Ame - Âme Bind The Fabric Together
The latest instalment in the Fabric mix series comes from the highly regarded German duo Ame, who took the opportunity to take their sound in a new direction, as 3D’s Rezo discovers.
Kristian Beyer and Frank Wiedemann met in a record store. The store belonged to Kristian, and Frank was a customer. “That was about 10 years ago,” Wiedermann reflects. “I’m still a customer at the store today.”
Beyer and Wiedermann have done plenty to underpin their reputations as musicians with vision and foresight. They enjoy their time in the studio and consider their roles carefully. “Kristian is the producer and I am the musician,” Wiedermann explains. “Kristian is more about picking the right moment to create the music. Whereas I am more into the finer details – I don’t necessarily know how to make those choices.”
The duo have been doing things together for a number of years now and, as yet, don’t consider Âme a champion of a particular genre. They prefer to experiment with music, everything from deep house to minimal. Tech-trance, anyone-
“Tech-trance,” he laughs. “That is a nice word. But no, I don’t think we can be made to sound so specific. We are always doing different things. Right now we have influences that are coming specifically from house and techno.”
A mix for the esteemed UK label Fabric has proven to be a somewhat pivotal moment in Âme’s career. The duo plunged into the project headfirst, and came out with something far from typical. “The idea was to create something unique compared to what we had done before,” Wiedermann notes. “It is more experimental electronic music – almost like a minimal techno. But on the whole we chose tracks that were more techno than just minimal – there is a house base though. The end product is something we are proud of and very happy with.
“We think it went really well. We had about 40 tracks to choose from. We wanted to put things on the CD that ranged from the old to the new. At the end we had to get it down, and down, and down, until the end product had something like 14 tracks.”
Fabric 42 has signalled a new direction for Âme. An intentionally more diverse, wholly and independent sound has been crafted. “We really wanted to show who we are with a different approach and look,” Wiedermann affirms. “We wanted to show that were not only these deep house guys from Germany, but that we could do a CD that is more electronic, and that it could be completely independent from all the other stuff we did before. We just did a mix that was who we are and who we feel. All people are different and everyone wants to feel different from the next DJ. We just followed our taste. We have friends with similar tastes but we wanted to be different to the majority.”
WHO: Âme
WHAT: Fabric 42 through Fabric/Inertia
WHEN: Out now
MORE: fabriclondon.com