After a busy beginning of the year, with gigs in Germany at CTM Festival and Sameheads in Berlin etc., she enjoys a little down time in London before her touring schedule picks up speed again, with high profile gigs at Dekmantel Festival in Amsterdam and the smaller Selectors offshoot in Croatia. zweikommasieben’s Mathis Neuhaus caught up with Elena Colombi via Skype to find out more about her ways of looking for music, her stance on the global nightlife’s current stance and why she is trying to avoid routines by all means.

Mathis Neuhaus Do you have any routines in looking for and finding music?

Elena Colombi Not really. I somehow never feel satisfied with what I have got, so I am constantly on the hunt. I am not a person who approaches things in a systematic way, quite the opposite. I like to draw inspiration from a broad range of things and situations. This gives me more pleasure than searching in a methodical way.

MN These days, genres, be it new ones, old ones or made-up ones, are thrown around a bit too much, I feel. How do you organize your music?

EC I wish I had a found a satisfying way of organizing my music and therefore for answering this question. I am trying out different ways for it to make a bit of sense, but it changes. Even with digital files I can be messy. I still find what I need within the chaos, but it would be hard to explain how it works for someone who is not in my brain.

MN Do you find more music offline or online?

EC A bit of both. When I travel a lot, it tends to be more online, simply for practical reasons. I could be browsing at 2 am in a hotel room, when all the record stores are closed. But I do not really have preferences. Being in a physical shop, meeting people, going to markets and finding new things this way is also very appealing. Not knowing what to expect can be nice, too. There are so many smaller spaces and realities out there that not many people know about and when you come across them it can be really exciting.

MN Do you use Spotify?

EC I decided a long time ago that I was against it and never really changed my mind. I was recently having a conversation about this with a friend who owns a label, and he was saying that because Spotify is so popular and commercial it does not mean that it does not have music that someone like him and I would enjoy. Until now I have been more sympathetic towards websites like Bandcamp, where you can have a direct relationship with artists putting out their music and make sure they get the money they deserve. I also do not mind paying more for shipping, for example, if I know that I am supporting someone directly. Maybe I have to dive into the world of Spotify a bit more, since I am realizing that it is really one thing that I have been stubbornly avoiding for a long time now. And recently, I have been getting more and more nice feedback about it from people that I trust musically.

MN Do you ever get anxious about the sheer amount of music that yet has to be found?

EC No, quite the opposite I think. It keeps me doing what I do. It is the fact that I keep on discovering new music and I want to play it and I want to talk about it with people. It is about communication and sharing, always. There is so much music out there and no matter how knowledgeable someone is, it is impossible to know it all. And that is the exciting thing about it.

MN Are you still going out these days when you are not playing? What are you looking for in parties or what drives you when you are promoting parties yourself?

EC Of course, I am still going out! I will have some time off soon and I am looking forward to having a proper dance. The parties I enjoy the most always have a bit of a rough vibe, spaces where people are allowed to let loose instead of standing in the corner, stroking their chins and analyzing every track that is played. A good rave is the kind of thing I am missing and looking forward to go to.

MN With regards to openness for music and lifestyles , what is your stance on the global nightlife’s current state?

EC There are some really interesting nights out there, done by lovely promoters who are brave enough to put on diverse acts. Things are shifting and moving and I think they are moving in a good direction. It has to do with the type of music that gets put out, the acts that get put on, the openness of the people who go out and how they react to what is on offer. Even the bigger festivals seem to become more inclusive and slightly less commercial. But maybe I also have been very lucky, since I almost exclusively met nice people along the way and it has been a really positive experience so far.

MN You said, routines kill your creativity and you try to avoid them by all means?

EC Yes, they really do. Even if I try, I am not a person that functions that way. I try to avoid anything that becomes repetitive. This also reflects in the way I play music. I am not someone who looks into finding a winning combination of tracks. I want to challenge myself each time, change every set as much as possible. Some people find routines comforting, they make them feel secure in their job or the in the place they live. Even in nightlife, you can have that sort of secure combination and I do not judge it, but I need chaos, diversity, new challenges. I need to be stressed. If I am too relaxed, no good ideas come from it.

MN You tour quite a bit: how do you prevent from travelling becoming a routine?

EC It’s rarely a routine. Being at the same airport or stations is still never quite the same: you can turn up really early and think you are prepared for everything that comes, but then something happens that you could have not foreseen and suddenly, everything changes. New plan, new start, new story!

MN You are associated with this free-ranging style of playing music that became almost en vogue the last few years. Is this making it easier or harder to stand out?

EC I think whoever stands out, stands out for a reason. Be it the way they are playing, what they are playing, their personality, the way they are approaching a dancefloor, or all of it combined. In the end, I think people that stand out are those who take risks. It makes more of an interesting story if you have twist and turns and shake up things a little, prevent yourself from becoming too complacent with what you are doing. And it seems to me that people who play a broad range of music are more confident to do this.

MN You are also doing a radio show on NTS: when you do that, do you imagine your audience or the perfect listener or something like that?

EC No, I have no idea to whom a specific show might reach out to and I think this is what keeps me going. For the show on NTS I first come up with some sort of theme but I try not to make it too obvious. Then I follow by looking for an image that suits and, in theory, everything would magically fall into place. But more often than not while playing it becomes something completely new. For me, the beauty of radio is that it is so unpredictable.

MN NTS is based in London, and so are you. Do you think the city influenced the music you like and play? Or once more, differently put: do places, in
these times, still have a specific sound?

EC Not so much anymore. Some scenes are more relevant in certain cities than others, but the internet and globalization have made the differences more subtle. Whenever you travel now, in every city you can find a Starbucks and these streamlined experiences that share similarities with every other place you go to. It is a bit sad, but also a good example of how similar people’s tastes became. Someone in South Korea might be into the same things I am, even though the city is on the other end of the world. And I think entities like NTS play a big role in this, because even though they are mostly based in London, with smaller studios in Manchester and Los Angeles, you can listen to its broad variety of shows in every part of the world. And you could not pinpoint what kind of music NTS pushes, because they literally cover all sorts.