MMM make rave music that’s exuberant, delirious, crazed. But what’s so remarkable about their tracks is how damned tense they are. Theirs is the sound of contained chaos, potential energy, internal combustion – even at their most explosive you feel like you’re only experiencing the half of it.
The duo of Erik Wiegand and Michael ‘Fiedel’ Fiedler have been collaborating as MMM since 1996. Their first self-released 12″, MMM 1, established their unique aesthetic from the off: a collision of techno, disco, hardcore, house and electro that paid loving but irreverent tribute to great music of the past – reference without deference, if you will. In 1997 came ‘Donna’: mastered by Monolake’s Robert Henke, this lysergic electro-techno monster became an underground smash, and thirteen years later its off-beat arrangement, screaming acid lines and air-locked drums have lost none of their mind-mincing, club-razing power. Just thinking about it makes my palms itch.
With a sense of restraint and quality-control that many techno producers would do well to imitate, Fiedel and Erik proceeded to take an extended break from the MMM project. Erik made a name for himself for his solo work as Errorsmith, building custom synths and making jagged, loop-based works equally valid in the contexts of rave and sound-art, and collaborating with like-minded Frank Timm (AKA Soundhack / Sound Stream) on more disco-influenced work as Smith N Hack. Fiedel – who cites early electro-anchored hip-hop (particularly Mantronix, Ice-T, 2 Live Crew, Egyptian Lover), acid house, and Berlin’s Hard Wax store as his three key formative influences – threw himself back into DJing. An esteemed name on the Berlin scene since the mid-90s, these days he holds down a residency at Berghain.
It would be a whopping 11 years before the next MMM release – 2008′s 10th Anniversary EP, a split with Soundhack. The jaunty melody of lead track ‘Touch & Go’ evidenced Fiedel’s enduring love of hi-NRG, while the brilliant synth-wave-gone-mad of ‘Casiotone (From The Vaults)’ might just be the most demure and addictive jam in the MMM canon. It seemed to safe to assume that the next tranmission from Erik and Fiedel would drop some time around 2020, but then the duo surprised us at the beginning of this year by releasing the massive MMM4. Leading with the utterly bombastic ‘Nous Sommes MMM’, the 12″ has acted a timely reminder of MMM’s place at the top-table of Berlin dancefloor technicians – it’s an unashamed banger, but one rendered with such conviction, acuity and disregard for (or, perhaps more accurately, amplification of) conventional narrative logic that it can be seen as a kind of surrealist rave art-piece. You can hear it in Fiedel’s new and exclusive FACT mix, which also features a track from the forthcoming MMM5. Oh yes, these lads are hitting their stride now.
FACT was able to get hold of Erik and Fiedel for a rare joint interview, conducted via e-mail. Fittingly enough, they chose to answer questions as a single entity, occasionally chipping in with an individual opinion. As well as telling us what ‘MMM’ actually stands for, they explain their motivations and methodologies, and the importance of that “raw, imperfect quality” in their music.
How did the two of you first meet, and how did MMM begin? Did the idea of MMM exist before the music…?
MMM: “We met in the year 1995 through a mutual friend, the late DJ Niplz AKA Rufus. Erik was already making music, experimenting with self-made and modified sound devices. Fiedel was DJing and from there came the great idea to work on music together and release it on vinyl. We had the feeling that our music wouldn’t fit on an existing label and we were adventurous enough to do it on our own. We were fortunate that Hard Wax supported us from the beginning.
“Music-wise we didn’t have a plan, we just tried to find our own twist on styles that we liked: electro, techno, house, disco…”
Can you tell us where the name MMM came from? What about the logo and design?
MMM: “MMM stands for ‘Messe der Meister von Morgen’, an ‘exhibition or trade fair of the masters of tomorrow’. This was the name of a youth science competition in the GDR intended to animate pupils and young workers to do research and make inventions to forward the economy and strenghten society. We liked the absurd name as well as their artwork – the kind of stamps, logos and certificates that you would get for your inventions (like Fiedel did!). So we picked up their name and design.”
Excellent. My heroes.