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Vice Blog

I’VE SEEN THE FUTURE, BROTHER: IT IS… HYPNO-TRANCE

Trying to list music producer Mark Reeder’s achievements in the music business is like writing out Moby's Christmas wishlist. Using his professional connections with the former State-owned record label Amiga in the DDR he was able to found his own...

Trying to list music producer Mark Reeder's achievements in the music business is like writing out Moby's Christmas wishlist. Born in the UK, Mark started out at Virgin Records before a fascination for war movies led him to Berlin, where he fell into the Berliner Krankheit scene in the late 70s. From those gloomy no-wave roots Reeder has developed into a hot commodity in the techno scene. Using his professional connections with the former State-owned record label Amiga in the DDR he was able to found his own label MFS, which he has used to develop the minimal robotics of techno into something warmer and more melodic. Hypno-trance, as he called it – now more commonly known as trance – was the first black-sheep offspring to be born from techno. With artists like Cosmic Baby and Effective Force he's unleashed the future of electronic music on Europe. Let's find out how.

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Vice: Mark, this year is something of a special birthday for Germany; five years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Mark Reeder: Five years already? It seems like only yesterday that I was being interviewed for MTV and was asked if I thought the Wall would ever fall. I said, not in our lifetime. That was in early October 1989…

What would you say was the soundtrack for that time in Germany?

Arguably, techno. Before the Mauerfall, the techno scene in Berlin was just a handful of clubbers hanging about small clubs and bars in West Berlin. Places like 90 Grad, Fischlabor and UFO. The fall of the Wall changed all that because a club didn't have to be in a traditional building anymore. By 1992 the entire club scene had moved east.

Do you think techno would have become the massive genre it is now if it hadn't been for that influx of East Germans hungry for something new?

The sudden mass of Easties had a massive effect on the music and club culture in Berlin. That was the first time their generation could freely decide what they really wanted to hear and they chose techno, because it was radical and revolutionary. It doesn't adhere to the old rules of blues and rock & roll and there are no difficult English lyrics to understand.

Plus, it pisses off their parents.

Exactly. The fact that new clubbing locations were suddenly made available in areas that were previously forbidden zones and ecstacy helped that of course.

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When you first came over to Berlin you were working for Factory Records. How did that come about?

I used to work at Virgin Records in Manchester and knew Tony Wilson pretty well so when he set up Factory I was appointed their German rep. I'll never forget Joy Division coming and playing a mini-tour over here. No one really knew who they were. That was in January 1980. Ian Curtis went wild for the cheap fags you could buy in East Germany and chainsmoked the whole time. That was quite a memorable image. Trundling through bleak East Germany in the middle of a freezing winter with him smoking non-stop in the van. But as far as I was concerend, they were the future of music. As I fan, I wanted everyone to be doing what Joy Division and A Certain Ratio were doing.

So how did you become the head of a trance label?

Despite being really into that whole Manchester scene, I was already really into underground disco and US and German electronic dance music. I was also captivated by Berlin's underground music scene. It was so unlike anywhere else. This radical, avant-garde approach to making music just didn't exist in the UK. Especially early German electronic music like P1/E, Geile Tiere or Kosmonautentraum were very appealing to me.

Musically, Berlin was quite a hotbed of activity during the 80s with the Berliner Krankheit scene evolving, producing stuff like Neubauten and Die Ärtzte. What were you up to during the last decade?

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Throughout the 80s, I was really involved in the music scene here organising gigs, managing Malaria, touring with New Order. It's crazy when I think of how much has happened in such a short time. I even managed to squeeze in producing the last ever album in the DDR.

What?

Yeah, Torture by Die Vision. In fact if I hadn't done that, I'd never be running my label, MFS.

How did that come about?

I was invited to produce this LP for Die Vision and I suppose give it a bit of Western credibility or whatever. Anyway, we recorded that through summer and autumn of 89 and once the sessions were over I immediately took off on holiday to Eastern Europe for a couple of weeks. The day we left the fucking Wall came down. The biggest event to happen to Germany since the War and we missed it! By the time I got back, Amiga, which was the state-owned record label then, was in tatters and we were able to mix the record in West Berlin with the Eastie technicians. I guess that was the first collaboration between East and West Berlin in a way! Anyway, techno was definitely becoming a force to be reckoned with and I thought, fuck, we have a label here, or at least the ruins of one, we should be putting out some credible techno records. I badgered and badgered them to do it but of course these old guys in suits didn't have a clue what the hell it was and eventually said, „Well if you know so much about it, you do it!" So I did.

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What were your aims when you started the label?

My idea was to present a more after-party, deep and trippier style of music. I initially called this sound hypno-trance but it has become known more commonly as trance. I noticed many friends and former disco clubbers were really interested in the idea of techno but were frustrated that they couldn't get to grips with the sound. They were looking for a hook, a melody, something familiar.

