An interview with Jazzanova

Jazzanova’s Jeurgen talks tunes and technology, plus reveals some very exciting live news…

Jazzanova are one of electronic music’s most inspirational acts. A six man dream-team hailing from Berlin, their remixes and productions have been crucial in the development of the broken beat and house scenes. Their influence stretches beyond the confines of those scenes, and they are also heads of Sonar Kollektiv, one of electronic music’s top labels. Through their many compilations they are also highly regarded as crate diggers and tastemakers – unearthing musical gems from Bucharest to Brasil.

With their set in the lounge at DJ Marky & Friends’ Third Birthday a week away, we got Jeurgen on the phone and chatted with him about the past, present and future of Jazzanova and Sonar Kollektiv; in the process discovering a taste for Commix, British folk music and Russian jazz – plus one of the most refreshing takes on the rise of technology in music that we’ve heard in a while. The guy’s a genius, read the interview for more…

The End: There are six members of Jazzanova, how does it work in the studio and in the DJ booth?

Jazzanova: Normally it’s two guys in the studio, then we share all the other work between us; the label work and all the other things that are necessary to run the crew. We’re all in the studio at one time or another, but I’m not one of the main studio guys, me and Alex tend to do a lot of the DJing as Jazzanova, and I do a lot of the A&Ring, running the label artist-wise and taking care of a lot of our online business.

Over the years you’ve compiled CDs of such world scenes as Cuban Jazz, folk, Romanian Jazz, Brazilian music and so on. How do the six of you go about selecting the music for these releases?

We have a quite strong taste. Actually if musicians know what we like, it’s very easy to press the right buttons to produce music that we’re into! In the end it’s not that difficult, it can be anything soulful, from any genre, I mean up till now we didn’t do a drum & bass record, but we could do one if we got the right records on the table. It always depends on the vibe, the message and the arrangements. It can be everything really, like the folk side with our ‘Secret Love’ series, or last year we produced a guy called Thief, or Clara Hill’s ‘Folkwaves’. Then there’s our jazz series, which we do country-related so the last one was Cuba, and we’re working on an Australian jazz one at the moment. It’s difficult, because we don’t do bootlegs so it’s very hard sometimes to sign the music, to find the right people to talk to for the licensing. That’s one of the reasons why we have had so many eastern European countries in the series at the moment, the Polish one, Romanian, and Cuba, they’re all quite Communist in a way, one label, one person to talk to and a whole catalogue in the back, so it’s very easy just to pick the music then arrange with one person. It’s a lot of work, but we have great employees and great people to work with, and it’s a lot of fun to select music for these projects and for our fans.

Your music would sound incredible live, why has there never been a Jazzanova live show? Is it something you have plans to create?

Everything has been very organic in our development, it’s not really by design. Until now, we’ve done remixes by working with a sampler and didn’t have any experience of working with live musicians. That came with time. For our first album we only invited singers for one or two tracks, but nowadays it’s completely different, we’ve grown over the years, so now we write the music on the computer and then invite musicians to come in and translate the ideas into real live music. It’s done on the computer but there are no samples from records, it’s pretty much all done in our recording booth - so now our sound is totally live. With the musicians we’ve been working with over the last few years we will form a band and go live - we now have the ability, the experience and we know the people. We’re now we’re at a stage where we know what we do. Although none of us is a traditional musician (we DJ of course), we have the music that we want to play in mind, and now we can translate it to a live show. We will be on stage, but for the most part it will rely on the singer and the musicians.

You’ve had the massive privilege of being given access to the Blue Note vaults, are there any particular labels or artists whose catalogue you dream of being allowed to compile or remix?

Polydor is a label that interests us. There’s the Brazilian guys Copacabana, we did a Brazilian compilation as well but we didn’t go very deep, we just picked our obvious favourites. There are a lot of labels we could work on, and the Australian compilation ‘Dimensions’ will take in different labels, tracks we like and at the moment we’re also working on a Russian one. There is also one label from the 70s and 80s called Melodia, the British label Deram is very interesting…there are so many! What is really great is there are also a lot of reissues, for example all the Terry Callier music is on vinyl again reissued by the majors, so you are able to buy a lot of records which you weren’t able to buy in the second half of the 90s - then they were very hard to find, but now you can go to a record shop and buy them new!

