Stefan Goldmann – An Ardent Heart

MACRO M56 – Stefan Goldmann – An Ardent Heart

@ Nightflight x Macro 10 Years

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@ Macro 10

Finn Johannsen – Interview for Mondo Magazine

First thing Front club in Hamburg, what made the place magical and what made you follow Klaus Stockhausen, and his way of DJing?

There were different things falling into place then. I was always interested in club culture and music, but pre-internet you could mostly only read about legendary clubs and its resident DJs. When I first went to Front in 1987 I was 18 years old, and up to then I never heard a DJ who could really mix. Klaus Stockhausen played there since 1983, several times a week, and he had built up a very loyal crowd. The club itself was a raw basement, there was not much to distract from the music, apart from the hedonistic dancers. The place was very intense, and Stockhausen as well as his protegé and successor Boris Dlugosch were incredibly good. Of course you tend to be sentimental about times and places that intiated you into something, but I still have not experienced anything close, both in terms of clubs and DJing. Of course it also helped that those years saw very crucial developments in club music. When I started going there it was the end of that transitional period between Disco and House, which was extremely exciting. And in the following years I frequently went there that excitement persisted. Those were the blueprint years for everything we still dance to now, and I had the privilege to experience it right on the floor. And I learnt a lot of things that I still use.

How did you become part of Hard Wax, was it hard to get that job?

No. Seven years ago all my freelance activities and the according deadlines began to collide with being a father. My wife suggested some more steady work to complement and that I could ask for a job at the store, as I was a very regular customer anyway. Coincidentally Achim Brandenburg aka Prosumer quit working there at that time and they were thinking about asking me to replace him. So within a short time I sat down with the owner Mark Ernestus and the store manager Michael Hain and got the job.

I know you like to write about music, but why do you hate to write reviews?

I actually do not hate writing reviews at all. But after doing that for several years at de:bug magazine I felt I was increasingly running out of words to accurately describe the music I was given the task to review, and I think keeping a fresh perspective is mandatory in that aspect. But more importantly writing reviews does not work too well with running a label yourself, and working at Hard Wax. On the one hand I wanted to avoid allegations of being biased, on the other hand I had to keep potential implications of my writing commitments out of my other work. So I began to lay my focus on features and interviews, mostly from a historical perspective. I am not afraid of discourse and speaking my mind on certain topics if I feel it is necessary, but I am very cautious to remain objective.

Can you tell us what is Druffalo?

Druffalo is a semi-anonymous collective of six seasoned DJs and writers living in Berlin, Mannheim and Cologne, and was founded in 2007. It used to be a rather notorious web fanzine celebrating aspects of culture we felt were worth celebrating, and we were pretty merciless in pointing out aspects of culture we felt were not worth celebrating at all. The web magazine is defunct for a while now, as at some point the server we were running on mysteriously disconnected us and we thought it was a good statement to just disappear. The whole archive is backed up though, so nobody should feel too safe. Attached to it was a DJ collective called the Druffalo Hit Squad, consisting of the same six editors and likeminded guests. We did an influential mix series that is archived on Mixcloud, and we were constantly throwing parties that were pretty anarchic. Since the end of 2015 we took up a bi-monthly residency at the club Paloma Bar in Berlin, where we mostly define our idea of a modern Soul allnighter, using our vast archive of Disco, Soul and Garage House records. But there are also plans to return to the eclecticism of former years.

Do you think your Macro label is becoming a genre in itself, like RE-GRM, ECM, L.I.E.S., or Blackest Ever Black?

No, I do not think so, nor were Stefan Goldmann and me ever interested in establishing a certain trademark label sound that we have to fulfill with every release. We are more interested in working with producers that have developed their own signature sound, as long as it fits in with our own preferences. Our idea of running a label is very open, it is only determined by what we are interested in, and we are both very different individuals. We only release what we both agree on and that, combined with the consistent collaboration with our designer Hau, resulted in a certain coherence, although our back catalogue is rather diverse. We were also always aiming for the long run, and we both feel that you only can achieve that with a healthy amount of leeway and fresh ideas. Of course it is also important to have an identity, but we much prefer that to be based on reliable quality than sound aesthetics that create or reflect trends but are likely to end up as mere expectations. I do not think we are really comparable to the labels you mentioned, too. We had some archival releases, and we might have influenced some musical developments, but neither are essential to what we do.

