TRICKSKI (Suol/Sonar Kollektiv), Nov 2011

 

The Berlin-based label SUOL recently released an album called „Unreality“ produced by the German duo TRICKSKI. Trickski, that is Daniel Becker and Yannick Labbé.

Daniel Becker

* Photo via Daniel Becker

Daniel Becker lives around Prenzlauer Berg and besides being his own boss at his graphic design agency GOLDENER WESTEN that he runs with two partners (previously in Berlin-Mitte directly at the Hackescher Markt) since October 2011 located at Frankfurter Tor on the ground level of one of the two towers, he told me about his other passion, house music: Trickski.

 

Yannick Labbé

* Photo via Yannick Labbé

Yannick Labbé is a sound designer, and he lives in Halensee with his girlfriend and two cats. Halensee, that is „JWD“ – at the end of beyond – as most Berliners would say. He thinks it is awesome to start running just from the doormat and get to the forest right away, the city vanishing more and more. That it takes longer to the city centre, he puts up with easily.

Why would a young man live so far away from the center? Yannick states: „It is just awesome. („Geil,“ he says, actually.) I did not know that back then. I used to live with Daniel. But the deal there was unbeatable. Yeah well, it is still within the S-Bahn ring …“

 

Trickski

Daniel and Yannick seem to be two individuals who are not at all related to each other – one blond, the other brown-haired, one living inmidst Berlin city madness, the other at the edge of the city… BUT. If you see them at the decks playing, hear their identical laughter, listening to them talking about music, passion and life, you understand that they are closely connected.

Yannick: „If you spend so much time of your lives together, it is more than just common interests you get to share.“

So, who is Trickski?

It is a Wednesday. Late summer in Berlin, if we can talk about having had any day of summer this year. I arrive at the café, far too late, Daniel, fortunately is not mad, or at least, does not show it off. It could have been a bit awkward, but it is not at all – a cup of tea later, I am a proud owner of the new SUOL canvas bag and a bit smarter about Trickski.

„THIS IS US AND WE DO WHAT WE DO“

This is the statement of SUOL, the label on which Trickski released their first full album. (Read the stylistberlin review HERE)

 

We talk about life in general, as he is a friend of friends. As I tell him about my dissertation project, he talks about his grandfather, the past, and tells me about his book that was planned to be just a small project but ended up being a photo book of 120 pages with stories in it. It is interesting to see what stands behind the music of Trickski – isn’t it the whole background that is fundamental of what you create?

About Coolness

Daniel, despite of his success as designer and dj/producer, is living an understatement and does not care that much about being „cool“ in „the scene,“ which makes him quite sympathetic. „Trendiness and coolness can be a trap,“ he says, running his own company since 2006. He likes to watch soccer, sleep, read a lot, is interested in politics and the economy. Neither does he take drugs. The only vice you can see is smoking.

„I have my company, my studio, my customers, my label, my friends. I earn enough money and love to go to work every day. I like my partners a lot and work on a very trustful basis with them.“ Daniel says. „I guess that’s already more than most people have. I am very happy with my life as it is.“

„I go out when I feel like it. I don’t have to be at a party just to show off myself,“ He says. He also gives me advice for my current job offerings, which are „cool“ but not that solid. „Thumbs up for the solid, incredibly uncool middle class.“

„Don’t ask about the „cool“ stuff,“ he goes on. „Ask yourself if it is „good“ or not.“

Refreshingly honest and with a perspective, Daniel makes his statements.

 

About Music

Twice a year, Trickski produce a single. That is really not much, if you consider how much is produced every year, especially in the house music scene.

Yannick took his break from IAA 2011 to answer some questions, a gesture you do not see often and that speaks for his personality, on music, on Trickski’s history.

 

Since when are you spinning vinyls (now tracks) as DJs?

