by RAF KATIGBAK

With album titles like Stadtkind (City Child) and Berlinette, it’s obvious that Ellen Allien is a Berliner first and a producer second. Her hometown permeates everything she records—it’s the sound of reconstruction, an elegant rawness that captures the ghostly beauty that emerges from the city’s harshness, the bittersweet sound of soul emerging from rubble. From championing the new techno sound of Berlin in the early ’90s to her current role as top-notch producer/DJ/head of the bleeding-edge electronic label Bpitch Control, her hometown has always been a major factor in her work. The Mirror caught up with her via e-mail to find out why.

Mirror: After visiting Berlin, your music makes much more sense to me. How deeply does the city influence your music?

Ellen Allien: It’s my home base, the place where I grew up, where my family lives and many of my friends. I’m deeply connected to Berlin, and that allows me to feel a certain freedom, a space for creativity. The contrast I feel when coming home from touring or travelling activates a lot of energies, because I’m able to change perspectives. Berlin has such a warm, cozy feeling somehow, also the worst winters I know. And I think you can hear that, the connection, the relationship.

M: I know Chicago’s Trax label and Detroit artists also helped inform your sound. After visiting these cities, did you find a similarity with Berlin?

AE: Sure, I have been in Detroit several times and in Chicago too. It was very important for me to feel the drive there, to visualize the music, to picture it. Detroit is a good example of the crazy American politics. That hurts! They leave the city to a small group of capitalists and investors, and they destroy what the city actually means. But Detroit is also deeply connected to Berlin—when the wall came down, in the early ’90s, in East Berlin there was a similar flavour, a similar atmosphere with the empty industrial buildings. It’s no coincidence that techno was reborn in Berlin.

M: One thing I find in common is that music from all these cities sounds like it is trying to give listeners a sense of freedom from their sometimes-difficult surroundings. Is this a thought when you produce?

AE: Earlier it was an idea, but somehow we develop independent from the city, when we are deeply connected to the city at the same time. It’s a mixture of love and hate—I guess it’s the same for you in Montreal. But in the end, the combination of new influences and existing material—architecture, people, ways of living—and the never-ending flow of new arrivals and views changes the city, and changes us too! Sure, we Berliners don’t like all that happens in the city, like building up dead consumer zones like Potsdamer Platz—do you know what it has actually been before? In the ’20s of last century?—but that shows us only that we have to work harder to make Berlin the kind of city we want to live in. A good example is my label, which is viewed in Japan as the Berlin-based label. But actually, we are only one among many, but we worked hard and we will continue!

With DJ Mini at Parking tonight, Thursday, March 16, 10 p.m., $4

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