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Ellen Allien- Thrills, Berlin & Dream V

Author: Jonty Skrufff
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
"Do what you want to. Believe in yourself and your aims. Dreams can come true. Get up. And war hurts; peace is the most important thing in world."

With her DIY ethos and anti-war convictions, Ellen Allien is a classic product of Berlin's post-unification creative explosion, coming up through the city's squat scene and subsequent techno explosion that followed the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Though through her DJing, music making and continuing efforts as creative director of the label she founded Bpitch Records, she's also one of its most successful and influential players.

"I developed my drive very early on, it was always clear to me that I'd have to establish my own network," she tells Jonty Skrufff. "I was initially a part of others' groups, but I wasn't that happy, because they weren't always based on respect and trust.

For me, the starting point was entering the techno scene. I immediately had a vision, because everything was different and at the same time possible," she recalls.

"For example, take the gender issue: it was no longer important in techno if you were a woman or a man, unlike in hip hop where they had, and still have, those fixed gender roles."

15 years after she discovered her direction she remains evangelical about the transformative power of music, particularly techno.

"With techno we developed a whole culture, an alternative way of living, fulfilling our dreams and earning money with it at the same time. But the money was never in the forefront. It was more important to go a different way, to be part of that small and friendly revolution that enabled us all to be artists. And we also changed the understanding of art," she continues.

"It still works in Berlin, the clubs are always full of new faces, and when I go into the record stores searching through the vinyl I often see new names on the labels, which I never have heard before, and the music is still great. Dance music will never die .The network is boiling and growing and growing."

Adding to the record store stocks, is Ellen's latest album Thrills, an electro-tech record she considers her best.

"What connects all my records is the way they reflect my life; where I stay, how I life, the records are a mirror of my personal development as well as my musical and professional development. And a thrill is the wideness and the excess of music, the trip of running a label and keeping it alive; loving my beloved (boyfriend) so that we are happy. Or finding no sleep when I'm jetlagged, when I can't feel my skin anymore. Thrills is when people totally freak out in front of me, when the feeling of being together grows more and more in my heart, because we all search the same. A thrill is my whole life, the outcome of the inside," she adds.

Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): Thrills is your third full length studio album- does it get any easier with experience-

Ellen Allien: "Sure, it gets easier in terms of the production, I've learned over the years how to make music, or how that certain sound in my head can get outside. But in another way it gets more difficult, because of people's expectations which I increasingly start thinking about when the album's finished and approaching release. Will people like it- Is it too minimal- Too poppy- Too techno- Too much/ too little- But I guess that's a normal process, because I release something very personal, something that makes me sensitive to people's reactions. Though having said that, Thrills is also the first record which I'm totally satisfied with, or perhaps I've reached a level in my life where I'm satisfied with what I do.

Skrufff: the biog says "Thrills makes a firm statement: her passions have become her profession": how much do you see you music as art, how much about entertainment-

Ellen Allien: "Making music is always an experiment, which brings a lot of fun. And all the technical aspects are amazing, they allow to grab all my emotions. And the process of maki
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