Fitting the extent of Modeselektor producer Sebastian Szary’s experience as an electronic musician into a single conversation is an impossible feat. He talks with energy and vigour as our interview bounces from the origins of techno to his children to the relationship between electronic music and gardening. Unable to compress his career down into a 20-minute phone call, Szary reels off the highlights with me as we take a trip through the 20-year career of a German techno icon.
“Back in the ’90s, we were certain that techno was just a phase,” says Szary. “Techno itself wasn’t really a genre back then. We made techno beats with a wild array of different influences from swing, funk and hip hop to things like Russian folk music. Me and Gernot started making music right around the time that grunge really started happening, so Nirvana was pretty much our number one influence.”
The relationship between Szary and Gernot Bronsert – the other half of the techno duo – stretches back into the ’80s, when they met in school. “Gernot and I were both heavily into hip hop. I think it was him who first got into techno … and started trying to mix the coolness of hip hop beats into the techno sphere.”
There is an air of incredulity from Szary as he speaks about Modeselektor’s origins, as if he can’t believe they’ve been in the game this long. “We feel like observers for the genre,” he says. “There are different markers for us that have really shown the progression of techno from its origin. The biggest is technology – the first gear we used was a Roland 808 drum machine and a 303 synth, the bare basics of acid techno four-four beats.
“We were still recording on tape when the first hard disk recording systems came out and I remember thinking, ‘This won’t last.’ I worked for ages recording and mixing on my old Atari computer.”
The mark of distinction between a DJ and an electronic musician is their ability to play a live show. Szary admits that he and Bronsert were press-play DJs up until they really started to grasp the art of live shows, inspired by the musicianship of Sascha Ring, more commonly known as Apparat.
“We wanted to start playing live shows as real musicians,” he says. “Apparat played live with a computer and had programmed an eight-track looper that you could use in Cubase and perform using a MIDI controller. That was the first live device we used onstage.”
Modeselektor were using two computers onstage in an era before you could sync devices together, so audio cues were done by hand. “It made the music sound erratic and nothing like our EPs,” he says, “but it probably became our sound signature pretty quickly.”
It’s a signature that has carried across the world. Szary and Bronsert have released a combined 17 EPs and albums both as Modeselektor and Moderat, their collaborative effort with Apparat. Szary is not shy about discussing the changes he’s witnessed in the genre during his time in the industry.
“It’s so interesting the way that it’s changed over time. I’d say the biggest thing that I’ve noticed about modern techno crowds is that their attention span is so much shorter now that everything is so immediately available online. I remember when that Jamie xx track ‘NY Is Killing Me’ dropped before the album and people went absolutely crazy for it, but four weeks later it was yesterday’s news.”
Far from sounding like a crusty old coot shouting about modern music and kids on his lawn, Szary speaks with a profound understanding and embracement of the way techno has changed over time.
“Techno is a constant recycling effort. It never ceases to amaze me how many ways a simple four-four beat can be interpreted. Sometimes it bores me, hearing music remixed over again, but then other times I hear a new take on a song and it perks me up. I’m waiting for the day that six-eight becomes the new four-four and we have to break new ground.”
Szary admits a soft spot for Australia, having worked with Richard Pike of PVT on ‘Green Light Go’ for Modeselektor’s 2011 album Monkeytown. “Australia is so far away from us, it’s a completely different crowd,” he says. “Richard introduced me to flat white coffees while we were recording together and now that’s all I drink in the Monkeytown Records office.”
With an upcoming tour schedule that reads more like a holiday through Australasia and South America, Szary is looking forward to Modeselektor’s return Down Under. “Australia has always been great to us. The food is amazing. The last time we were in Australia, me and Gernot had an idea to write a cookbook based on recipes we learn in all the countries we go to – but that’s probably too much work.”
When asked to reminisce at last on where his creative influence comes from, Szary breathes deep and replies with whimsy. “Life,” he says. “I remember when I was in the room as my first child was being born and they had her heart rate up on the monitor. I glanced up just before she was born and saw that her heart was beating at 130bpm, and all I could think was, ‘My God, that’s a four-four techno beat.’”
Catch them with Tuff Sherm, Cassius Select, Dual Point, Ben Ashton atThe Hi-Fi onFriday February 13, tickets online.
