14. Asmus Tietchens Biotop
I bought it in a record shop in Hamburg in 2010 or 2011 and I remember listening to it and thinking, ‘This is crazy. Is it from 1982?’ It’s so ahead of its time, and it still sounds so fresh and modern and not in any way dated. It still sounds like the vision of the future. When I record a mix at home, I would always go back to it and see if there’s something wrong there that I can use, because it’s very versatile. It’s got so many ideas and feelings and you could put it in so many different mixes, and all the ideas are not totally thought through, which is a good quality. It’s kind of open, you can kind of finish the idea. When you put it in the mix, you can play the track and then with the next track you can keep the idea evolving that he starts in this track. As a DJ I tend to go for records that are not entirely finished. I can put it together and develop ideas over the set. And if something is very thought through and perfect from start to finish, and it’s got all the different melodies, the counter melodies, and the bridge and the chorus and the this and that, it’s cool. But it’s more interesting me to find tracks that have little ideas that are not entirely ready. And then you can finish them, or plan something else, or have the melodies talk to each other and build the idea in the set. I might be talking absolute codswallop, whatever, but I feel like that sometimes. I just love the cutest English words I find!
