Influences: Sascha Funke

Karat was one of the most popular pop bands from East Germany which also was successful in West Germany and allowed to perform there. I remember listening all the time to Der Blaue Planet in my early child years. The bassline of that song is great.

I wasn’t much into The Cure when I was young. Boys Don’t Cry and all the chart hits they had in the 80’s didn’t really got me. Years later I realised how much they defined the signature of guitar pop music I felt home with. The Cats Are Grey is my favourite song of The Cure.

In East Germany we didn’t have many hip hop bands. Every teenager of my generation listened to the Electric Beat Crew and even if everyone knew that all the hip hop music from the US was ten times better and cooler we were proud of our Electric Beat Crew.

For Christmas 1988 I got a double tape deck. I recorded pop songs from the radio and tried to mix my first tapes. Okay was on one of these tapes. On that track an italo disco bassline is playing and you can hear samples from German TV shows.

The first record I bought after the wall came down. Classic Dutch rave pianos with a rapper and a girl singing on top… put it that way it doesn’t really sound inspiring. For me it was a true masterpiece and my first encounter with techno music.

In 1991 I bought a compilation CD called Rave because EMF’s Unbelievable was on it. And the big wave from Manchester flew over me. I celebrated my summer of love 3 years after the real one at the Hacienda. In my opinion Primal Scream’s Screamadelica (co-produced by Andrew Weatherall) is one of the best albums of that time. Come together is the hymn.

In 1992 I went out for clubbing in Berlin for the first time and Cyberspace was then a club anthem. Trance, acid, techno are all together in this track and it shows how united electronic music was at that time.

I went to my first Love Parade in 1993. The magic and endless intro with the sirens of Vapourspace was played on every truck that year. I think that summer had the biggest impact on my musical experience. I went to London for the first time that year and started playing my first DJ sets in East Berlin’s youth clubs.

I started producing around 1997 and during that time Cologne was my favourite city in Germany for electronic music. The way they used samples in their productions became one of the key inspirations for my own music. Grungerman’s (aka Wolfgang Voigt) Fackeln Im Sturm is based on a sample from a German singer called Julianne Werding.

The newest record on that list. Zombie Zombie are one of my favourite electronic bands. This track is from their second album Rituels D’un Nouveau Monde. Live drums meet synths and sax played by Etienne Jaumet. They also did a great soundtrack for the movie Irreprochable.