Thomas Melchior has to be one of the most under-appreciated talents in the Minimalist Continuum. While his biggest successes were probably in his Vulva project alongside Tim Hutton, which released three albums of acid squiggles, radical tempo variance, and drum machine mayhem (two on Rephlex and one on Source Germany), it was their Yoni project that first alerted me to Melchior, and as I blogged a few months ago, My Little Yoni remains one of my top ten or 20 “electronic” albums of all time.
He dropped off my radar until the past few years when he started releasing under his own name for Playhouse, but in fact throughout the late '90s he was working alongside Baby Ford in at least two duos, Soul Capsule and Sunpeople. Rededicated to the minimalist project, he applies the spirit of microhouse – spaciousness, truncated musical elements, a playground at recess’ worth of swing – to a more traditionalist deep house aesthetic. It’s jacking, melodic, muted without sacrificing punch and glossy without giving up the grit.
Melchior also ran a short-lived label called Aspect; the CD version of his excellent new Playhouse album, The Meaning, contains many of those tracks on a bonus disc, and a remix 12” or two is in the works as well.
I recently spoke to Melchior for The Wire, catching up with him in his Berlin studio – he’s just relocated there from London – shortly after his return from several months in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. That article will be out in September; read on for the full text of the interview – the first in what I hope will be an ongoing series of uncut interviews here on Chez Sherblog.
PS: Now that the new album is out, what are you working on?
TM: I don’t know, really, just some new stuff. I haven’t really kind of done anything for the last few months because as you know I had a baby. That’s why i went to Brazil. My girlfriend lives there, and we had a kid there, a boy. So that’s been taking up my time.
The whole resettling to Berlin the last year, there’s been a lot going on.
You’d been in London before that?
Yeah, and I finally decided that I should go to Berlin. I kind of had a plan for a while, but it’s quite a move after a long time. The older you get, I think, the harder it gets to make a change. So I’m kind of a bit homeless at the moment, I don’t even know where home is anymore.
So what’s your background? I thought you were English, but on the Ongaku site it says you’re German but raised in the US, Spain, and England.
I’ve always been moving around with my family, so I finally ended up living in Washington DC, and I did a few stints in NY as well. I’ve always kind of been moving around, but the last 20 years I’ve been in London. Pretty much became like a London boy, and I finally tore myself away from it. Because there were a lot of changes going on there as well, you know, in the last seven years. England has become a bit, I don’t know – it’s changed the emphasis a bit and the electronic music thing isn’t really, it hasn’t got the same force there as it has in Germany.
Well it seems not to be happening in England at all these days, except for some small sectors.
Yeah, it’s a shame. Obviously there’s a lot of talent there and people doing it, but it’s not really connected together. There you feel quite isolated. In the last few years I’ve been feeling quite isolated there. Me and Peter as well, Peter Ford, we lived in the same neighborhood –
Which one?
In Ladbroke Grove, Portobello, a part of town that’s become really flash now in the past few years. That’s kind of part of the change. It became more and more ritzy. It’s kind of nice, but after a while it becomes too much, and you’re like, Oh my God, I’m starting to participate in this glitzy world. I didn’t want to, you know? I didn’t want to do that. It doesn’t go with the music – there’s something about it, and I’ve seen that in Berlin, it’s a lot less glamorous here and it’s more down to earth. In a way that’s better for the music, there’s less bullshit, you know?
It’s interesting you say that, because a lot of people tend to accuse the microhouse scene of being this glamorous, jetset, globetrotting, flashy music. And you’re saying the opposite, that a glitzy city can’t support that music.
Well, to a certain extent there is the house scene, which is almost always a little bit more glitzy, isn’t it. You know, the sort of Luke Solomon, Derrick Carter – which is really wicked, I think that’s really wicked as well. I love that Derrick Carter kind of stuff. But it is veering towards the more chic end. I don’t know, the parties here in Berlin seem to be a lot rougher. You know the Watergate?
No, I’ve never been to Berlin.
You have to come! Well, for me I’m kind of rediscovering it, in a different way for me. It’s great making a comparison to London. It’s a German kind of thing. Adjusting to the German way of thinking is a bit of a change from the English way of thinking. The English are a lot more relaxed, kind of laissez-faire… They’re more relaxed, aren’t they, kind of more soulful in a way. And that’s maybe reflected in the kind of music they like as well. They don’t like it too intellectual, too intelligent, or too…. I don’t know.
