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Sensual, melancholic and playful: that’s the sound of Isolée.

The German producer’s breakthrough came in 1998 with the era-defining house track ‘Beau Mot Plage’. Even now, it sums him up: there’s the francophilia. The romanticism, and the weirdness. Anarchic sounds versus more rooted elements. His debut album Rest, released two years later, announced Isolée as one of the most vibrant artists of his generation, before the 2005 follow-up We Are Monster, took things to a kind of funk-fuelled indie-disco plane. Arriving at the height of the minimal house/techno wave, it was instantly recognised as a modern classic; some people even went so far as to call it electronic pop music. And Isolée? He was baffled by its huge success.

A relative calm has surrounded the Hamburg artist in the past years. There was a quarrel with Playhouse and an ensuing separation from the Frankfurt label, but this was barely registered by the scene. Last autumn saw Isolée on Dial and more recently providing an excellent vocal remix for Manuel Tur. Now it looks as if he’s coming full circle.

Having joined the Pampa stable of his friend DJ Koze, Isolée’s third album Well Spent Youth is reminiscent of Rest: more obviously electronic in nature than We Are Monster, it’s no less charming, and it beautifully fuses the microscopic and the epic. FACT’s Bjørn Schaeffner hooked up with the elusive – real name Rajko Müller – in early January and talked about creative pressure, musical sects and ubiquitous deep house nostalgia.



Rajko, six years have passed since the release of  We Are Monster. What held you up?

“For one thing, there was the separation from Playhouse. Then, you don’t want to release too much, considering the flood of music that’s coming out. Also, there’s a an astonishing amount that gets thrown away in the process of doing an album. At times you think every track fits in great, but then you realize that’s not the case. There were other reasons of a more private nature. I broke my ankle and lost another year or so because of that.”


“I like that ‘well’ is such a decent, moderate word. ‘Well’ means well, but not fantastic.”



Your new album is entitled Well Spent Youth. How come?

“I was intrigued by this expression, it’s kind of strange, isn’t it? A slogan, really. Also, I like that ‘well’ is such a decent, moderate word. ‘Well’ means well, but not fantastic. I found that interesting. But there’s no biographical twist or anything.”

The album is more electronic than We Are Monster, closer in spirit to Rest. Was that a conscious step back to your roots?

“That’s definitely the case. I wanted to come back to that. I was actually quite surprised when people reacted so positively to We Are Monster. A lot of people came to know Isolée only through that album. I have been asked whether it was difficult to handle the pressure after such a success. But in fact We Are Monster was much harder! There I felt I had to reinvent myself after Rest and ‘Beau Mot Plage’. Which gladly was not the case with Well Spent Youth. Working on this album was much more relaxed.

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But surely there were obstacles to overcome…

“It’s always difficult, you know. You’re constantly battling with yourself, I guess it’s about handling that and the feeling of saturation that occurs after a while. There’s only a certain amount of leisure and focus you have. Technology is just a means of aiding you in this. It should channel your intuition, though it’s easy to get lost in the endless possibilities.”

How does a Isolée track evolve then?

“I’m permanently finding, archiving, stacking up and re-arranging sounds. It’s like an architectural process of making music. The point, of course, is to make it sound good in the end. I don’t like to go to work with a preconceived idea in my head. If I do so, the results tend to be boring. I’d rather try to take a different route. That’s where you encounter the interesting stuff.”

“You’re constantly battling with yourself, I guess it’s about handling that and the feeling of saturation that occurs after a while.”




So chance is a creative principle.

“Definitely. I love to provoke accidents! It’s just brilliant to see what can happen. When something occurs that you haven’t expected.”

How much experimenting do you allow yourself?

“Well, you move within certain boundaries, you try to obey the laws that apply to the realm of electronic music. Such as rhythmical conventions. I may challenge people’s listening habits, but I don’t want to risk not being understood. People should be able to digest my music. I want to be accessible, after all.”

You’ve joined the ranks of DJ Koze’s Pampa imprint…

“After my separation from Playhouse I was in a kind of limbo: I wasn’t sure where to go with my music. After all, you don’t want to release on a label that’s only interested in your name. Stefan [DJ Koze] and I have been very good friends for quite a while. He was always interested in my sound, we exchange musical ideas on a regular basis. Since Stefan is a DJ and is so closely involved in the scene, it’s great to have someone like him giving his two cents. So, with Pampa nothing was really planned at first, the topic just grew bigger and bigger over the last year.”


“I may challenge people’s listening habits, but I don’t want to risk not being understood. People should be able to digest my music.”



Koze said in an interview with German magazine de:bug that he wanted to turn Pampa into a sect. Is this a desire you share?

“[Laughs] I really like to have this feeling of jointly building something. Instead of brooding about all by myself! What you need is a soulmate whom you can trust with an idea and who then takes it one step further. Having found that at Pampa was certainly a big motivation.”

How was it with Playhouse?

“[Laughs] There was this similiar feeling of being in a sect of fellow believers!”

You intend to re-issue the Isolée back catalogue on Pampa. Can we look forward to a super deluxe edition?

“I don’t think it’s going to be a special collector’s item, though we haven’t made up our minds yet. We will re-issue some of the releases which are no longer available due to the separation from Playhouse, including bonus tracks. Maybe we’ll put the tracks in a new and varied order. First off, Rest and We Are Monster will be re-released.”

It looks like you’ll be playing out live a lot over the next months. What can audiences expect?

“They will encounter the Isolée tracks in a different guise. I’ve changed my approach a bit, the way I perform, so that I’m in better control of things. That’s what it’s about, being able to create a great vibe. It’s music that belongs in a club, people should have a great party, after all!”



How do y
ou keep your live set fresh?

“Sometimes it helps to booze yourself up a little, so you can hear the tracks with different ears [laughs]. I always add new tracks to the roster, since I spend time in the studio in between gigs. There’s a lot of stuff I only play live and which then goes down the drain.”

You turned 40 recently. How is it to grow older in the club scene?

“I have kind of mixed feelings on that subject. It’s not like I’m constantly travelling and run at full throttle like a busy DJ. But even so, you sometimes ask yourself how long you still want to go on with this or whether this world has grown strange on you. It’s hard to say. I don’t have any concrete idea of what will be in five years time.”


“I would love to do something in the shoegaze tradition, but I’m not sure if I can manage it on my own…”



Looking at current dancefloor trends, what are your sentiments?

“I’m not really sure if I’m up on the ins-and-outs, as I don’t follow the scene that closely. What struck me of course is the big deep house revival. Which is interesting, but also strange, since it’s exactly the kind of house music I was listening to when I discovered club music in the Nineties. Sometimes I get the feeling that there are only so many old school classics that are being played. I guess this has to do with a younger generation discovering the older stuff.

The remix you did for Manuel Tur is quite a deep-housey affair…

“Yes, in this case I totally succumbed to the trend [Laughs]. It was a liberating thing to do, something different after the album. Fooling around with this vocal [by Holly Backler] was really great fun.”

What’s next for Isolée?

“Right now, I’m working on a skateboard video. I would love to do something in the shoegaze tradition, I’m really into this Brit sound, would be great if I could do something like that, though I’m not sure if I can manage it on my own.”

Bjørn Schaeffner

Main photo: © Pierre Humbert  / www.moltisanti.net

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