1.Growing Up

I mainly listened to the radio and my father’s record collection growing up. Stevie Wonder, Motown, Diana Ross, The Temptations and Michael Jackson. That was the kind of stuff I would listen to, sitting in front of the record player for hours, reading the lyrics from the record sleeves and singing along. We also had a rule in our household that every child had to do one kind of sports and learn one instrument. That’s why I got into the fruitless endeavour of learning cello – I was more successful on the sports side back then, as a boxer.

2.Inspirations

Stevie Wonder, Wu-Tang Clan and Sven Väth. Those are the three acts that influenced me the most. Stevie Wonder with his soulfulness and catchy songs, the Wu-Tang Clan with this uncompromising rough sound, and Sven Väth, well, he brought me to techno. I love his charisma, passion and style of DJing. I also worked for his company for a bit, which gave me the courage to take this music thing more seriously.

3.Your Crew

I hang out with a lot of great guys in Berlin, like Ben Rau from Fuse, Riccardo from Black Loops and many more. DJ T. and the whole Get Physical crew are also an important relationship. They, especially T., brought me onto the scene by releasing a string of EPs in the last couple years. I’m still working together with T., co-producing him.

4.The Music You Make And Play

I play a lot of different styles in my sets, from groovy tech house, to uplifting jacking house music, to pumping techno. I only need it to be energetic. I want to set things on fire – it’s rare to hear me play a deep set.

5.Music, Right Here, Right Now

I think that electronic music is still in a very good place, since everything is built around touring, but nowadays everyone wants to be a DJ, so it’s quite hard to break into the scene. A true test of your passion, I would say. Musically speaking I think that house and techno is not changing too much – there’s not much invention, the formula is pretty much laid out – but the formula of house and techno is so good that I don’t care at all, it still connects on a very deep level with me and probably always will.

[Emanuel Satie photo by Vitali Gelwich Photography]

Emanuel Satie plays The Cellar on Saturday August 6, with support from Mantra Collective.

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