Audiowarp, een van de meest innovatieve en verrassende acts / producers op het gebied van hardere stijlen kreeg afgelopen week een aantal vragen voorgeschoteld. Lees hier het hele interview!

1. Hey Dirk, thanks for doing this interview, how have you been?

Hey, i am fine, had a good start into 2010, hope you too!

2. Noticing your releases, there is a gap of no releases between 2002-2007, how come there were no releases between those years?

Yes, i know, after the releases “We Bring The Future” and “The Next
Level” i had some problems regarding the exclusiveness of the tracks
that had been signed to Boost Records before. When i was 18 years I
had signed an exclusive artist contract with a guy who let me produce
my early electronic solo tracks in his studio aiming to promote and
sublicense my music to other labels which did not allow me to sign
tracks to other licensees. He had the exclusive rights on my music.
But when i signed this adhesion contract i did not really knew what
kind of problems that could cause in the future, i mean i did not
expect that Markus and me come in first in the raveline remix contest
and that this will get us a record deal. I was juristically trapped
and Boost records and this guy started to negotiate about me but they
did not come to any agreement. So we changed our original name
“Electrosmog” to “Audiowarp” cos the guy did not know about this new
name and Markus became the only official producer of Audiowarp. Time
passed by and i was completing my apreentice ship to be an IT-Merchant
and Markus was studying. When we contacted Claus Pieper from Boost
Records again regarding further releases he told us he quit business
with Boost Records, seemed like he made no assets with the company. It
was in the time when MP3s started spreading all over the internet and
producing expensive vinyls became a risk. So we were labelless then.
Time of frustration but also time of learning for my successful
completion of my apprenticeship followed. But we still played live in
our club we used to go to under the alias “Twisted Tribe” When i
finally earned money in a german steel company i contacted the guy to
finally find an agreement regarding the exclusiveness of the
productions i am involved in. I payed a lot of money to get out of
this contract but i was finally free then. After some time i got in
contact with Fabian Kempe from Sweden known as Ultraform who was a big
fan of our music from the beginning and everything started to develope
because he supported and still supports us and got us loads of
important new contacts!

3. Originally you produced hard trance, how come you switched your style over to techno?

We did not really “switch” to Techno because we have always been
producing what we liked, Techno, Hardtrance, Goatrance or even House
and Brekabeat, it just happened that our first record was a Hardtrance
track but we where always interested in other EDM styles also. But
indeed, a lot of our tracks still have hardtrance elements.

4. How do you guys feel about the hard trance and techno scene at the moment?

What i dislike about the hardtrance scene at the moment is the big
number of remakes of old classic tracks, makes me think people
don’t have ideas anymore and if music listeners are not open minded
enough to engage in new musical stuff. I think there are a lot of
amazing new artists at the moment who make really deep stuff.
Ultraform, Dimesioncrasher, Mauguzun, Sinith, Stana, Trimada, Louk,
Esh to name a few. The Techno scene here in germany is not very
promising to me at the moment. The original definition of Techno more
and more changed over the years and now defines something that hasn’t
got to do much with our definition and the original feeling. Techno
has always been a sound of the maximum, increasing all it’s energy in
endless buildups to explode into a “big bang”. But lately techno more
and more seemed to become a sound of the minimum, the afterhour,
starting to sound “clippy cloppy”, getting slower and loosing all it’s
energy. That’s nothing for me personally, everythings sounds the same
somehow…

5. What equipment and hardware do you guys use to create your tracks?

We use Access Virus B rack (quality trance and goa sounds, excellent
filters!), Clavia Nord Modular (very good for fat new basslines!),
Roland XP-80 Workstation (a big allrounder, very good wavetable
pads!), a dbx 166xl hardware compressor and we trigger and control our
main sequencer software Ableton Live with Evolution UC-33, M-Audio
Triggerfinger, Evolution PCR-80 an Korg Microcontrol. It’s all about
keeping everything live playable and get a real good hardware feeling
and to catch this feeling in live recordings for the productions.

6. What was the main motivation to start Encoded Records?

The main motivation was to release our stuff without anybody telling
what we have to be like and of course also to support other awesome
new artists and build up a label that stands for deep sounds and
innovative quality productions.

7. How come it seems like Dirk does majority of the work? Is there any reason for that and is it true ?

It’s just because of the fact that i have got more time for music at
the moment, Markus is concentrating on completing his apprenticeship
to be a programmer and developer bu the has also got new awesome
tracks in progress that i am going to master and finalize.

8. One of your latest releases “The New Generation EP” got a lot of positive feedback. Plus also so many other artists were featured on it. Why did you guys want to create a big EP like that and do you plan on doing something like that again?

For “The New Generation” we originally intended to put Ultraform Remix
and Mauguzun Remix on the EP only which we planned when Fabian Kempe
and Mauricio Unzueta Gubernati visited us in Summer of 2008, But some
friend artists also asked if they can make a remix of this track also
and then we decided to put them on the EP aswell, which was a good
idea because the variations of Remixes were responsible for the
success i think. So this can alo be a good plan for future releases…

9. How do guys prepare for a live act?

We don’t have to do much cos the arrangement of our tracks are always
ready for being played live with midicontollers on laptops, we only
make sure which tracks we are going to play and test the set with our
live setup in the studio

10. Whats your favourite track and who is your favourite producer at
the moment ?

My favourite track at the moment is “The Advent – Sketch Mix 1″, The
Advent is also one of my favourite producers at the moment because is
is still real Techno with energetic and driving sound. Also David
Moleon is one of my personal favourites, who also did a collaboration
with us. “David Moleon & Audiowarp – Porlapolla” which is available on
Toyfriend vinyl.

11. Why did you guys decide to chose the Audiowarp? Any meaning behind that name at all?

As i mentioned we had to find a new name after we were calling
ourselves “Electrosmog”. We just collected words which sound good and
fitted and put them together. And we invented the name “Audiowarp”
before music sofware developer Steinberg integrated their famous
“audio warp” algorhythm for audio data timestreching into their
software Cubase SX!

12. What do you listen to beside electronic music?

Not pretty much to be honest, nearly everything we listen to is
electronic somehow, but i recovered some music from my youth which is
very powerful guitar music: Fear Factory. I can really recommend their
album “Demanufacture”

13. What do you think of the hard trance tracks that have been released in 2009, was it a good year ?

Indeed, i twas a good year i had really good promos in my mailbox.
Especially good stuff has been released by Fools Forest in my opinion,
very deep and full of fantastic new unconvetional sounds!

14. Thanks for the interview Dirk, is there anything you want to add and are there any new gigs/releases upcoming ?

“T3kn1que + Josh Abernethie – Distortion (Audiowarp Remix)” has just
been released on Benefactor and there is “Reaky – Situation 69″ coming
up on Techment Records inluding Audiowarp Tech Mix and Audiowarp Atmo
Mix! And of course there will be Audiowarp Releases beneath the
Remixes, “Experimentaions” and “Sunstorm” on Cosa Nostra vinyl. No
upcoming gigs yet but if any promoter or organizer is up for an
awesome audiowarp liveset don’t hesitate to send a request to
audiowarp@encoded-records.com, we are ready to enter the stage and
rock the house! Cheers!