Kiki (from Berlin and Finland via the World)

13 years after he first visited Berlin to rave at the annual Love Parade, Finnish producer Kiki sits near the top of the German capital's techno and house tree, as one of the star producers on Ellen Allien's hugely rated dance label B Pitch Control. Such is his status that when he does go home to Helsinki he finds a mixed reaction from his kin.

"My old friends of course know me from before, of course but still it's kind of weird to be born in Helsinki and to see a flyer for a club stating DJ Kiki from Berlin," he laughs. "That's quite strange sometimes."

Educated as an architect and based in Berlin for a decade, his profile looks set to go even higher with the release of his new album Run With Me, a serious contender for album of the year. Packed with original, listenable, captivating songs, the largely instrumental record demonstrates perfectly the enormous potential that remains in house and techno, for those with the genuine talent to capture melody and songs through electronic music, something he attributes to his education.

"Maybe it's a quite an abstract thought, but I see a similarity between working with design and with music, especially with electronic music," says Kiki.

"I did a pre-diploma in architecture and afterwards I moved to the University of Art in Berlin to have a broader direction of the subject, and there I studied communication designs. To me, philosophically speaking, it's not too far away from the music I'm doing and the approach I have to work. The parallel draws from working on something creative. I've learnt at university to think about specific themes first and then research around the different techniques," he explains.


Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): You've previously made singles, where did you start when making the album-

Kiki: "The first thing I did was to think of all my favorite albums and what really motivated me to make music in the first place. In the past I wrote many singles mainly designed for the dance floor, but for this album I've used a totally different approach. Initially I had many ideas in mind of linking thousands of different influences together, which probably helped me to forge my personal sound in the end."

Skrufff: What common characteristics have you recognized in the albums you've liked over the years-

Kiki: "Many different sounds have made a big impression on me when I was growing up. When I was really young, between 8 and 10, I was in a band at school and we were trying to ape all the rock bands we liked, people like Kiss or whoever else we were into at the time. I think "The End Of The World" is the track we would have loved to have done back then, though at the time we couldn't play any instruments. Later on I got into hip-hop and that's what started me DJing. I've also tried to bring some of that into the album, which I think you can hear on tracks like Classic Nouveau and On the 101st Day. At one point I even considered having an MC on the album, but it would have moved too far away from the rest of the tracks."

Skrufff: The End of The World sounds very Sisters of Mercy like in style, where you aware of them when you were eight years old-

Kiki: "Sisters of Mercy came a bit later for me. I didn't really own any records at the time, so I must have heard them on the radio because my school band had a similar sound. The funny thing is I'm working with the ex-guitarist from The Sisters of Mercy now, Adam Pearson. He heard The End of The World and said it sounded quite like The Sisters…though it's me who does the singing."

Skrufff: In England children aged eight or nine now listen mostly to manufactured music…Being in Finland at that age, how did it happen you were listening to Kiss and Sisters of Mercy; were your parents' rockers-

Kiki: "No, not at all. Maybe it was just the fact of having really nice, creative friends around that influenced me. They were all into the same kind of stuff, and at school we were a bit like the alternative g Tags

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