Monika Kruse

Monika Kruse, is one of Germanys biggest DJ’s, playing a mix of high-energy techno and house to clubbers all over the world. From humble beginnings, DJ’ing in a local bar, she soon made the step to organising her own raves, everywhere from abandoned bunkers, to not quite abandoned military bases. Her profile as a DJ continued to grow, as she was booked for bigger and bigger clubs, culminating her being voted Germany’s 4th best DJ by the readers of Raveline.

So this is your second album? No actually it’s my first solo album. I did 2 albums under the name GTMK but this time I wanted to do something just by myself.

Was it something you’ve wanted to do for a long time? Your DJ career goes back a long way. When did you decide you wanted to move into solo production? Well, It was a wish for a long time of course, but time went by and I had some personal problems that took a while to solve and get over. Then I had to get the power and the energy to get back to myself. It was one of my biggest dreams to do a solo project.

Are you pleased with it? Yeah of course! As an artist if you do a track you can work on it forever! It got to a point when I said; “that’s it.” I’m excited; I hope the people like it too.

I know it’s a pain in the ass to listen to, with the spoilers, but it’s already on the net and. . .

That’s one of the things I was going to ask you about: MP3s and digital distribution. Being a DJ do you play with MP3s? I still play with vinyl because I love vinyl. The music is more real. For example if a play a CD with it’s like grrr, silver, nothing! Sometimes if I look at the title on a CD I’m like what is this? But when you have vinyl you can look at it and see the image or colour and know that a track you want is on it, a kind of visual connection. Vinyl is still in my heart, but I suppose one day I’m going to spin only CDs. For now though, I think well I have a record label and I put out records, so I have to support vinyl!

How do you feel about your music being available on the Internet? Well I mean of course I get pissed off with people sharing files for nothing. They don’t respect the work behind it. As a musician you have to put a lot money into your studio, put a lot of time into your music. Exchanging files for free means “we don’t have respect for your music” that’s my opinion. They [illegal file sharers] don’t know the artist they want to listen to first, but then I say if you really like the track listen to it a couple of times, then buy it.

It seems a lot of people now have an expectation that because of the Internet, they should be able to get music for free.For me now that is my biggest gripe, like I have less time, so you give something from your life through the music and people don’t respect it.

So you don’t download music yourself then?! No of course not! Sometimes people give me CD of an album, but then I go to the store and I buy the album! Sometimes even if I get the downloads from the album that I really like, I still go out and buy it on vinyl.

I prefer vinyl myself but it seems there are so many digital DJs around at the moment. Yeah there’re so many young DJs now and vinyl doesn’t mean anything to them...

People who produce the music want people to play on vinyl, but the people that want the music don’t want to pay all the money for vinyl so there’s a conflict. The good thing about digital downloads is that people in countries who really can’t afford to buy records, where there isn’t that choice, then it’s good to have some digital platforms where they can get the music. Every side has its pros and cons.

It was your birthday a while ago, and you played at Berghain? Yeah I played a couple of days after my birthday we had an amazing party haha! I left the club at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, but then went onto another club. It was really great I had my friends playing there like Heartthrob, Tony Rohr playing live and Gregor Tresher. That was his first time playing at Berghain.

And you worked with Gregor on the album? Yeah that’s right, he was co-producer on the album – so it was like a little family around me, it was fun! And I love Berghain, it’s an amazing club I always call it my living room. I feel at home there, I can go there just for a little drink. It’s like if I play, I still like to dance; if you play somewhere and your finish your set you cannot have a dance afterwards as people want to talk to you and it’s impossible.

Have you always had this connection with Berghain? It was another club before called Ostgut before, but I never went there that much. I played there once. In the first month of Berghain I was going there as much as I could!

Let’s talk about you new album. It’s called Changes Of Perception and is quite different from what you’ve been doing. Is that where the title came from? Well I’ve changed musically over the years, more than one time, because as you get older you change or get bored of one style, as it’s not evolving anymore; I always need a challenge. I was getting kind of well known with loopy techno and after a while I sort of got bored as the records all started to sound the same. So I thought hey OK I can play these records from 5 years ago, but is it going to be interesting? No! And then with other productions and systems, new sounds and plug-ins, it became really interesting with new influences within minimal techno and other parts of electronic music. I found it more interesting for me with this kind of style. I was open-minded after buying techno to drum & bass, chill-out and vocal house, everything that I really liked. I thought hey I’m bored let’s make a change. Not so hardcore, so it got slower and slower and slower. So that’s where the name came from.

I wanted to give it a personal touch as I’ve changed over the years, not really as a person, but by the way I see things which is normal; you get older you get wiser, you understand more about life about situations and why people behave in certain ways. It’s like an expression for musical change or doing live music for me is in my soul. You can put a lot of ideas inside.

Listening to your old stuff and then the new album you can really hear the change. Did you plan write an album or was it just a collection of ideas you already had? Of course I had some ideas that I wanted to express on the album, my love for different styles. I’m influenced by Chicago house, Detroit techno as well as dark monotone techno and acid. So, I said I don’t only want to have one style. Even when I DJ and always play different styles. That was the main idea, but I couldn’t bring all of what I really like about electronic music together, or there would be a drum & bass track on it, a dub track. I just put the most important styles on the album.

It’s not a collection of 12 inches but all of the tracks could be used on the dance floor, do you agree? I liked a lot of the percussive sounds. Me too. I really like bongos, tribal sounds. I had one colleague I worked with in the studio and he called me tribal Monica haha! I was like “you have to put this and that sound in”. Maybe I still am influenced by funk or meringue. I really like African music with all the different elements, so that’s kind of one of my roots.

How is working with someone else producing the album? Did it make it harder or easier for you? Umm, easier because I always come to a point when I produce by myself that I doubt what I do. If I work by myself there’s always a point when I say is this any good, shall I leave it, put more energy or time into it? It’s nice to have someone I can ask ‘is it good, is there more I can do? Shall we go on?’ In the past I had not so much time to work in my own studio because I lost connection with things; synthesisers, new programmes. To be a good producer you always have to be ahead of time. So I knew Gregor from earlier productions, we did some records on Intacto, and Terminal under the GTMK and it worked very well. I wanted to work with someone who could do what I wanted, be it reverb or particular sounds. It is hard to find a producer who can really hold himself back, and just do what I ask.

What does the future hold? Next year I am going to do a new mix, but I really want to develop some new artists on my label [Terminal M]. I have decided to have not so many artists on the label. I want to have a family. That is one of my biggest aims, to find young talented artists who are consistently producing good music. Then we can on tour as the Terminal M family!