Yannick: Since 1998. We met at Rainer Trüby’s parties in Freiburg (South Germany), the legendary Root Down parties. Those mattered a lot back in the days, they stood for an attitude towards life. I was so in love with these parties that I used to wear the clothes of the previous party the following day as well, because they still wore that scent.

It was not common in that area of Germany to like that kind of music and Root Down was something very special.

 

What made you play together?

Yannick: The conceptual design of a piece of music, to apply that on a set, you know it should not be monotonous, there are now boundaries. So the mutual point of view on that made us work together.

 

Since when are you working together then, if you could name a year?

Yannick: We have been doing some stuff together since the late 90s. We teamed up as Trickski in 2004.

 

Yannick, why did you team up with Daniel?

Yannick: It was a special constellation, because we had mutual interests regarding lifestyle and also shared the taste in music.

The bottom line of all was that we were friends and have a similar background.

 

So it’s more than just being business partners?

Yannick: Yes, it’s more than that. We got to know each other in a moment that had lots to do with music, and in the end, in the studio, we had loads of fun together.

 

Yannick tells me that Daniel and he are looking back on twelve years of friendship without a single serious argument. „Always a productive, friendly co-working, we don’t always have the same opinion, but we always work things out in a productive manner“ he calls it, one can get jealous of that.

If he had to name it, he would refer to themselves as „more friends than musicians.“

„We complement each other / (we are) more friends than musicians“

„It is really hard to tell it apart, I mean you can’t really separate friendship and work here,“ he says and adds, „Trickski is not based on business. Maybe the secret is, that we complement each other, we simply get along very well.

In short, they met as friends and founded TRICKSKI afterwards.

 

Trickski, the stylistberlin-interview

 

Where does the name TRICKSKI come from?

Yannick: It was Daniel’s idea and I thought it was pretty cool.

Daniel: Actually the idea behind the name was this: Trickski is the German word for the Olympic sport of freestyle skiing which has three major parts: ice-skating on skis / dancing, acrobatic jumps on skis and the so called buckelpiste, the bumpy slope. We felt like this would represent pretty well what we liked / had in mind at around this time: musically exciting stuff, bumpiness and full on action but also graceful at some parts. On the way we realized that people did not get it at all. But it does not matter. The sound of it is great. Somehow it sounds sporty, hiphoppy and eastern European at the same time. Anyways, at a certain point your name is just your name and turns into whatever you do with it.

 

So, “Trickski” (German expression for acrobatic skiing) is an Olympic discipline, consisting of

1 mogul slope

2 downhill

3 freestyle

They describe their sets as such, offering different styles of music when they play. They start with a somewhat calm beginning, then go with the heartwarming tunes. (As far as I have observed, both have loads of fun to be at the decks – nothing is more fun when the DJs have fun themselves playing, and Trickski definitely do!)

 

How do you pronounce it right? I had an argument with a fellow DJ who insisted it was pronounced [trick-ski], and I went for [trick-shi]…

Daniel explains: „You can pronounce it either way. I am okay with that.“ Yannick says: „A no-go is when they call us Tricky, Tricksi or Tricksky.“

I have to laugh.

 

When you started, there were three of you. (Yes, I did some research.) Who is the third one you can find on some old pictures?

Daniel: That is MC Jack Migger.

 

Why aren’t you working together any more?

Yannick: Everything fitted. As he was getting more and more successful in his job, there simply wasn’t much time left anymore. It’s a bit sad, because he is an incredibly nice person.

Daniel: We are still good friends and I like him very much. He is a good one. It would be nice to have a little reunion at a certain point… We will see…

 

Good to hear that some partners are still friends when they end a collaboration. But after talking to both guys, I get the notion that most of the times it works out well with them.

 

Who is doing what in the Trickski team?

Yannick*: We always do everything together. I usually work on the first sketches and then we team up.

* Yannick is a sounddesigner, remember?

 

It is all house music

So what is Trickski standing for? Not definable, with all the styles you produced so far…?

Yannick: Well, we always worked on the slower style of music. Before Trickski, I produced a solo EP. Theo Parrish was a huge influence. I got interested in house because of him.

