Plastikman – ‘Disconnected’


If we move forward a few years now, there was the initial period of Plastikman and then there was a bit of a gap and then you returned with Consumed. That was quite a departure from earlier Plastikman releases, was that a conscious reaction to the problems you had had recording Klinik? How do you view Consumed and that era now?

Yeah, it was definitely a reaction to the problems I had trying to record the third album. I was trying to build upon Sheet One and Musik and I felt kind of pigeonholed into coming up with Sheet Two for lack of a better title and I was also getting into this very stripped down sound that I’d kind of found with the Concept 1 releases.

“I had been thrown out of America and had kind of become detached from the whole Detroit scene that was instrumental in inspiring Sheet One and Musik. All these factors were at play and the one thing that I knew, after I kind of cobbled together the Artifakts record and had Consumed finished also, I knew that whatever I put out would have a huge amount of hype and people were going to go out and buy it and listen to it, so I thought the best thing at that moment for me was to use that momentum, that situation, that position I was in, to deliver something as different as possible, to kind of hopefully use the notoriety or the popularity of Plastikman to perhaps get people into something that they weren’t expecting and that was, you know, part of consuming. And also to break with the tradition of what those first two albums were.

“Of course Consumed is based upon all the same components as Sheet One and Musik – the acid lines are there but they are muted and everything has kind of been detached, like I felt. So I knew it was a direction that I wanted to go in, and it just felt like the right moment to come with that album with no compromises.”

“I thought the best thing at that moment for me was to use that momentum, that situation, that position I was in, to deliver something as different as possible, to use the notoriety or the popularity of Plastikman to perhaps get people into something that they weren’t expecting.”

It would be another five years before you released Closer. Why was there such a long gap?

“After what we have just talked about, being thrown out, working on Concept 1, working on trying to find the direction of Plastikman, once it was all done, I found myself in 1998, having spent a couple of years in, more to the arts side, the more minimal side, the experimental side with those records – they definitely weren’t coming from a dance-focused Richie Hawtin at that time, and that was because it was a reaction against the dance-focused Richie Hawtin of the early 90s.

“So after that, and this is what usually happens after a big Plastikman project, I really wanted to take a step away and get back into DJing and travelling. And one of the first things I did right after Consumed was to end, or at least put Plus 8 on hiatus, work on the first M-nus track, which was ‘Minus Orange’, which was sample-based. It was clubby, it was based upon Yello, it was something completely different, I had never worked with samples, it was another challenge to myself. And that kind of took off, M-nus took off and that became my focus.

“All that [M-nus] started to happen, weeks became months, months became years, and suddenly it was four or five years later and I found myself in a different situation, which pushed me to return to the Plastikman sound.”

Plastikman – ‘I Don’t Know’

When you were listening back to the old recordings as you were compiling Arkives what surprised you the most?

“It surprised me how many forgotten tracks there were, little bits and pieces and experiments that were happening around the Consumed time. And some really interesting bridges between Consumed and Closer. I didn’t record that much in that gap, I was really busy off DJing, but the little that was recorded really had connectivity between the concept albums and Closer and you kind of hear them slowly melting into what became Closer. Some of those tracks are on Arkives and they kind of bridge that gap. And also listening to things like ‘Slinky’, and some of the things that were done in ’95/’96 and didn’t even make it onto Klinik, hearing these other reactions. ‘Slinky’, which we’ve just released now is totally pure, classic Plastikman. At the time I didn’t I didn’t want to release it because it was too prototypical Plastikman, which is exactly what I love about it now and why I decided to release it now.

“M-nus became my focus…weeks became months, months became years, and suddenly it was four or five years later and I found myself in a different situation.”

“I guess at some point I didn’t take the obvious or the easiest route, I wasn’t really comfortable with the success of Plastikman after Sheet One and Musik. Like I said there seemed to be a push to get the next album as soon as possible, work on live shows, get on the touring thing with Plastikman, and Plastikman is so connected to Detroit and the parties and my friends there that it was hard to take that experience and translate it to the rest of the world. I had trouble with that and looking back I brought myself back to that and remembered why some of these things I really liked then and I still like now didn’t see the light of day until now on Arkives.”

Next page (3/3)

Plastikman – ‘Consumed’


Is there anything in the Plastikman back catalogue that disappoints you now, or which you think should have been done better or could have been done better?

“That’s hard to say. One track that always bothered me is a track that was out on Musik, one of my favourite tracks ever: ‘Marbles’. It has such an intensity and feeling and aggression, which I loved. And part of that is because of the one pass mix I did on it. I always wish I could have got back to that and cleaned it up a bit so it had a bit more power in a club system. In the same way, some of the tracks at the time, they were four-to-the-floor, but I remember mixing them, they weren’t supposed to be pounding to the head, they were supposed to be danceable, they were supposed to be nearly danceable to someone who was lying down or sitting there listening to them.