So how did you come up with trance?

I really want to tap into their E'd up emotions more than techno did. I really liked the way that Wagner had been able to use complimentary tones to subliminally influence the listener's psyche with his melencholic or euphoric chord changes and I imagined what that idea would sound like with a driving beat and a head full of E. Secondly, I noticed the initial euphoria generated by the immediate fall of the Wall, the German World Cup victory and the positive momentum of a unified Germany and thought that we now need a sound to accompany the optimistic feeling which was everywhere.

So who was your first artist on MFS?

Juergen Laarmann of Frontpage mentioned that Cosmic Baby was looking for a label and so I had a meeting with him and we exchanged ideas and he became my first real trance artist.

How did people react in the beginning?

I was constantly slated for making trance and I got real grief from some of the other labels in the city. I wanted trance to be an alternative sub genre under the general umberella of techno and I wasn't going to let these bastards get me down. In fact, Die Gestalten have just published a really good book about techno called Localizer and Laarmann. In there they called us „Germany's first and most influential trance label, MFS." So in a short space of time MFS has gone from being a small, niche label to a globally recognised name.

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So what's on the horizon for MFS this year?

I'm working a hell of a lot with Paul van Dyk these days. He approached me not long after the Mauerfall and asked if I would help him get started as a DJ. We've just released his first single, My World and right now I am working on the design idea for his first album which I have titled 45rpm. I'm sure Paul is going to be one to watch in the future. Although to be honest, I am no longer convinced of any artist's loyalty to me or my label anymore and I am quite certain that when the time comes he will also royally shaft me and fall into the clutches of the majors.

Has the whole techno scene managed to transfer over to the UK yet?

I'm just not sure the UK gets it. I'm sure they will but it's definitely a Berlin baby at the moment. I remember the video shoot for Paul's first single a couple of months back. Horrendous. Ben Hardyment who had directed the Berliner Trance documentary convinced us to go to London for the shoot.

How was it?

Well the fucker was still in bed when we got there. He had these miserable models trying their best to dance to a kind of music they'd never, ever heard before while wrapped up in cling film and then Ben took Paul off to some studio to do some blue-screen filming of him flying through the Grand Canyon.

Nice.

It was fucking awful. An embarrassment like that could kill the genre in the UK before it's even got off the ground.

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You did an MFS night in London recently, which sounded like a bit of a shambles.

Rob Deacon at Volume asked us over to do an MFS night for the opening of a new club called Leisure Lounge. I should've known then it would be a mess. Me, Paul van Dyk, Valis and Mijk van Dijk turn up at the Volume offices and Rob's all excited about how the night is going to go. Apparently he got a plug in the NME and there were posters and flyers all over. So Valis being a nosey bugger opens a cardboard box on the stairs and pulls out a flyer for the gig. Well, Rob just turned white…then purple. There were boxes and boxes of these flyers just sat in the office. Some cock hadn't done their job and they'd not been distributed. Anywhere!

So what happened, anyone turn up?

Well we headed down to the club and the first thing I see smack bang in the middle of the dancefloor is a fucking cement mixer. I had brought all these slides over of artworks by Stephan Hoeneloh to project as Rob wanted this industrial Berlin feel going on. My „screens" it turned out were bed sheets strung up on the ceiling. So of course no one turned up. Well, the VIPs did of course for the free drinks. Neil and Chris from Pet Shop Boys dropped in. But it was just a sham. In fact there were two guests there. Two Japanese tourists who'd been strongarmed in off the street were attempting to dance in the middle of all this smoke and strobe lights.

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So not really comparable to your nights in Berlin.

Well, possibly but it all just seemed pretty desperate.

Perhaps the UK isn't ready for the techno/trance monster just yet.

For the moment, trance and techno rule in Europe although I am sure that the USA and the UK will be thinking up new ways to force its demise. Just as they managed to fizzle out synthpop music in the early 80s. Already there is a new Britpop movement on the horizon; Beatles-imitating guitar bands like Oasis and things like that.

What do you think about Brit-Pop?

I'd be surprised if they managed to topple techno which is way more revolutionary than anything they are doing. However, even techno has been hi-jacked into the charts. Dreadful records like Eins, Zwei, Polizei have stormed the pop charts and even the Schlagermusik scene has elements of techno scattered in there.

So what's the future for techno?

I guess it will probably peak by the end of the 90s and the next generation of clubbers will all crave for those early days when techno was basic. I am sure as we head towards the new millenium and computers take on a greater role in music production we will be inundated with retro sounds of the 20th century. Some kind of back to basics, minimal campaign. But do we really need that?

No, I guess not.