibiza, playing at Space the whole summer as a resident and also playing Cocoon, so we have a long summer on the island coming up. We’re also going to go to Australia, Japan and China soon which is also special. After the summer, I think we’ll finally take it a little bit easy and start working on a new album.”