Chapter 1: Sharing a life with himself
Choosing an alias is often a matter of intimacy or aestheticism; yet, when Phillip Sollmann picked Efdemin as his artist name, he created an alter ego, which would take his perception of techno to a realm of unexplored paths. The consensus is wide: Phillip, or Efdemin, is a major figure of house and minimal in the German landscape. What he does with his productions however, shifts depending on who is taking the lead. Appeal of the crowd, or solitary experimental compositions? He is the man split into two worlds: the art of sound and the techno parties. Eventually his music, elegantly deep, sometimes gently brutal, finds its sense in both worlds.
Funny to point out how unusual his musical path is. On one side playing the cello and practicing in bands, on the other side studying sociology, experimental sound art and music journalism, we have a man here that seems to dislike nothing really, influenced by the booming years of hip hop and Detroit techno during the expansion of neoliberal parties.
Efdemin released a first album on Dial Records in which could be attributed identifiable features of minimal, house and techno. The work is abstract, switching genres always in a quite charming sound design despite its obscurity. One could already see the challenge: how to not betray his unusual, experimental vision of music, although ensuring a relative success? Efdemin managed to release tracks and albums with popular labels and won the risky bet of being both experimental and accessible. While many producers struggle with their creativity despite fantastic marketing skills, Efdemin is on the other side of the shore. His passion runs first, and the struggle arises from attracting a public adventurous enough to deep into his experiments, his ways of composing, his state of mind.
“(…) I’m not able to produce something good when I’m in between gigs, in between weekends, with one, two, maximum three days, and somehow I don’t get into this state of mind where I can make music that I think is good enough to release.”
Electronic Beats - Efdemin interviewed
With no identifiable structure, his work induces new listening experiences, to break out from the classic observable pattern on modern techno albums.
Chapter 2: Oh, lovely appearance of decks
Efdemin released last year New Atlantis, an album inspired by the novel written by philosopher Francis Bacon. Depicting a utopian society where “generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendour, piety and public spirit” are the common goods of its inhabitants, the album’s name nicely resonates with Sollmann’s own label, naïf (naive in French).
In the album, Phillip includes a hymn composed by Charles Wesley and sung by artist William T. Wiley, Oh, lovely appearance of death. Preaching the acceptance of death as the freedom from life burdens, Sollmann definitely confirms his unbreakable passion for sound art and experiments, and cuts from the production of basic hits to something that resembles him, something that resonates with his conception of music, without complexes.
“For the first time, it allowed me to reconcile my other personality, as someone who works more in the field of sound art, with my club-oriented work as Efdemin. I always thought that there was club music and then the serious stuff, but now I realise that they have always worked together. I think that, for a while, I had some insecurity about my position at Berghain and within the club scene generally, but over the past few years that has changed, and I feel really at home there.”
The Quietus - Efdemin's interview
Questioning for a long time his belonging to what one could call a Berghain community, Efdemin seems to have found a balance between what he truly loves and what his main job requires him to do. While touring the world, he keeps exploring and creating under his civilian name.
The richness of course, is to bring clubbers to some distant lands of music they wouldn’t have travelled to on their own. There isn’t Sollmann composing in the shadows on one side and Efdemin lighting up the clubs on the other side. The two work together to produce a techno rooted in boldness and delicate crudeness.
Chapter 3: Teasing the crowd
The emergence of techno as a mainstream movement brought to light fantastic talents; but it also turned itself into a booming industry with its fair share of passive consumers. For unconditional lovers of the genre like Efdemin, this passivity is a heavy regression. It affects public interaction, diversity of tastes and the implicit relationship between crowd and DJ. The exchange is decreasing, it goes from speakers to people, without complicity.
Therefore, which better place than Berghain, where pictures are forbidden and sound system is said to be the best in the world, to bring back this relationship on stage?
“My interest in techno started was when I realised it didn’t have a stage, or a performer who was bigger or more important than anyone else there. The first clubs I went to were left-wing, Antifa type places; it was just about sound.”
The Quietus - Efdemin's interview
It goes beyond entertaining. Efdemin teaches. Like any teacher, he needs a public that wants to learn. This is where the importance of the venue matters. If people expect him to bang their ears for 4 hours straight, they will surely be disappointed. If they agree to navigate with him and accept times of silence, the first and hardest step is taken.
Venues like Berghain, where people come with huge expectations and refuse passive consumption, exist here and there, but remain rare enough to question our relation to techno. Its transcending aspect has led many listeners to identify the drops as the unique exciting part and to reject any other variation of rhythm. Teasing the crowd has become so rare that DJs who do have come to be considered “provocative”.
For all that, it seems “provocation” is simply an attempt to show the crowd the essence of their art and help them enjoy every single bits of their nights, through the appreciation of silence and discovery of the unusual.