Jazzmina exclusive interview and mix for Electronews.net

Posted by admin on Monday, October 11, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Jazzmina for electronews by Electronewsnet

Sabrina hello, thanks for your time and for the interview!

Tell us about you, introduce yourself to our readers and tell us a little bit of your life!

Hey everybody on electronews.net! I’m glad to get the chance to present my style of music to your community. Thanx for the interview request, too.
Let me give you some hard facts about my person at first: I’m a 26 year old girl (still not really adult) from Leipzig (Saxony), a city of 500.000 inhabitants in the East of Germany. I have spent my whole life in this place, except of two phases: I studied Media Technology (audio technology & broadcasting) in a smaller City in Saxony, and I had been living in Berlin for the last seven months. At the moment I am sitting between two chairs. I’m on my way to find a new home within Germany. Besides the music I really enjoy the photography. At the moment I produce a weekly radio show called “Sputnik chillzone” for a German based radio station under public law. For those who are interested: You can read more about my work on my official website.

I meet your productions thanks to my friend, Kevin, and I immediately liked the way you mix various genres. you can mix snippets of deep house with a bit of jazz and electronic sounds for create a style all your own, again, I really like. what was and what does’ become your style of playing?

Thanx for the compliment, and thanx to Kevin for recommending me

Concerning the music, I can not present the typical career and background of a DJ and producer. Although my parents do own a few records, these are neither classical music nor top-class jazz records. I got in touch with vocal house music at the age of 17. In the year 2001 most of the Leipzig based DJs did not play electro or minimal, but house music, with a lot of melody, singing, groove and feeling. This was the genre where I started my musical journey, including the influences by French electronic-jazz artist like St. Germain, Shazz, or Marc Moulin from Belgium. The Berlin-based Jazzanova collective has always had a strong influence on me, too. This sort of music was (and it still is) so fascinating for me, that I even descided to choose a pseudonym that includes the term of my favourite genre.

I started playing my first official DJ gigs in 2007. The following years had been really exciting. I learned a lot about choosing the right track selection for the different audiences and locations and how to weave a musical carpet during one night, that is not monochromatic and harsh, but colourful and made of different, comfortable material, that builds a harmonic overall concept for the people, walking on it barefoot.

Deep house has been in my mind since I left my vocal house period behind. Furthermore I prefer genres like broken beat, soul, R’n’B, downtempo, but also some rougher and dirtier house tunes form Detroit.
The thing that I always try to keep in mind while preparing a Dj set at home or in the club is not to bore or annoy the audience. Even if I played the finest deep house tunes for the whole two or three hours of my set, this might become a boring night for the people and for myself, too, although I am an enthusiast of this genre.
As soon as you start to feel the mood of the music, you will find out, that even songs of different (electronic) genres have some things in common, concerning the feeling and the “colour” of the music (sometimes also the structure of the rhythm). And this is the point that makes the DJ thing interesting for me. There’s a challenge to combine tracks of different genres within one session, to make the set varied and exciting on the one hand, but still floating and harmonic on the other hand. And thereby you can give the audience an impression of how colourful electronic music can be, in fact.

The MIX you prepared for us is ‘amazing! I listened it last night while I worked and it rocked! stayed with me in the background in a perfect way ,you really like “soft” sounds ?

I appreciate again
Maybe “soft” is a good adjective. I am glad that you didn’t use the word “chillout”. Since “jazzmina” was born, I have always been fighting against this prejudice: “jazzmina plays chillout.” I have never played electro house, techno nor minimal – but also no typical chillout. And most of my DJ gigs happen in bars or lounges. Maybe this is the reason why a lot of people have come to this opinion. But my definition of “chillout” is different to the style that I play. The words, that I associate with the vocable “soft” (if we want to go on using this term) are: Soulful, warm, expressive, emotional (but not superficial or kitschy), honest and with an interesting and ambitous musical body. This kind of music can reflect my feelings – often music has a medicative function for me, too. Maybe it sounds a bit naïve, but in my opinion, you can look deep into the soul of a person, by listening to his or her music collection.
Let’s say in summary: jazzmina likes “soft” sounds with character, amongst others

I understand that you like different genres of music , but above all, the vocal tracks, are really wonderful! how much music you play for find that beautiful pearls?

As I already mentioned, I have been occupying myself with electronic music for about 10 years now. During this period of time I have expanded my music collection bit by bit. Acutally I am not explicitly searching for those tracks you call “beautiful pearls” (very valuing denotation, nice!). I have found most of these tracks by accident. My favourite resources to dig for musical treasures from time to time are: Friends who are also totally into this (or related) kind of electronic music, and the exchange with other people I do not know yet. A very fertile ground where such interpersonal and amicable communication can happen is our online forum HYPERLINK “http://www.deephouseaddicts.de” www.deephouseaddicts.de, for example. Here you can find a lot of inspiring music commendations by other music lovers, also genre-crossing, within a certain extend. A lot of our members do know each other in person, too. That’s a movent I assist.
The point is: I could tell you a story to each of these tracks, If you asked me, how or where I found them. People that enclose me, that are in my environment (also virtual) have a strong influence on my musical progress.
One example is my boyfriend. Once he showed me a very short sound clip of poor sound quality of one track he has been searching for more than one year. I had never heard this song before, but I liked the clip, too. While we were searching for the artist again in the internet, he suddenly noticed that there was a mistake in the spelling of the artist name. Knowing the correct artist name now, we even found the complete album and bought it for one Euro (it was even sold in our city!). Two days later he could listen to his beloved song for the first time, in crystal clear CD quality sound And now you can hear precisely this song in my set, it starts at minute 7.