If you talk about „drawers“ to put us into, well, you can put us into several ones, as you could put Jazzanova or Rainer Trüby in many in those days.

But house is the mother of everything, EVERYTHING we produce is definitely house music, but a playful one, as to say, so the music sometimes fathoms here and there. Maybe you can call it „playful house music,“ but I wouldn’t be able to name one tag. I know the house-police will be upset by that, but actually, I don’t give a damn.

Daniel: Since we don’t release that much, we try to make a statement with each release, whereas others try to stay on the playlists and thus producing up to ten tracks a year. Which is totally fine. Don’t get me wrong. It is just likely that things sound similar to each other. Maybe that’s what „defining a sound“ means?
If we don’t have gigs, it doesn’t matter that much. So we enjoy our creative freedom and take it.

 

SUOL for Trickski

 

Asking artists about the label they are working with is like walking on ice.

Why did you sign with SUOL?

Daniel: We got to know them a while ago, and instantly hooked up. The SUOL team is just really nice. Thien and John with a lot of backup by Nicole do such a solid job and stay true to what it is all about that we felt very good with them right from the start. On top of that they are probably the sweetest guys in the scene. We really like to work with people that we not only respect but also like on a personal level. Plus: all the other artists on the label are great kiddos. It’s a family kind of feel. We treat each other with respect and can also speak out loud, when things are going the wrong way without being disrespected for it. Can you work under better circumstances?

Yannick: SUOL is a cool label. We met them two years ago and thought they were nice people.

John Muder and Chi-Thien Nguyen are extremely open, totally enganged with all their hearts in the label. We wanted to join the crew gladly.

You know there are four people working in the core, they do so much work and they have a great planning.

Theoretically, it is the same thing as with Trickski. We met excellent people and the decision to work with them was a relatively complete decision out of instinct.

 

Trickski about UNREALITY

 

Daniel explains that behind the album, released on SUOL recently, stands a lot of time and effort. „The whole thing is relatively important. We didn’t just make an album. We put loads of thoughts in it.“

 

Why did it take so long to produce UNREALITY? It has taken you six years.

Yannick: There are several reasons for that: We are not the fastest ones. It is getting better now, though. When we are in a workflow, it happens that we make 12 versions out of one – that explains the speed. On the way others producers would have finished 6 of them already.

Actually, we put five half-done albums in this one.

We couldn’t find an agreement on the concept of our first full album – or maybe the agreement did not find us -, and when we were asked years ago, when it is going to be released, and we said „soon“ – it was never a lie. We were constantly working on the release of an album. We just did not know which way we wanted to go with it or it just happened differently than we planned.

End of last year, we decided to pick one and just finish the whole thing.

 

If you would describe UNREALITY with three words?

Yannick: Manifold, dark, unreal.

Daniel: Rough. Sexy. Spooky

 

Manifold, dark, unreal vs Rough. Sexy, Spooky

 

The tracks are all under 125 BPM. It is not really something that you expect from club music. Is there a specific reason?

Yannick: Well, it is still house music, the same scheme of rhythm. Four to the floor, you know, the slower it gets, the more space you have between the beats, it is getting more hot to put the individual sounds in scene, the groove gets sexier. It is sufficiant to move one element and you create a whole different thing with it.

I am from the school of Theo Parrish, you must know. Slow housegroove is the best thing that you can have, because it flows through you. It moves through your whole body, that is dope!

The whole slowhouse thing wasn’t a marketing strategy, we always had made slower stuff. We just think „Forget all bullshit!“ SLOW is soooo dope!

 

Favourite Track on UNREALITY

Daniel: For me Beginning, Wilderness, Slowestens and Unreality are the most inspiring tracks.

Yannick: Slowestens, not because of the piano stuff, but because of the weird base line.

 

What matters most while producing a track?

