WESTBAM TALKS ABOUT HIS PASSION FOR HIP-HOP, BENEFITS OF MODERN TECHNOLOGIES, FAVORITE COLLABORATIONS ON THE LATEST ALBUM “RISKY SETS”, HIS RECENT APPROACH IN CREATING MUSIC AND VIDEOS AND NEVERENDING EXCITEMENT
Maximillian Lenz, mostly known by his stage name Westbam, is one of the most influential Berlin dj’s, a true raver who was responsible for the massive techno-culture explosion at the edge of the 80s/90s and reaffirmed his position as one of the most interesting and creative artists on this scene during the following decades.
Maximillian started his musical journey with forming punk band Anormal Null in 1979. In the mid 80s he got more interested in dance music and went deeper into Djing. At that point he got his now well known DJ moniker Westbam — a kind of reinvention of Afrika Bambaata’s name that showed his passion for early hip-hop music. As Westbam, he quickly achieved the status of being one of the most interesting and forward-thinking dj’s of his time, the one who was pushing DJing from just selecting songs for the moment to a new art-form that is based on the way of creating musical compositions using records and mixing effects. Starting with playing eclectic mixes of electro, new wave, italo disco and hip-hop in the legendary club Metropol in West Berlin, Westbam soon turned his head to the most futuristic sounds of house and techno.
In 1989, when the Berlin wall came down, techno music and night clubs became one of the most distinctive signs of this new time and Westbam became one of the leading figures in an evolving cultural movement. According to Westbam, techno became at that time a kind of soundtrack of liberation and played an important social and political role especially for East Berliners, and today’s Berlin techno fame is in many ways an echo of that era.
Westbam stood behind the events that pushed the development of this rave scene, as the organizer of the trademark festival MayDay and a dj who played on all legendary Love Parade’s. At the moment, he’s retired from his promoter and event organizer duties and just enjoys himself as an artist who only dedicates himself to creative things like making new music and playing it to the people. He regularly releases his music as well as composing new tracks everyday just for the listening pleasure and in order to make the sets that he plays in clubs and festivals exclusively consist only of his material. Throughout his career, Westbam made a huge number of contemporary dance music hits and epic rave anthems which covered different genres from electro to techno and house music, as well as conceptual albums, remixes and collaborations with big artists that stand far away from the electronic music world like Iggy Pop and Brian Molko. His successful work in this wide range of musical genres always carried a mark of his personal style – always very experimental, energetic and with a sense of humor.
We had a chance to chat with Westbam about his latest album “Risky Sets”, passion for hip-hop culture, benefits of modern technologies, his approach in creating music and videos, retiring from the event business as well as some other interesting things.
Interview: Dmitry Tolkunov
Hi! As I understand your main new work is the new album “Risky Sets” that was released just a few months ago? Can you tell a bit about it and did the creation process took a long time?
Well you know, these days, I don’t work on tracks as long as I used to do in the early days of my production – in the 80s and 90s. I believe that a good track must be done fast, and when you are working too long on it, you are losing the main idea. But the hall technical process of making this album happen took a long time as I had a lot of collaborations on “Risky Sets” with different unbelievable superstars. And it was a long way, confirming everything with their management. And as time goes by while you are doing the same work, there comes a moment when you run out of ideas. Because of this long process of confirmation of everything it was evolving for a long time, so at the moment when everything was finally confirmed, I had around 10 versions for each track of the album. And think it all worked well at the end and I’m really satisfied by “Risky Sets”.
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