In addition of mixing , you produce too? what kind of genre enter your productions?

I did my first track in cooperation with a very good friend of mine from Frankfurt. He is running the Blackfish Productions label there. Last autumn we did the loppjazz song “do not care”. My productions with Max enter the genre of deephouse, in principle. But at the moment I have to put the producing thing on the back burner, unfortunately, because of personal issues. But I’ll definitely go on creating music in the future. What the jazzmina solo productions will sound like is difficult to say at the moment. I’d like to embed a lot of field recording and “vocals”, because I prefer the “dirty” character the recordings bring to a track, they make every song unique. You can also put rhythmic sounds from your environment as a snare, hihat etc. into a track. The creative possibilities are almost unlimited

you’re comfortable with digital mix or you still prefer the good old vinyl?

I use both mediums. But since I have the possibilty to let two digital tracks flow together just in the same (analogue) manner as I mix two records, I have changed my buying behavoir concerning vinyl. I decided to buy a vinyl only if most of the tracks on the record are really worth paying 7 to 10 euros (and more) for them. In my opinion, thinking in an econonic way should not be forbidden to a DJ. Some labels offer one-sided pressings, one single track on a vinyl that is not even packed safely and artful in a commercially available record sleve made out of stable cardboard, thus also not decorated with a stylish artwork at the front. Instead they just put the vinyl into a thin plastic pocket and sell this for 8 Euros…. sorry, that’s not my sort of consumtion. I still do buy records, but just the ones that are worth the money – for both, music and cover.

Aside from that I am extremely tired of the never-ending anologue vs. digital discussion. For me the most important thing is THE MUSIC. Including the fact, the sound quality should always be excellent, if you play tracks at home or in a club, there’s no doubt about it. If you play low quality files, you destroy the music. But if the quality of a digital track is comparable to the quality of a vinyl track (I mean for the ears of the avarage audience that likes to enjoy good music at a club – not a professionel sound engineer) it’s just a matter of taste which medium you prefer. No more, no less. There are so many different components in a sound system (needles, turntabels, mixer, amps, PA, even room acoustics) that affect or distrot the original sound of a track played back either from a PC or a vinyl. I think more DJs should rather take care for their track selection than racking their brains about the sort of medium, they, and – which is the worst thing on this discussion – OTHERS, should use. Frederick the Great once advised: “Every man must go to heaven in his own way”. And every women, too

I’m devoting much space to germany in my website and its new musical productions, what do you think has changed in your country, and if anything changed, talking about music, in recent years?

To be honest, I am not very much interested in the musical changes of the country and I do not observe the development very closely. But this is not meant in a conceited way at all. I listen and have always been listening to the music that I like. In my opinion there are always music people who play special genres, styles and songs in their sets. DJs who have a weakness for extraordinary and simply good music. It is difficult for me to speak repesentatively for the whole music scene, because I always act in my special section and in the “microcosm” of my genre. What I have detected within this field of electronic music: I think the amount of disco music and disco/ soul classics within the deephouse sector has risen, which I really like and support. Some DJs rather put the original track onto the turntable than playing a modern remake of the track. I think this decision brings a lot of honesty, originality and the focus on the essentials back to the clubs. I really enjoy that.

After a dark period minimal music is coming back to old beginnings, and is churning out new sounds that are the proper evolution of the initial concept of minimal music. Germany ais the ‘pioneer in this genre, you’re noticing a U-turn? a return to the music raw and minimal?

I do not care for the development of this kind of music because I don’t want to familiarize with it. All I can say to answer this question is that the record cases of many mainstream DJs are still contaminated with annoying electro and minimal music (sorry, but…), at least within my zone of attraction. The Minus label (Richie Hawtin, Magda…) is still popular. The 46-year old Sven Väth successfully runs the Coocoon Label and his own huge discotheque in Frankfurt. Even the trance DJ Paul Van Dyk is still doing a “world tour” in 2010. Also see the hype about Paul Kalkbrenner, after people saw him acting as a fictional character within a movie. In my opinion, minimal has always been there. And I aks myself: How shall it be possible, to do a “new” sort of minimal? Because the nature of minimal is, that it’s musical structure is literally minimal. Thus it might be really difficult to create a new sort of minimal, with these very few means of musical design. Mnml – you know? I am anxious…

Still fixed with a particular track at this time?

club: Floating Points – Truly
soft: Cinematic Orchestra – familiar ground (feat. Fontella Bass)
in between: Jazztronik – Samurai (album version)

The mix that you have packaged for us is very long! I noticed that you like to be complete in what you create and explore all the genres you love while you play, anthis is a thing that I liked very much, and I appreciate all this till the end. I guess?

Yes, indeed – (see the length of my interview, maybe this is because I am a woman ). Wow, it’s a bit scary that you’ve found out this fact about me
I always try to take the audience/listener to a journey through the genres of electronic music that I prefer. And I always try to make things different, to do it in my own, special manner. There are lots of things in the world that are copied, a lot of DJs play an equal and replaceable style of music – why shall I be the next in the row, who does the same again? There’s no need.
My principle concern is: Trying to infect as many people as possible with this virus that makes you feel the music, everyone for themselves. Music is always a matter of taste, that’s what I used to say. For me, music is one of the greatest gifts we have. I am atheist and no spiritual person at all. But if you take a few minutes, sit down in your living room, put the cinematic orchestra track (see above) into your cd player and then just close your eyes and enjoy the feeling, every single instrument, the voice…I always get goosebumps when I listen to this song. Music always brings me back to life, when I feel like leaving it. That’s the secret.