King Brain was born in Kraftwerk’s home town, Düsseldorf, just in time to witness the first landing on the moon. Even before starting primary school he quickly discovered the unique power of music by entertaining his family and relatives, rocking his EMIMENT-organ with sizzling interpretations of the newest pop songs. Fast-forward to 2007, three years after working on Tube & Berger’s ‘Straight Ahead’ featuring Chrissie Hynde, and King Brain produced ‘Give Good Feeling’ for the Take That’s live-shows.
Having made his debut on DFTD alongside Guti with ‘Opus 1 & 2’, here we discuss what has already been an incredibly diverse career with the German producer.
To kick us off, tell us a little about your career to date…
My artist name is King Brain and I have been working in music professionally for 25 years. I started off working in big studios with Neve mixing desks, through the days of analog 2 inch tapes, learning how to cut extended versions with quarter inch analog tape way before DATs. On my first studio job, the owner gave me a S1000 sampler as no-one knew how to work it, so I took the sampler, read all the features, learned to work it and started working as a sampling operator back in 1990. This is where I worked on Daisy Dee ‘This Beat is Technotronic’ and ‘Crazy’ which reached Top 20 sales chart in Germany and Top 100 Billboard sales chart.
In my job at the studio I was responsible for sampling, but also keys, mixing, engineering. In those days the majority of those involved in music were musicians and not engineers. When we finished ‘This Beat is Technotronic’ it was signed to Dieter Stemmer’s Dance Street label. Dieter asked me ‘can you make some techno?’. I said ‘sure, but what is techno?’ before going on to make around 100 productions for Dance Street.
You mention that back then that most of the people involved in music creation were musicians rather than engineers. How does that compare to your experiences working in modern studios?
Nowadays the sounds and samples are much, much better. They are already EQ’d, and sound great for the most part. All you really need is a compressor and some nice speakers to adjust the sound. I think the innovation is done at the development stage of the sounds, and the plugins, DAW’s such as Ableton, Pro Tools etc all sound amazing.
There has been a huge advance in digital development of audio and visuals, including photographic software and hardware. Back then the only way to make music like this was to hire equipment or studios, which wasn’t cheap! For example a Sony Digital Tape Recorder (DASH – Digital Audio Stationary Head) was around half-a-million Deutschmark (£150,000)!
If you wanted to record drums during the production of disco records, you had to hire a drummer; same with saxophonist. The S900 was a big step then – the first 12 bit stereo sampler.
I used to make my own samples with an Akai S-1000 Sampler and two blue high quality Focurite EQs at the frontend. I actually made a CD and sold around 1,000 copies at £60 each. I used to hear the sounds I had sampled, I could tell from the kick drums or pads and knew straight away it came from my CD.
Let’s talk about your Opus 1 & 2 EP… how did you and Guti first meet?
I worked on his album Rompecorazones, some of which Guti recorded in my studio. He asked me to mix his album so we spent a couple of days together in the studio and were soon good friends. He moved away from Düsseldorf to Barcelona but came back to make remixes for Francesco Tristano and Nicole Moudaber which I engineered. During this time we started some of our own tracks.
And these were ‘Opus 1’ and ‘Opus 2’?
That is correct. We didn’t have a plan for the tracks, like a lot of good music It was just about capturing the mood and the moment and feeling of them. When I first heard Guti’s productions I thought he lacked something because I was probably too much into underground techno at the time due to heavy involvement in my radio station minimalstation.fm. But as soon as I saw him live I understood everything. He’s a fantastic live performer.
We worked very quickly and naturally together. It only took a day and a half to write and complete both tracks; it was very much about the natural feel during that time.
You’ve worked with a lot of people throughout your career, from underground electronic producers to huge pop acts… do you have a particular career highlights to date?
Working with Take That is certainly a career high. I had been working with Howard Donald, and Take That wanted a track that they could perform live as a special something for their hardcore fan-base that would also be part of their live-DVD. We started the track ‘Give Good Feeling’. The composition was already in place and everybody loved it. I produced a kind of karaoke version in a modern dance music format. It was difficult at first because I was thinking of it as a ‘cheesy’ track but it turned out great. It was very important to Gary Barlow, so much so he literally had said he would pay anything for the track! I must have left a good impression on Gary at the time as we went on to work together on another track of his with Guy Chambers.
That’s a terrific accolade. Are there any other artists that you have worked with about whom you have fond memories?
Working with Tube & Berger and Chrissie Hynde on their first record was amazing. The guys were working in a pizzeria at the time and weren’t sure whether to call themselves Tube & Berger, but they did and they were an instant hit. I helped to sign their first record to Ministry of Sound (Germany), when Guti’s Manager Roland was A&Ring.
Do you have any final words for the DFTD fans?
Only that I am delighted to be involved with the label. I saw how much of an amazing job Defected have done with Guti and Tube & Berger and know that it is such a great label suite. It is a pleasure to be involved.
Opus 1 & 2 is out now on DFTD - buy from Beatport, Traxsource and DStore