It’s interesting because what I hear coming out of Playhouse or Perlon is incredibly relaxed and sensual and soulful.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. This kind of minimalism, a lot of people have to get it first, don’t they. But in a way you don’t want it too big anyway. The music becomes too big; it’s nice if it’s kind of small, [played in] small clubs, it’s much nicer, isn’t it? I think so. I don’t know, it’s definitely a change in Berlin.
So what drew you there, was it the community?
Yeah, basically. Over the last few years, I got to know Zip more and more, and basically yeah it’s four years now, and he was always quite into the stuff I was doing, and Ricardo as well – they’re kind of like my biggest supporters. After a while I realized that I should give it a go. Try going back, you know, because sometimes it’s nice to touch your roots again.
Where is your family from?
From all over the place, but I spent about 10 years in Freiburg, in the Black Forest. Near Switzerland.
I don’t know Germany at all – I’ve only been to Cologne.
I don’t know Cologne. Sounds quite happening.
A million producers, but not much nightlife, which is perhaps different from Berlin.
Here it just seems to be – I mean, compared to London, people say that’s the trap in Berlin, that you get there, there’s so many things to do, you can always go out. And everyone is here as well, you get like – I mean, it’s great having everyone there. Luciano, Ricardo, Daniel Bell… it’s really nice. It’s basically a meeting point. It’s almost mind-boggling to get all your favorite producers in one place. It’s probably like Detroit or something.
Is Peter Ford there as well?
No. I’m trying to convince him to get over here as well but basically he’s got different circumstances and it’s harder for him to leave. I think he’d really like to, but it’s hard for him to get himself out of there for the time being. You never know. Everyone’s trying to get him. It would be perfect.
So Brazil, you’ve been spending time because of your girlfriend…
I’ve always been into Brazil, so I kind of, yeah, basically via my girlfriend there. But basically I wouldn’t mind kind of living there – obviously it’s everyone’s dream to live on the bay somewhere…
This is in Salvador da Bahia?
Yeah, and it’s a totally different world. I really like it there, I really like the people. I suppose it’s like, you said you’re going to Chile, so you know the difference. You get a different perspective to the world you live in, this high tech, everything modern, big cars, and then you go into this world, and you meet a bit rougher side of life.
It’s interesting because the whole Perlon crew has a strong Latin American connection via Chile. Now you’ve become part of the German/Latin American contingent as well.
It’s odd, there’s some cosmic thing going on.
Is your time in Brazil starting to filter into your music?
Obviously I don’t want to do, like, Brazilian house music. To translate it onto a minimal level is a bit more challenging. But I’m working on it, yeah. I think it’s not quite – there’s so many different styles you get influenced by in Brazil, so many different directions – there’s so many different rhythms. Just so many rhythms you can use there, it’s great. It’s a great country for learning rhythm, understanding it – getting the African mixed with the white, with the Latino, Portuguese… that’s probably the most amazing thing about Brazil anyway, is the mixture of cultures. It’s unbelievable the kind of variety of people you get there. It’s quite mind-boggling.
I was only in São Paulo once, for a week, but it was unlike anywhere else I’d ever been.
São Paulo is obviously a bit more European, it’s like the European Brazil. When you go further up North the African influence becomes stronger, and it becomes poorer and poorer as well. Salvador’s an amazing city. It’s African baroque, basically. Really surreal… it seems odd, you know? Like some weird fantasy. And everyone’s playing drums all the time, it’s unbelievable – at least the Baroque part of the city feels like it’s vibrating. There’s an unbelievable energy.
So in a way it’s not entirely unlike Berlin, where you’ve got parties going on 24/7.
Yeah, though there it’s obviously the more primitive variety. Here it’s more in a controlled environment. The whole atmosphere’s more controlled.
Electronic music isn’t really going on in Salvador. I mean, the whole thing in Brazil, obviously the further south you go you have the more interesting… well, Buenos Aires is a bit of a hotspot, isn’t it. Everyone goes there, basically, and then São Paulo sometimes. They’re more switched on, and they’re really into what’s a bit trendy. The further up north you go, their idea of electronic music, is like the batistaca [ed note: I didn’t catch this word] kind of stuff. Really fast, really hardcore – that’s what they think is techno, you know?
It’s a bit like it used to be here 10 years ago, it’s 10 years behind. On a mass level, you know. All the old rave DJs from the UK, you know – it’s really funny, you meet people you haven’t seen for years. “Oh, what are you doing here?” It’s like, “I’m playing on a rave.” The same stuff [they were playing 10 years ago]!
Tell me about your passage through the rave scene. I think I told you, but Yoni was one of the first 4/4 records that really turned me on. I’d grown up punk rock, and somehow anti-electronic music, and when I heard Yoni it just flipped my head around.
