Over a cup of coffee and a half-dozen rollies, Kristoffer Cornils talked with the Hamburg native about her career as producer and DJ, gender trouble, and the monopoly of the Internet.

Kristoffer Cornils In interviews it often comes up that your mother was very skeptical of technology. Is there something to that?

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

KC So you would go to the library and tape your favorite CDs.

HH 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.

KC When did you begin DJing?

HH 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.

KC Do you think the scene should return its focus to smaller clubs and reclaim the underground?

HH 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.

KC Are there any regional differences? Are people in smaller cities able to be more appreciative independent of any scene-specific distinctions or tastes that might exist?

HH 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.

KC When did you begin producing?

HH 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.

KC You seem to avoid using a laptop as a production tool. Why?

HH 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.

KC That brings me back to your work with the 303. I’ve wondered whether you are consciously aiming for a specific sound aesthetic.

HH 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.

KC So there’s a certain duality existing here: while many praise the computer for its limitless possibilities, others find a kind of salvation in reduction or limitation, and that’s represented in their decision to use analog hardware.

HH 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.

KC On top of that you also take a relatively improvisational approach.

HH 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.

KC That raises the question of whether you approach production with a certain ‘DJ mentality.’

HH 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.

KC Your sound is often described in reviews as “dark.” Would you subscribe to that?

HH 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?

KC Raw. Or –and this is not meant negatively- flat, because of the analog sound. A kind of alternative to the Ableton high gloss.

HH 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.

KC Your music does, however, show the influences of styles that are often associated with words like “dark”- Wave, above all.

HH 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 post-punk. 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.”

KC You used the word “primitive.” What do you mean by that?

HH 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.

KC Do you see the Actio Reactio EP with its complex polyrhythm as a club record?

HH Yes. But when in doubt I’d consider everything a club record. A good example is Pharoah Sanders’s “Africa – 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.

KC How did the Black Sites project come to PAN?

HH 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.

KC Upon first hearing the name Obscure Object I had to think of Luis Buñuel- specifically his film Cet obscur objet du désir. That led me in turn to wonder whether your mix plays with the myth of DJing as a kind of storytelling. There is an irritating moment on the noise side of the mix: for a while one hears nothing but isolated spurts of static.

HH 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!

KC One of your tracks was included in one of female:pressure’s radio shows. What do you think of that project and how important would you deem it as an institution?

HH 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!

KC That recalls the classic debate about statistics. The figures presented by female:pressure are frightening.

HH 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.

KC It’s probably also due to the fact that men hang out with other men- they buddy up to each other and then pass along gigs to each other. In Berlin, anyway, that’s very common. How is it in Hamburg? It seems like the public there is more mixed.

HH 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.

KC The lack of acceptance for female DJs can be discerned alone from the comments under Boiler Room videos. What were the reasons for your decision not to have a Facebook page? You do have a Soundcloud account.

HH 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; to 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 business 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.

KC For me as a music journalist, though, Facebook is incredibly useful- it’s a source of accumulated information in real time. None of that is available when you’re not registered.

HH 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.

 

 

Footnotes:

Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) was a Spanish filmmaker whose work is usually associated with the Surrealistic movement. On of his most well known films, Un chien andalu, was created in 1929 in collaboration with Salvador Dalí. Cet obscur objet du désir was Buñuel’s last film. It was premiered in 1977.

Pharoah Sanders (b. 1940) is an American jazz musician who performed with Sun Ra and Don Cherry, among others, and released many albums, some of them on Impulse!.

Obscur Object appeared on Krokodilo, the cassette-only sublabel of Blackest Ever Black.

female:pressure is an international database for female DJs and producers working in electronic music. Early in 2013 the network published statistics about the distribution and representation of women, men, and mixed acts in festivals, on labels, and in the charts.