Abstract Histories Helena Hauff

I think my mother was mostly just careful with money and not really interested in music, or at least not in the idea that one should have to possess it.

Yeah. I always just went after the sounds I liked—I never did research or made real distinctions: when I liked it, it was good. When I began to go to clubs, though, I noticed there was a difference between straight and non-straight bass drum, for example, or between what can be played in clubs and what can’t.

Sometimes I wonder if I began DJing in order to have an excuse to buy records. [Laughs] I bought myself two turntables, taught myself beatmatching, and played a couple of times in bars. Then I asked a friend if it wouldn’t be possible to spin at [the Golden] Pudel. It was there that I learned how to get people to dance and how to generate energy on the dance floor. It was the perfect setting in which to develop and teach myself.

Difficult question—what is “underground,” anyway? I would like to see people entering clubs with less of a bias. I am picky myself, but I’d like for people to stop thinking in specific categories, for example, prejudging whether something is “mainstream” or not.

That could be. One time I played in Schwerin. In this case I was the one who came with pre-formed judgments: I expected that they wouldn’t appreciate my set. That turned out to be nonsense—they loved it! I’m not sure if people are more welcoming in smaller cities because the cities have less to offer or because they think less in specific scene categories.

Two or three years ago. I bought a 303 from a friend and borrowed a MPC 2000 from another friend (in the meantime it’s become my own). [Laughs] Then I began to try things out and started working a lot with f#x as Black Sites. Lately I produce predominantly on my own.

It’s very simple—I just don’t understand the things! First of all, mine is old and doesn’t work right. Secondly, I don’t want to buy a new one. Thirdly, I didn’t grow up with one. I didn’t buy my first PC until 2008. Of course I’d sat in front of one before and could operate one, but I was never really interested. I’ve tried to work with Ableton but I always ended up with big clicks in my tracks and couldn’t get them to go away because my computer is so slow. That’s why I only use Audacity—I understand that, at least! [Laughs] My reluctance to use PCs has nothing to do with an ideology; I simply don’t know what I’m supposed to do with them. I always find it very impressive when people really know their way around computers and can build synthesizers and things. I’m very interested in technology and physics—just not computers themselves.

Yes. I love analog sound and therefore don’t need computers. That’s also a decision. Although I suppose that the analog sound quality can also be reproduced with a computer.

At the beginning it makes sense for the options to be restricted. Even today I don’t understand my machines thoroughly . There’s still a lot of leeway and a lot more to learn, so even in that context the possibilities are unlimited. I would like to get to know my machines as intimately as I can.

I record my tracks in one take and then add at most a second or third layer over that first take. I prefer to play the track as it was created: live. Sometimes I end up having to use my nose to hold down a key.

Producing is a bit like DJing in the sense that I’d like the same energy to exist in my tracks as exists in a club. Pre-conceptualizing and cutting a track isn’t really my approach. I’m more physically than mentally involved. I focus on real-time recording more than on thinking and planning structurally. When I’m DJing in a club and feel I need something with handclaps, I’ll play a Chicago track that uses 707. Or when I want a break I’ll choose a song that manages to go for three minutes without beats. It’s similar with producing: when I feel like hand claps, I play handclaps. When I feel like a break, I integrate a break.

Personally, I find neither Actio Reactio nor the Black Sites EP to be “dark.” If anything I’d describe them more as psychotic, primitive, unsettling. I guess at most they’re dark in the sense of not being “happy-happy.” Overly cheerful music makes me aggressive. I can’t deal! [Laughs] That’s how I imagine hell to be. But anyway, what would you say?

It’s difficult to say what “dark,” “raw” or “flat” is. I’m always reminded of how much the understanding of these words varies from person to person. In principle, these terms should be defined before they are used in conversation. But this cannot, of course, be done in reviews.

