Part 2

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

Yes of course, I think it's part of the process to be pulled back and forth and maybe have this idea or that idea, which lead to nothing.

But that's the wrong way to look at it. Nothing ever only leads to nothing. Everything you do in the studio will teach you something. And if it's only that you should not repeat the kind of actions that didn't lead you anywhere and rather try something new.

I believe that there is absolutely no waste of time in the studio. You do have downtimes in the production process when you can't work, so you better enjoy those downtimes too. Just do random things and if there is absolutely no result you could somehow use, be sure that this is not really the point. I think that there is a certain percentage of the creative process that from the outside might not lead anywhere, but it's a necessary part of finding the right path. So I stopped being angry at myself if I sit in the studio all day and I don't have a result in the end or I bin everything I have done, because I know that this is essential to be super-creative, super-quickly at some other point.

The quicker you realise that, the less time you spend being angry at something. You understand that it's just part of the process not to always be successful and creative. You need to have those seemingly unconstructive moments and let go of the idea that you have to do something notably constructive and productive all the time.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

I would not claim that I heavily walk on a spiritual path, but I think that creating art does have much to do with spirituality. If I define spirituality as living in the moment and just experiencing what happens around you without the interventions of your own thoughts, then yes.

I believe that you can only fully enter the creative state with a more or less empty mind. The less thoughts you have clinging on and occupying space in your head will leave more space for creativity to flow through you. All thoughts that you need will come automatically. Some might call that spirituality, I just think it's part of the creative process.

That's why I am a firm believer in meditation and controlling your mind and the madness going on inside of it.

Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process? How do you finish a work?

I always try to follow the 80% rule. As soon as you have done 80% of your creative work, there are two issues for the remaining 20%.

First, those 20% will probably never be appreciated by anyone else except yourself. They most likely represent your ego trying to change some stuff of minor importance. The other problem with the 20% is that it takes way more time than the 80% - the large majority of the work that has already been done. They might even lead you to destroy the essence of the 80 % you have already achieved. You might think your work is not finished yet, even though it somehow is, and you might ruin the whole thing.

At some point you have to tell yourself: that's it! You must learn to finish things, as you could endlessly work on art. It's never finished, and that's part of the beauty of it. You need to learn to tell yourself at some point: this piece is finished and I'll start a new one.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practice?

Well, as I said, a piece is never really finished. You just decide at some point to stop working on it. Due to my touring, I need to stick to deadlines when I work and as Rick Rubin once famously said: "Art doesn't get made on the clock, but it does get finished on the clock."

I always find deadlines crucial. Depending on the deadline, I sometimes go back to the track, because I played it out over the weekend and realised that some parts are not working. Some parts might be too long, my idea in the studio might have been different to what the reality check showed me when I played it in the club, so I might quickly change things around to be happier with it. But at some point, as I said, you just have to let go of a piece and start with something new.

Some tracks get a lot of refinement and improvement, some other tracks happen organically and are just there. This doesn't mean that one is better than the other, it's just how it goes. You constantly keep learning, trying to avoid mistakes, trying to avoid things that wouldn't work - for example in a club environment when it comes to club music. It's a constant live-and-learn thing.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

I am involved in everything 100%. Quite a while ago I started to mix and master my own tracks and also master and sometimes even mix the tracks of the artists who release on my label. Sometimes I also mix music for other artists. If they ask me for help and I have time, I am happy to do that. I am a total sound fanatic, so I am always trying to learn, and I have realised that also the mastering process is by now a process I can approach myself. I know that there are a lot of people who say that it's better to leave the mastering to someone else who is not involved with the production and I agree.

All the music I produced together with Ralf Hildenbeutel, which we released on Mute, was mastered by Stefan from Scape Mastering as this is listening music, and he knows much better how those masters need to sound. When it comes to club music, by now, I know exactly what a club track needs to sound like. I can test it over the weekend and can come back and tweak it. So when it comes to my own productions I do everything from the first note to the finished master.

I also have to say that due to amazing new plugins and stuff like this, mastering is not so much like rocket science anymore. If you teach yourself with loads of tutorials on youtube and other platforms over many many years, you can learn quite a bit about that. I have realised that I am happier when I master my stuff, rather than sending it back and forth with a mastering engineer who might not have enough bass or high-end in there. I just know how it needs to be, so I am very involved in the whole process.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

I don't really feel this emptiness when something is finished. Instead I feel happy that it finally gets out to the world.

I guess I deal with this situation by immediately starting something new, so I don't even let any emptiness emerge. Or I do something completely different. I am on tour or I just get out into nature, meet friends, go on a bike ride or skiing or whatever.

I don't want to cling on to things that I have done for too long. I'd rather try to do something new.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

As I previously said, music has a lot in common with cooking for me, and I love to cook as well. You need a base, a basic idea, a foundation. The higher the frequencies the more the spices come in. There is a main sound, a main line, a main idea, which is obviously the dish. That dish has a foundation, which might be potatoes, which might be tofu or pasta or pizza dough, and then you just add everything else.

I am convinced that everything is totally connected. What I am trying to achieve through music, is a certain state of mind, a certain atmosphere I want to create, that people can get lost in and discover new worlds inside their own bodies by just listening to music and dancing to it. And I guess that's something I could never do with anything else but music.