DJ Pete (Substance) interview

It was Thursday night. There was 7 or 8 of us going to Shanti club to see one of the most interesting artists of German club scene, DJ Pete (also known as Substance). We definitely couldn't miss a chance to talk about the legendary Chain Reaction label, Hardwax shop, Basic Channel sound and other interesting projects Pete might've known of or even has been involved into. So it turned out a little messy... But how could we manage ourselves?

What do you think about the tendency of coping the sound of Chain Reaction?
It is the thing that came up, that’s true. And it’s kind of a massive thing that happened. But it started also during the period of Chain Reaction that there was some people so much into it to adapt it. But actually the copying process more concentrates on Rhythm & Sound, because the Chain reaction thing itself is still pretty unique. But I know what you are talking about, basically it’s Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound that’s been copied. And like any copy, it’s not fulfilled. The essence is not there. It’s something not finished.

Nothing interesting in it?
You have 100 releases and maybe only 2 interesting.

What was the magic of Chain Reaction then? How come musicians didn’t manage to reach the level they did when they were into Chain Reaction?
It is a little bit different. There are a few people that are still doing music on other labels, for example Porter Rickss. But they did different music, they had more ambient projects. And if you want to call it magic, it’s the magic numbers from 1 to 20. And these are the most Chain Reaction releases. At that time it was just a very tense indirection because everybody was in Berlin and was focusing on their own sound, also different inside Chain Reaction. Maybe this was the good thing that there was indirection and the same idea of how to make a certain sound and indirection between like engineers and people who are coming from the club scene. This combination made it so magical.

Some people are convinced that Moritz von Oswald and Marcus Ernestus launched the whole story with dub techno and then they did cut it down. Do you think that the last, 35th release of Chain Reaction was to mark the end of dub techno?
No, it wasn’t. At the same time the thing that was more dub techno were the releases of Burial Mix. The Rhythm & Sound at that time were still releasing music and that was really what dub techno was about. Chain Reaction never was dub techno for me like people understand it, it was more ambient and experimental techno.

Please excuse us for not asking questions about your own works yet, we’ll come to this soon, but we just can’t miss a chance to find out how come the inventors of this unique experimental music don’t produce anything like that anymore.
Oh, you don’t have to apologize because I’m actually the only one that’s traveling around and nobody else can answer your question. I’ll try to give you my view on it, and probably it’s a view of others too. It’s kind of a situation that all of the Chain Reaction crew mostly disappeared and there are few only like producing music like this. This is for example my partner, Rene and I, we do Substance & Vainqueur, then there is a little bit of Hallucinator, a little bit of Monolake still existing. The others are kind of gone. Sometimes we have various artists released but you can barely see their names and see where it’s coming from. This rebel influence or dub thing mainly came because of the Burial Mix releases, this is my opinion. The decision to do more reggae for the Rhythm & Sound guys is because they started with this in the beginning, and it’s more important than the techno thing for them. I would also like to say that Chain Reaction has nothing to do with Mark and Moritz. They’ve never done any music. They just were the label makers, the A&Rs, however you want to call it.

On your label Scion Versions you are trying to resurrect Chain Reaction or not?
We weren’t thinking about Chain Reaction when we started it. The thing was that we still were having a lot of material that we had from live performances. Because from `96 till now my friend and I were performing live. But we were not doing recording. We had an amount of material that wasn’t released. And the situation with Chain Reaction wasn’t so good for us so we were never speaking about a release. Also because my friend was living in another city. So there was no time to go to the studio and record. But in 2002 we’ve done a mix CD for Tresor, which was called Arrange And Process Basic Channel Tracks, using new software. And because we were so much into it, using this software, reproducing or reshaping this material we were working on, it was automatically a new start of our own material. So in 2006 we finally started this thing to bring out the music that was still there but never released. We were never thinking about making a new Chain Reaction.

You mean the work on the Tresor CD inspired you to move on and produce your music? Was it the music of Basic Channel to urge you to do your own thing?
It was not so important for the creative process but it was very good for the routine of using the new software because we’ve been using the music for years. I used to play these records as a DJ and I knew the tracks inside out. I was inspired anyway during the whole period, and now bringing them together in this mix made us feel well prepared to produce our own music.