That’s great, I think that’s really great if you can get people into it who normally wouldn’t really like that. Part of my brain has an element that understands a person that doesn’t like techno music. I can understand if a person says he doesn’t like it. I can understand there’s something to it they obviously don’t like.
It’s quite nice if you can do it in such a way that you can get somebody into it that wouldn’t really – I suppose, coming from the same background, you know, being a musician you understand a certain fact, certain things about electronic music – you could do it a bit lighter, or make it really obvious… I think it’s really great you say that, coming from punk rock. I used to like punk rock as well, but obviously I’m a bit older.
How old are you?
39. I wasn’t punk rock, I was more, I guess, new wave. I kind of had a few musical growing-ups, basically, as everyone does. I kind of come from a black music background as well, liking James Brown, Funkadelic… just basically completely funky music. Anything that kind of goes, basically. Punk has that energy as well, doesn’t it. Ch-ch-ch-ch-
Yeah, the forward motion –
Yeah, pushing it.
And at what point did you get into the rave scene?
Well, pretty much from the beginning, really. It was kind of like, doing electronic funky music, when the acid stuff first started, and you could hear it on the radio, you know. ‘86, ‘87, you were always really listening to it, yeah, crazy sounds from America. So obviously that had a big influence, and from then it started growing and I started getting deeper and deeper into the music itself. Kind of started going different directions, and yeah, basically – the progression got more and more dancy, basically, like a path that was opening up.
That’s where I’m at at the moment. There’s a lot of stuff which is more ambient, which I really like – it’s a lot more on the electronic, electronica, I suppose. And now it’s much more, like, well, as you know… minimal.
Kind of, I don’t know, maybe there is a direction, a natural progression in electronic music – especially when you get a couple of decks, and then you go, “Hold on – I want to play this together with another record!”
I was going back through the Vulva records, which I haven’t listened to in a long time, and I was intrigued by the variety of tempos. Nowadays, and frankly I like this, everything’s in the same range. But that Vulva record is really all over the place, from half-speed to double-time…
Obviously, there’s a lot of styles to explore. In the beginning there was kind of a search for a style, like which is the one… because they’re all good, you know? I suppose in that era as well, it was more like the thing if you did an album, it wasn’t just for the club, it was kind of like an album, a band album. It’s nice if you have different tempos, especially if you don’t have vocals, that you can bring variety through the beats and the tempos. It’s not like that any more now! [Laughs]
I like the fact that I can play all my records together and mix them seamlessly – within reason.
I kind of think there is something addictive about it, 125, 128 BPM, jacking. There’s something about it, I’m addicted to it.
Tell me a little about the new record. What you said earlier – you understood people who don’t like certain elements in electronic music, and that might be what appeals to them in your work – the new record in many ways is a traditional deep house record, with a lot of elements that I would otherwise find boring, but there’s a lightness of touch that puts it over the edge.
Yeah, yeah. I suppose that’s the way I like it. When I go out – I’m kind of a house fan, I like sexy house music. I have a weak spot for it. And I kind of like, the more the beat is bumping and grinding, the more I like it. Obviously with the garage stuff, it’s got this two-steppy – sometimes it’s too crass, bang in your face, almost like drum’n’bass. But I try to make it a bit garagey, and the other element, another influence I have, is Chez and Trent productions, like Prescription Records and Balance, this sort of phase of – I don’t know if you’re familiar with them, it’s kind of – in my eyes it’s the best house music that’s been made, some of the best, anyway. Ron Trent and Chez Damier, that’s the golden era, the mid-‘90s, and everyone was in that scene. Derrick Carter when he was beginning, or not the biggest DJ in the world yet. That’s the kind of style. It is quite basic as well, what they’re doing. In a way their productions are a lot bigger, in the more classical kind of Kevin Saunderson studio productions, in a way. But they’ve made it sound very small already – you couldn’t really play it in a big club because it’s too small sounding, in a way, and very muted, and very… unlarge, you know? Almost understated, and in fact immensely beautiful. Obviously that’s the direction I like – taking the sound and making it basic, having the rhythm pumping and using certain elements that in a way are traditional, but they work. They can be minimalized.
It’s a bit like bringing the old, that era, and trying to fuse that.
Your music is very suggestive. You’ll have one little keyboard blip that implies an entire melody you don’t have to say.
That’s right, it’s like hinting at what could be. It’s basically like, obviously the music’s kind of, the whole kind of minimal house stuff is really wicked like that. There’s a lot of, a lot more now, funky minimal… it’s a lot more sexy, the music now. Because a lot of the German stuff was a little more stiff, you know.