Yannick: Extremely important is this one moment during the production, the clicking moment. Bassdrum, snare, chords, samples… Sometimes nothing really matches. But then the moment comes where everything intertwines. The blanks are seized, are filled up with another element. It is not about smacking a sample over a beat, it is an interweaved entity. It is not a question of speed. It is resulting into a track when every element fits in.

 

Inspirations

 

Where do you get your inspirations from?

Daniel: Inspiration comes from everywhere. Other music, life, art, films, literature, society, travelling, love, small things, thoughts, discussions, dreams, relationships, whatever… I guess it is not different to other artists. You cannot force inspiration to come to you. It decides itself to come or not to come to you. It just happens or does not happen.

Since we both have day jobs we normally don’t get to work on music that much. Most of the time we take the Friday nights to spend time in the studio and work on stuff. Sometime in between when we need to or feel like it. But it is mainly this very limited time frame. This is also the reason why we don’t release so much music and why it took us so long.

Sometimes it feels good like that since we don’t have to have a hit with every release and we don’t have to make sure a release is the next big thing. We can do what we want since we don’t depend on it. This gives us an amazing creative freedom. On the other hand it would be great to spend more time in the studio and be able to work more on our ideas, since we really love it and enjoy it, even though it is hard work.

Yannick: Lots of things. Sometimes, it is sufficiant to smash on the kickdrum. Sound inspirations. Going out and play, if someone drops a tune and that is cool, I memorize that in my head and if I try to reconstruct that, something entirely different is the outcome. To play a gig abroad, sleep deprived, hung-over, things like that inspire like hell as well.

 

Up next

 

What are you up to next?

Daniel: Between early September and late December there is not a single weekend without a gig. So I guess you can call this „touring“.  The next two singles of our album are in the making. (One if them is out already and reviewed here: link)

Yannick: Something real big is coming. It is going to be a bomb, already in my head, going to be the next big thing. [For reasons of exclusiveness, this information had to be censored] First of all, some 12“s for the upcoming summer 2012 are going to be produced.

The bookings go really well at the moment. It was a fantastic year so far. The label is taking care of everything.

 

With whom would you like to collaborate regarding your music?

Daniel: Hmmmm. There are quite a few people that we really respect, many that we can learn from. I guess you are mainly talking about vocalists. For some time we wanted to do something with Mike Patton. I did not happen yet. Actually I don’t know. There is nobody that we „have to work with“ at a certain point. Since all the music we do is so different all of the time it is more like we are working a track and on the way it feels like „Artist X or Y would sound super-amazing with this one. So the tracks tell us. Does that make sense?

Yannick: My unaccomplished dream is to work with the singer Mike Patton (Faith No More).

Henry Rollins – but he didn’t accept my myspace friends request …

 

Where do you see yourself next year, in 10, in 20 years?

Yannick: I see US with a couple of more gigs, in 10 years likewise, in 20 years in the countryside, on a farm with kids, two dogs and all that shit.

 

The defintion of happiness

 

The reason one might like to be around these guys is, because they seem to stand on firm grounds. Compared to most Berliners, who are always on the search for something, always on the run, always floating, these communicate

 

Are you happy right now?

Daniel: Yes.

Yannick: Yes.

 

Define happiness, please.

Daniel: To have found one’s balance. To know about what you want and what you don’t want – to understand. Plus being able to live up to this without smacking others in the face by being a ego-centric dick that doesn’t give a shit about anybody else.

Yannick: Being happy is being calm. Simply being in terms with oneself, with what you have achieved, where you are standing right now. I have been extremely restless for a long time, not any more, which is satisfying, I am madly happy at the moment. Being able to have things done. Taking responsibility.

*******

stylistberlin: This interview took quite a long time (September-November 2011). Meanwhile, Trickski’s UNREALITY album is received very well by fellow artists and „Without You“ with the vocals of Fritz Kalkbrenner already is recognized by guests when randomly played. Even the old pieces by Trickski are getting attention again; 2012 should become a busy year for the team.