“I was doing some experiments with a track called ‘Afrika’, which was like very heavily percussive. I found quite a lot of tribally kind of things in between ’95 and ’96 because I was quite into this tribal-bongo-disco-house at that moment. I was trying to experiment with how that went with Plastikman; I think that could have been experimented more. And I also liked some of the things I was doing with Bomb the Bass and some of the remixes with Attica Blues and especially La Funk Mob. I could have spent more time going down that pathway on my own sound and it could have developed into something else interesting.”

“My focus is to create new material, but my focus is not to create new material for an album per se. I’m very much focused on where the live show and this difficult experience that we’re working on right now, where that could go in the future.”

The career trajectory of the Plastikman name has tended to consist of relatively short periods of intense release activity (1993/94, 1998, 2003) interspersed with long periods of silence. As we are now in one of the periods of intense release activity, could you perhaps say something about the new Plastikman recordings you have been working on and when a new album might be ready?

“I can honestly say I’m not working on anything yet. I’m doing a lot of doodling and playing around and checking out pieces of equipment and software. And of course just working on the whole Plastikman live show this whole year, as well as going through Arkives kind of just pushed me fully back into the whole Plastikman idea and sound.

“You asked at the beginning was the live show a kind of test bed or did that inspire things in the early days? I think it’s inspiring things much more now. Because the live show, the equipment, what I’m doing, what’s built inside the cage that you can’t really see is really like the new version of my studio from 1993: a new analogue/digital hybrid. And as I’m doing the shows, doing the rehearsals, it’s becoming kind of a test bed – not even a test bed of ideas – it’s becoming where things get created.

“It’s my plan next year between shows to take the live set-up and augment it with one or two other pieces and just flesh out the system, flesh out the live show, by creating new content for the show and I imagine that could become a new album or something like that. My focus is to create new material, but my focus is not to create new material for an album per se. I’m very much focused on where the live show and this difficult experience that we’re working on right now, where that could go in the future.”

“When I was writing Closer words and vocals and lyrics just started to happen. I remember the day it turned on and I remember the day it turned off.”

On Closer you starting featuring vocals with Plastikman for the first time. Do you see that continuing with any new tracks you generate?

“At the moment I don’t want to say either way. I don’t really have any plans. When I was writing Closer words and vocals and lyrics just started to happen. I remember the day it turned on and I remember the day it turned off. About a year and a half ago that clicked on again for a couple of days and clicked off. We’ll see: once I get into the studio that may happen, I can’t tell. This is why there’s gaps between these, as you say, intense periods of Plastikman activity. There’s a lot of time when I don’t feel so connected to the project and I have other things, aspirations and ideas that I am working on and when I do get sucked into it I go with it and I go with the feeling and the flow and where it takes me. Right now I’m definitely in there, but I could see some type of vocal start happening again.”

“The Plastikman project will always be connected to Detroit: the people, the city.”

You mentioned earlier that the genesis of Plastikman was very much a Detroit thing and connected to your experiences of being there. This is going to be the first Plastikman stuff that you’ve written since you moved to Berlin. In your mind are you still rooting the project in Detroit or are you going to try and come up with something that sounds like Berlin?

“Well, as soon as I’ve finished New Year’s Eve I’m actually going back to my studio in Windsor (Ontario) to start recording. You know I feel somehow the Plastikman project will always be connected to Detroit: the people, the city. I don’t know if that means I have to go back to record. But at the moment I feel I need to go back there to have a certain distance from everything that I’ve experienced the last couple of years in Berlin and around the world. To try and distill that into some kind of new project. It’s very much like when I was recording the Plastikman projects, they’ve all been recorded in Windsor, but they would always be about me in my studio in Windsor peering back into Detroit, into those experiences that I had there.

“Perhaps being back home in Windsor will reconnect me to Detroit or perhaps it will let me connect to all the different things that Berlin has offered me over the last couple of years – I’m not quite sure yet.”

One more question: what else have you got coming up in 2011?

“At the moment we have a Plastikman tour, a five-date tour, in March in Australia. That will kind of be the continuation or the end of what we’ve done this year. After that I plan on jumping back fully into the DJ thing, whatever that is, for a couple of months and announcing some new DJ technology ideas. I would like to try and get back into the DE9 project, which has kind of been on the shelf for a couple of years. There’s a conflict that I’ve been trying to work on and I think maybe I can [solve] it – we’ll see. If I can do that maybe next year is the time.

|Into September/October/November, the plan right now is to bring Plastikman back on tour with a slightly updated show. We’ve just been filming all the shows and there’s an idea of a Plastikman film. That’s the first time I’ve mentioned it and it won’t be a typical live concert film if we do it. So it should be a busy year.”

When you say it won’t be a typical live concert film, what will it be? Acting?

“No, I don’t think I’ll be acting. [laughs] But there might be actors.”

Justin Toland
Plastikman homepage