Interveiw by Damir Plicanic for Mondo Magazine 03/17

@ Panorama Bar

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Various Artists – Macrospective 2

Finn Johannsen & Stefan Goldmann – Macrospective II (Free Download)

Stefan Goldmann – A1 Tools

MACRO M50x – Stefan Goldmann – A1 Tools

Stefan Goldmann – A1

MACRO M50 – Stefan Goldmann – A1

Finn Johannsen – Live At Macro Lab, Berlin, August 12 2016

A chat with…Finn Johannsen

The next instalment of Acetate will once again exhibit selectors of world class calibre. David Kennedy aka Pearson Sound, who organises the night, errs towards the DJs who dedicate their time to collecting music, infrequently booking those who attempt to spin plates and produce music at the same time. The DJs’ heightened awareness of the vinyl record landscape seems to breed a uniquely rich atmosphere during the club night.

Alongside long time dubstep colleague, and one of the world’s most sought after selectors, Ben UFO, Kennedy has invited a bona fide head out to play in the Wire basement: music critic and Hard Wax staff member, Finn Johannsen. The German also runs Macro Recordings, Stefan Goldmann’s primary production outlet.

Finn is rarely seen by Brits out of his natural habitat of the Berlin record shop, and is normally only spotted in the by-line of an online electronic music article. So we thought we’d do a bit of investigative work and reverse roles. Here’s our interview with him:

What is the application like for a job at Hard Wax? How did you come to work there?

We get a lot of mails every week by people looking for a job at the store, but all current staff members were already regular customers or otherwise affiliated with Hard Wax before they started working there. Same with me. Six years ago I became father of a wonderful girl, and I realized that all the deadlines involved with freelance work did not work well with that. So I was thinking about adding some steadier work to my weekly schedule, and my wife suggested Hard Wax as an option. I tested ground and what I did not know at the time was that Prosumer was quitting the job, and they were looking for a replacement anyway. So I had a meeting with Michael Hain, the store manager, and Mark Ernestus, the owner, and started working there, all within a very short time.

It’s every young DJs dream to work in a record shop. Did you always know you’d work in one? What would you be doing if you weren’t there?

I worked in a second hand vinyl store when I was studying in the early 90s, but that was more to fund my own vinyl purchases. When I started DJing in the 80s I was not trying to get a job in a record shop, I only liked visiting them and it was that way for years. My focus at university was actually on film history, not music. But apart from a brief stint reviewing movies for De:bug magazine I never really did anything with that, nor did I really intend to. I also worked as an editor for art books a few years ago. But at some point I realized that it always fell back to activities connected to music, because it probably is what I know and do best. So I stuck with it. If I would not be there I would be doing something else, but it probably would have something to do with music as well.

What do you look for in a record when buying for Hard Wax?

Something new, or at least different. A personal signature. Ideas. Integrity. Attitude. When the record is referential I check if the references are used in a smart way, and if aspects are added that were not there before. I also take a good look at the proportion of value and money. I adjust my level of support for a release according to the level of how these criteria are met.

What led you to buy your first vinyl record? And what was it? 

I started taping radio shows in the mid 70s, but I did not have enough pocket money to afford buying records then. But I already had a record player and I used to play records from my parents’ collection. When I was 9 years old, in 1978, I recorded Blondie’s Heart Of Glass and decided to buy it on 7“. When I entered the record store I just knew that I loved the song and her voice in particular, but I did not even know what she looked like. I was probably assuming that she had blonde hair, but not really that she looked that fabulous on the cover, and what she really was about. I probably learnt quite a few lessons about pop culture at once with that purchase, and soon I started spending nearly all the money I had on records.

We’ve just had record store day in the UK. Do you have any comment on it? Do you see it as a celebration or capitalisation of record buying culture? 

It is the same in Germany, and I think it is the same all over the world. Which is why the recent negative implications of the event weigh in so heavily. Hard Wax decidedly never took part. We stated from early on that for us every day is a record store day, and that is basically it. But we feel the fallout from RSD as anybody else in the business nonetheless, especially the delays with the pressing plants, which affect our distribution as well, for example, and the releases we buy from other distributors. That has improved a bit lately, but it is still a tremendously hypocritical event, and that does not seem to improve. Nearly everybody’s trying to cash in now on a format that was willfully pronounced dead before, and nearly everything is blocked by back catalogue you can find around every corner, just in different layouts and for a much lesser price. Old wine in new skins. And the new grapes cannot be harvested because of it. It is totally absurd. There may have been some respectable thought implied with it once, but as soon as the major labels entered it predictably withered away into nothing. They want to gentrify vinyl into pricier artifacts instead, for customers that care more about the item itself than the music it contains. Read the rest of this entry »