The software itself, does it help the music to develop, does it make a progress in music?
This one did, yes.

Does the music of Basic Channel put pressure on you? Do you want to break their level, go even higher? Do you ever want to be compared with BC?
I never compared. There are similarities because we have some common things we were using all the time, but I would never compare. But I find more similarities in the music I do nowadays with deep house from Detroit.

And you don’t feel any competition with them?
No, because we are one family.

All of the Chain Reaction artists hide under monikers and don’t show up, is that some kind of tribute to Detroit techno traditions, so that music is the first thing?
Very many people hide and don’t present themselves so much, it’s just a thing that many people do. It puts focus on the music more than on the person. Well, in the beginning there was one thing I wasn’t so happy about, that the first thing you pay attention to on a record is the label name, the name of Chain Reaction, and the name of the producer was printed in small letters. It changed after time, though. But you know, it’s just an attitude some people have.
You said you focus on Detroit music, what are your influences by the way?
Everything from Detroit, from New York and Chicago, deep house and techno music and of course some early German music. Too many to mention. The way the early house producers from Chicago and Detroit were minimalising music, like Larry Heard for example, and creating feelings that are not so in your face, more dissent and melancholic, this is what I like.
How did you record your Substance album on Chain Reaction? What inspired you to make it the way it is?
It started with one release. It was CR05 called “Relish”, and this song had 4 mixes, and 2 of them were towards one sound and others were deeper. It was just a session thing that happened through some months where I created things based on this. I made a second EP, which built a CD with the first one, plus some dubplates. Plus one from a session, that’s why I call it session elements. I’ve been not using a sampler for a long time, and I found out that the sounds may be so various, that’s why it came out that I had so many different little things that came out of this basic thing. And in the end I realized that it’s 14 tracks. No big thought behind it, it was just one of Chain Reaction’s basic tracks actually.

What is your attitude to minimal music?
Actually minimal music has been there, from the beginning of techno like Danny Bell, Sähkö from Finland, these guys. And the problem with minimal was that there was too much repetition and no inspiration to do other things or combination of things. Also because making music this way became so easy makes not so much difference and excitement, that’s it. The masses of too many similar things. There were things like loop techno revivals or hypes that were going on your nerve. I don’t know. It’s still there and it’s big so we’ll see if something else will come up probably that also gets on our nerve.

How does Hardwax feel itself due to the fact that a lot of record shops are closed? Taking into account the fact that it has a different background, it is so much divided from others. Wouldn’t the whole situation with the record industry damage Hardwax?
Well, I see a lot of record shops closing. But with Hardwax the thing is different because we’ve had that very stable hard-working mail service that we’ve started almost in the beginning with. And now with the record store, and the mail order on-line shop we have a variation of an income. And of course the way we select stuff is important. That maybe helps us to stay alive.

What are your predictions about the future of music, of this kind of music? Can we say it’s intelligent techno? Do you place any ideas behind the music for it to be intelligent?
This is always the most difficult question. What I do comes from the inside and I cannot describe it. Balance between the elements inside the music just happens because of the character and soul of the person. I never used terms like intelligent techno or something like this. I don’t know, it’s kind of a little genre, but I don’t know how long would it exist. I see that you guys talk about it and it’s more than 10 years now. So maybe it’s lasting.

But what is the future of techno music then?
There will always be a new style in techno, there is a lot of future in it, no matter if there are combinations with acoustic music, bands using electronics, all this weird styles. The most important new style for me is dubstep music, it’s a major influence for me.
It is connected to techno?
It’s connected to techno, but it’s more connected to UK garage, to dub. Not really drum’n’bass music, but the feeling sometimes. It’s also a new genre were you can find anything that is in the music itself – reggae, techno, industrial – it’s all in the style. This is very futuristic.

But doesn’t the fact that techno music deals with acoustic instruments, which it basically disclaimed, breaks the whole idea of techno?
There were always people who had acoustic stuff in their music, or had, I would say, acoustic elements and made a techno track out of it, because the repetition makes it techno. But Matthew Herbert still keeps acoustic in anything he does, and of course Carl Craig with all his jazz thing going on, so maybe the idea was to create soulful music with machines, and sometimes it’s like creating more robot things with machines, which is of course possible. But it’s hard to say where the trend is going to.

Russian version on mixmag.info