“I have been doing a lot of interviews today and I need another coffee,” says German dance producer Stephan Bodzin when he answers the phone. The tell-tale sounds of a coffee machine firing up deliver confirmation to me and I hear a satisfied sigh from the other end of the line.
Bodzin is on the from his hometown of Bremen and he has already done five interviews. But I am not surprised – the man responsible for ‘the Bremen sound’ is no stranger to hard work. Prior to concentrating on his solo career in 2005 he had spent 10 years behind the scenes working with Thomas Schumacher, Marc Romboy, and Oliver Huntemann amongst others.
“Normally I’m an early riser,” Bodzin laughingly reflects in a thick German accent. “To be creative is only possible in the morning for me. It’s opposite to most artists who work overnight. But due to the travelling and partying over the weekend it’s a bit hard to get up this early in the morning. So I have a problem with my creativity.”
After 2 years of constant touring and a minimum of production work the word has been circulating for the last 12 months that Bodzin was about to start work on his new album. It is news that his fans have been waiting on with baited breath since his first album, ‘Liebe Ist’, in 2007. There was a frenzy of activity in the early stages of his solo work (2005-2007) but relative quiet since then.
“I just took a break for the whole of May actually. I am starting the live show again this weekend in Paris. I was working only on new tracks for the live performance and new tools for the live show. That’s very interesting and I have about forty or fifty minutes of new music for the live show. I also put some old classics into a new shape.”
“It has been a good year so far – busy and a lot of fun. I feel like I have already travelled the whole planet and had many good show and met great people. I started working on the album and finished lots of tracks that I will play first on the Australia tour. Getting back in the studio, after two to three years of travelling only, has been cool.”
I can almost feel his enthusiasm coming down the phone line. “After 2 years of thinking about a theme I decided not to,” he says when I enquire about it. “I am feeling very comfortable with old school machines – a bit like Ovum sound. I didn’t expect that but it’s all different and all new, and I’m really excited about what is coming out in the future. I never know – I just try to be honest with what I am doing and have maximum fun in the studio.”
“The process is very important, not just the result. So I hope, but of course I don’t promise, that I will have some singles released in Autumn and the album around Winter/Spring.” Apart from his new solo material there will be a box set of his collaborations with Marc Romboy coming out, including remixes by Gui Boratto, Speedy J, Minilogue, and Martin Buttrich later this year.
Bodzin was last in Australia for Future Music Festival with his own unique live show – his Lemur touch controller projected behind him for all to see and his hands iconically encased in white gloves. For 2010 he has updated and enhanced that setup with 2 more Lemurs, a new light wand and more to be revealed.
“The machines are controlling me – it’s a monster that is taking control of me!” he laughingly says. “The point is that I was working with one Lemur controller in the years before and it’s still the best controller – the most intuitive and the fastest live controller for me. But I had to swap surfaces like crazy in the past to get control over everything at the same time. So I decided to attach more Lemurs to have more possibilities.”
“And for people it is far better to see that I am really doing things live. I am not only dropping an audio file with an Ableton Live set. They can see that I am working on a synth, on oscillators, on a filter to create a sound live. That’s what I try to do in nearly every track.”
“And the three lemurs doesn’t only look good, they’re really very useful for the live performance. Actually I don’t have enough hands to control it but I start practising next week! I haven’t worked on it yet. I have stopped making music for the live show and I am now programming the Lemur. I guess I’ll finish that at the end of next week and I’ll have about 2 weeks practising. And I will practise like 12 hours a day to get this thing controlled.” There is that work ethic coming out again.
And what advice would Bodzin go back and give to himself? “Relax! I would say to myself don’t stress yourself so much – relax and have more fun,” he says thoughtfully. “Because to get here was really hard work and I was really willing to get here. I start having fun and start relaxing and feeling more comfortable in the last 2 years. But before that I was really stressed. I was working hard and had luck but I have a feeling that I did something right over the last few years.”
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