What is your position on technology in music, do you think it has been positive?

Yes of course. It’s made it much easier to hear music and the most positive side of it is that a lot of people who may have had good ideas but not the access can now make music. I think technology has meant that now there is so much music around it is difficult for people to keep up, so it has given the chance for institutions, labels, to survive by being selectors. People may not have the time to go deep into a sound and search for the things they really like, so there’s the chance for labels to select for them. This is what we can do, with our quality team and with Jazzanova - we produce our own music, but we stand for a certain attitude, a certain open-mindedness and if people like it they can follow us and get to know other music as well because we not only focus on our own music but on a lot of other music around us.

What’s on the musical horizon for Sonar Kollektiv – any new artists or releases that we should be looking out for in 2008?

There is a second Soulphiction album which is fantastic. We just signed Two Banks Of Four to release their album on our label. It’s Rob Gallagher and Dillip Harris who did a lot of work with Zero 7 amongst other things. It has some broken beats elements, but comes more from the jazz side, it’s really rich and covers a lot of areas, great arrangements, very film orientated, a little bit like Cinematic Orchestra but with not as much emphasis on the beats. And it has the voice of Valerie Etienne as well, who is amazing. In a way it sounds not that accessible, but then when you hear the vocals, the messages and certain elements make it easier to listen to, even if at first it may seem difficult.

There is also a Drumlesson album out this month which is a big thing for us. One of the guys from Needs is doing a record, very fusion orientated, very nice stuff. Marcus Enochson is doing an album…there is a lot! There’s Roland Appel, his long player will be released in the summer…there is of course Fat Freddy’s Drop, we will hopefully have them for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In Britain they have another label, but we will hopefully do them again here. And The Black Seeds, another New Zealand group, we’re doing their album. There was a problem with the distribution with Vital in the middle of last year – this is one of the disadvantages with the advancement in technology – a lot of the old school record stores went bust, and the bigger record stores stopped buying stock. They would only stock the big artists, and not buy from the indies anymore, so now we have to make a massive effort to get every release in there, it’s very difficult to get new artists into HMV now.

With The Black Seeds it was the same, especially in the summer when Fopp went bust, and that’s why sales-wise the album wasn’t as big as we hoped it would be. But they did twelve concerts in Britain and they were all sold out so there is definitely a market there. Hopefully with the second record it will be stocked in HMV and it will do better, because they are great and really good live too. The vibe is soulful, but they are a little more rock orientated.

Sonar Kollektiv has an incredibly wide scope of music in its catalogue, and the roster is always growing – are there any acts over the last few years that you wish you had signed, but missed out on?

That’s a good question. Of course there are a lot of things, but it’s difficult to say. We are very interested in Britain and there’s probably a few there, especially in the folk scene, and the house scene, there’s a lot we appreciate.

You’re playing at DJ Marky & Friends next week. Do you keep up to date with the drum & bass scene and are there any particular artists you are into?

Yeah, I’ve just bought the Commix album, I really like it, there’s a track on there with Spacek which is really cool (‘How You Gonna Feel’ – ed). There’s also a track around at the moment with Ben Westbeech which I really like…

Is that ‘Shame’ with Marky and Artificial Intelligence?

That’s it. ‘Shame’. I like that tune. The new Commix album is really different, it’s got a really different vibe and arrangements. You can actually compare the music to tracks by Âme, that kind of electronic house.

We interviewed Marky earlier today and he was waxing lyrical about you guys, and talking in particular about when he DJ’d with you in Czech Republic and in Liverpool…

Oh yeah, that was great, I remember that of course. In the Czech Republic it was amazing! It was actually after he first came to play for us, when we invited him in 1999 or 1998 to our Kaleidoscope night. The Czech Republic event was incredible, it was a festival - we didn’t actually play there together though, they had their own floor. What I really like about Marky is that he doesn’t just play typical hardcore music, he mixes it up more with the deeper stuff and the more melodic stuff, once in a while you want to hear some ‘war’ drum & bass, but he always heads back and that’s what I really like about him. He’s a great DJ.

Thanks Jeurgen!

Published: 16/01/2008

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