Well, it’s going in a couple of different directions, because on the one hand, Kompakt is going in this trancy direction, like the Ferenc stuff, really banging, it would be hard to call it sexy – and then what Ricardo Villalobos is doing is in the opposite direction, that it goes so deep into the groove, it’s weirdly static. It sort of draws out a moment over the space of several hours.
It’s true, you know. Ricardo kind of works that was as well, doesn’t he, using long sections and then editing them, doing it live and then editing them later on. He kind of thinks like a DJ anyway, so obviously – that’s partly why the tracks I do as well are great tools as well for a mixer. You can use them very easily as tools, and Ricardo likes that as well. Obviously you have to make them really long and very repetitive.
It’s a certain element of dance music is made like that, isn’t it. If you think as a DJ already. Because you know that they’ll want to mix it.
So it’s intentionally incomplete.
I suppose, because you complete it on the floor.
And yet your new record is a really lovely listening record, I listen to it around the house all the time.
Did you get the Aspect CD as well? The finished copy has got a bonus CD – it’s a little bit like a hidden gem, the way it’s worked out with Playhouse. You know about my label don’t you?
No!
That’s like my third attempt at running a label. I’d done it in the past, during the ‘90s, I never had the success that I wanted to make it continue. So Aspect, I started that in 2000, and only put three records out, but these three records have become quite sort of sought after. I don’t know, not many were sold, but the ones that people have, they love them. It’s like collaborations with Peter, and another French guy, and a couple of friends, and it’s a lot more varied than the album. There’s a bit of a variation going on, and in a way, that is a real gem.
So if you buy the CD of The Meaning, there’s an extra CD with all the aspect stuff.
Yeah, basically, with all my back catalogue on it.
Wow. Will you be reissuing the vinyl?
Playhouse is taking two tracks out of it, and Ricardo is doing a remix. It’s like four years old now, but it basically slipped under. You can get the vinyl through Hardwax,
That’s really nice on CD. The album itself is more jacking. When I heard them together, I thought, “Oh no! The bonus CD is better than the album!”
I’m interested in your productions because on the one hand there’s a similarity to your colleagues in Berlin, and yet you’re using drum samples instead of clicks and burps and pops. Where are you sourcing this stuff from?
Yeah, it’s basically done the old way, with an Atari and outboard gear. It’s pretty simple, pretty basic. I’ve got a good mixing desk, fairly good. It’s quite simple, but basically – I’m glad I didn’t – there was this time a few years ago when everyone changed around to the Mac, and I suppose it’s just me and Peter, he as well is an Atari man, we just sort of stayed on it because we wanted to continue with the music. I found a lot of people who switched over the to the Mac thing kind of lost it a little bit, for a while. I figure, if it ain’t broke…
So you don’t have plans to go to Mac then.
Well, yeah, I’ve got a Mac already and I’m sort of in the process of switching over. [Laughs.] It is kind of… obviously with time, you realize that it’s a lot easier on a Mac, you know. The control is tighter in a way. But there is something great about the old hardware. The Atari has a tighter groove than a lot of the laptop programs. It’s more primitive, and therefore the groove is more… bang! People can’t really explain why it is, but it’s just got a better groove. There’s another machine, an Akai hardware sequencer, and sometimes these machines have these particular grooves to them, and you can’t really get that on a laptop.
It seems to have improved now though, so that’s why I’m changing. People say it’s MIDI or something, there’s a millisecond delay or something. There’s definitely a difference, almost becomes like a trademark after a while.
I suppose it’s a challenge as well – obviously I’m inspired by the laptop music as well. Not all of it is good, I have to say. Often I find that the sound is a bit – it sounds too hollow. It sounds great and perfectly engineered, and all the gear you’re using is all in one machine, it’s a lot easier to control it, give it a unity. Whereas with analog equipement I find it’s more manual.
Well, I recently saw a laptop producer follow a pair of DJs, and I love his work, and yet there was something missing, following the vinyl, which was pressed so live and hot – it was as though the laptop just couldn’t replicate that intensity of sound.
It’s a different sound, you know. It goes back to the digital thing, and although I can’t claim to know much about the analog to digital converter business, it’s quite hard to get right. People say they can produce the analog sounds in digital programs, but it’s still not quite there. Obviously it’s becoming a lot better. But again, vinyl, a track always sounds much better once it’s on vinyl, definitely. It’s got a warmer sound to it, doesn’t it. Especially with bassy stuff.
Another band, Plaid, I think they’re great as well – they like to use a digital kind of setup, completely digital, and it does sound a little bit tinny at times. It’s hard – at the end of the day, these are like details. You can get used to it. If you listen to all digital stuff, you think this sounds great. But if you put a vinyl on, you go – oh!