I’d prefer to ask whether music is cold or warm, i.e., is it white or black music? I am less influenced by funk than by garage punk, wave and postpunk. The former is warmer and more friendly with regard to the melody, and the latter three more reserved. Such an approach lends itself, perhaps, to be labelled as “dark.”

Self-reduced and undemanding. It’s harder to create something simple that is both powerful and very present. For me that’s a manifestation of ingenuity. The entire club culture is itself somewhat primitive and archaic. You go, get drunk, want to kind of lose yourself and dance. That’s what fascinates me, and that primitiveness is also exactly what I like about club music.

Yes. But when in doubt I’d consider everything a club record. A good example is Pharoah Sanders’s “You’ve Got To Have Freedom” For me that’s one of the greatest club hits of all time! I’ve played it during peak hours and it’s been well received.

Thanks to my booking agent. She found me because she had discovered one of my mixes. She sent that mix to various people, among them Bill and Blackest Ever Black. BEB asked me to do a pure electro mix. By the time I completed the first side I was so tired of electro that I decided to record noise on the second side. I was in the mood for something obscure. That’s also how the name came into being.

I actually can’t remember that at the moment. [Laughs] But I like the idea of telling an emotional story without content, a kind of abstract history, over the course of an evening. I’m also a big fan of Luis Buñuel!

My big hope is that eventually it won’t make a difference anymore whether the DJ is a woman or a man. What I don’t like, however, is the idea of playing tracks solely by women. I don’t like when the focus is taken off of the music itself and transferred to the gender of the people who made it. There’s something discriminatory in that as well. When women are included because their tracks fit musically, then great. But I don’t like being invited to spin simply because I’m a woman!

Of course I’d love to see more women playing in clubs and at festivals, when the women are great at what they do. I wonder sometimes how much the statistics mean in light of the fact that there’s a low percentage of women doing this work in the first place. If you invite ten percent of the women who DJ and ten percent of the men who do, you’ll probably end up anyway with 99 men and 1 woman. But maybe I’m wrong; maybe the reason I don’t know so many women doing this is because most simply aren’t offered a platform.

Many people move to Berlin because they have a specific conception of the city. People don’t move to Hamburg to chase after a preconceived notion of the city or because it’s trendy. That’s a difference that results in a more heterogeneous crowd. I know some women through the Golden Pudel who play great music. However, there still aren’t many compared to the number of men. I also work behind the bar and at least twenty times men have come up to me and asked if they could DJ there. Only one woman has asked me. Maybe the women just aren’t confident enough? I’m not sure.

I was tired of people posting links to Soundcloud mixes instead of to my own homepage. In creating my own Soundcloud account I was trying to regain a bit of control over the situation. I’ve avoided Facebook very deliberately. That has nothing to do with my not liking computers; on the contrary—for me, the internet has become too important. I’m against the centralization of the Internet and the monopolies that are Google, Facebook or Soundcloud—that is, monopolies over information, communication or music. I don’t have anything against these websites, but what can’t happen is that the alternatives disappear—that nothing else works or is taken seriously. Aside from the fact that many of these websites limit users in their expression and make it difficult for people to generate their own content, the most dangerous aspect is that in the end all of the users’ activities, ideas and materials are managed by a company which then has a monopoly on all of that information. In the “real world” one rejects this kind of phenomenon; one chooses to support smaller businesses rather than a supermarket. The digital world is full of these supermarkets. You go inside, satisfy your need for social contact or collect some new sounds and don’t at all notice what happens. For example, when you matter-of-factly publicly share information on Facebook, there is a company interposed that makes money off of each individual user.

Precisely. You’re excluded from information when you don’t register for these services. Either you’re a member of the club or you’re completely left out. Things shouldn’t be allowed to work that way. Of course it’s ok for someone to use these things very pragmatically, just to stay in contact with friends, for example—whatever. It’s not all just negative. But the approach, the contact with these resources is too naïve. I’m not on Facebook because I wish for a democratic, decentralized Internet. That had been an idea at some point, I thought.