Tell me a little about Soul Capsule.
It’s basically this project that’s established itself. We’ve been friends for a really long time, and basically started working together, and we seemed to work quite well.
Before I was with Soul Capsule, I hadn’t really established my profile so much, and when I was working with Peter I realized that it was an important thing, and he guided me along a bit, so I became a little more independent. And by that time this sort of more jacking house direction became the thing I really like to do. So I kind of established myself by working with Peter. It was quite a hard process, because you kind of realize you’re in the shadow of somebody, so it can be frustrating as well. But basically we continued because everyone said it was great. It was a good combination as well because Peter’s really slow, he slows the process down, and you kind of get in deeper.
I think it’s more fun as well with two people. If you’re by yourself it becomes a little – personal life comes up, the lonely hours in the studio. But with a friend it’s really good fun.
With Yoni and Vulva you did a lot of really acidic work. Have you been tempted to go back to that, especially now that acid’s coming back?
Obviously it’s the old Rephlex kind of – well, the acid thing. But then I’d go with the old sort of Rephlex philosophy, which is basically doing acid music but not necessarily using acid sounds. So basically the whole idea is that it’s kind of trippy, isn’t it? That’s what acid is, for me, anyway – you know, get fucked up, trip out with the music. I suppose, yeah, it’s always tempting to do an acid track. But then when you switch that sound on, you go, “Nah,” you can’t do it.
Anyway, I don’t know – I don’t like being part of a trend particularly, you know. I kind of feel like I see myself outside the trend, over the years. If it then slips in together with something, that’s great. Obviously that means you sell more records, doesn’t it, if there’s a trend. But yeah, I mean, no. I kind of think my music is a bit acidy anyway, without using the acid sounds.
But yeah, the old acid stuff is amazing. The acid sound is part of what gets a lot of people into the music as well, this sort of element, that kind of frequency. But the acid thing got a bit ruined with the Goa thing, didn’t it? That took on the kind of, hey, let’s throw some trips, get really fucked up… it really crystallized into that, didn’t it? That kind of psychedelic trance. The excess of acid music.
I know quite a lot of people from the psychedelic trance scene, from London, you get to know them sooner or later – or a lot of people from the old days as well. And they throw good outside parties. Good parties; the music always sucks. Hippie chicks, you know? [Laughs.] But a lot of these people, they’ve kind of progressed as well – they’re really kind of into the minimal stuff now. They’re particularly into Akufen. So you see the continuation of this acid vibe – obviously that’s more the insider Goa people who switch to Akufen and realize that if you can take a trip to Akufen it’s a bit of a step up from psychedelic trance.
Maybe we could talk about minimalism briefly. You’ve always been to a certain extent a minimalist.
Yeah, I suppose, obviously the thing about minimalism is you keep it to the essentials, and you concentrate on the part rather than on the overall effect. You basically build it through all these layers of parts. Obviously you become more and more into the parts, and then you want it to be more and more simple so you can hear the parts quite clearly. I find that it’s kind of complicated, but you can still look through it. And if you blast it up too much and make it too big, it’s too much. I often find if the music’s too – on the whole I’ve always liked the more muted sounds. If it’s too bang, the snares are too loud; I find that with a lot of the Trax stuff, for instance, they’re very clanking, aren’t they. Obviously there’s a minimalism of the sound, and a minimalism of the parts.
There’s a restraint in the sounds you use, and a reduction of the elements.
I like that about, basically the whole of this popping and clicking, I like that about the minimal direction of the past few years. That the sounds have become very chk-chk-chk, clicking.
Well I think Pantytec is the extreme example of that, very clicky and scratchy.
They’re quite small sounds, aren’t they. I like when you listen to someone like Herbie Hancock, you know – he does like, basically, it’s a kind of jazz funk, and it’s electronic but everything using very small parts, and very snappy and yet very flowing.
That’s almost exactly what Jan Jelinek once said about Roy Ayers’ Ramp project.
Obviously it’s come about a bit as well through having a laptop or whatever. When you hear this minimal music on these cheap speakers, like on your laptop, it kind of pops really nicely, doesn’t it? I reckon that’s how it came about. It sounds good on a big system, obviously, but you get a lot of fuller sounding music, and you have it on cheap speakers, and it doesn’t sound as good. So I reckon that’s how the clicking got into it. [Laughs.]
That’s kind of a dream come true, the minimal house thing. You get a lot of it in the hip hop production as well; that’s becoming more minimal as well, isn’t it. Like really stripping it more and more – obviously that’s the future.
