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Buried alive

By Khalil Hegarty
June 28 2002

'Unification changed a lot for me as a German citizen," says Thomas Schumacher. "It was suddenly realising that this was all one country again."

When Germany was unified in 1989, Bremen-based techno DJ and producer Schumacher was just 17 and witness to one of the most significant events in recent history. But it's only been in the past few years that he's noticed the residue from the change, the small differences between the "old east" and "old west" that are still noticeable.

"You can still see the differences in the eastern parts of Berlin," he says. "And you can still tell whether people come from the west or the east - unless they're very young. The way they talk and the way they see things, it's a different approach to life. It's hard to understand unless you have a full knowledge of how it was living in a communist country. Nothing was remotely close to how we know life as it is - it would be something you'd never forget."

According to Schumacher, a different mindset still exists in the two regions. "The easterners seem to have a warmth inside. They never had to elbow other people all the time or push them around or do things they didn't want to just for the sake of their career. That's always been prominent in the west. It's all about the money."

Schumacher may have had a degree of commercial success during his 12-year career as a DJ and producer, but monetary rewards haven't been a primary motivation. His biggest track, the minimal techno anthem When I Rock, was very much an underground phenomenon. Although his touring takes him around the world for months at a time, his independent style and attitude are a world away from the altitudes of dance-pop superstardom. He founded his label, Spielzeug Schallplatten, four years ago, and for him it's been a refuge of independence in an age of increasing commercialisation.

"It gives me complete control over my work," he says. "It makes sense and it all comes together when you produce, put it on your label, then go play it in a club."

The English techno scene is suffering from a severe case of isolation (Dave Clarke recently declared he didn't want commercial radio jock Judge Jules to play his records), but Schumacher is comfortable with the interdependence of the underground and commercial scenes.

"A lot of dance music has gone overground, but I think they're both still very connected to each other," he says. "I know many people who wouldn't produce such good underground music if they didn't hate popular music so much. Music that becomes very popular, even on an underground level, will sooner or later cross over into the overground. It's very natural. At the end of the day it's not about underground or overground, it's about whether something is good or not.

"I'm certainly not one of these people who hates commercial or popular music, or thinks I have to be the most underground DJ in the world. What's more important is the reasons why you do the things you do. That's when I might have a problem with commercial music - when I hear it and can tell that they produced just with the intention of making money. That's something I don't like."

In a world saturated with music devoid of artistic intentions - and in an age when an underground style can be emulated and repackaged as pop in a matter of weeks - Schumacher's comments are well-founded.

"What has happened is commercial music producers incorporate pieces of underground techno and house into their productions, especially trance," he says. "You hear it everywhere, even with artists like Madonna. Nowadays, Madonna's produced by William Orbit. There are so many elements that come from club tracks."

In stark contrast to the proliferation of techno around Europe and the world, Schumacher has seen the underground scene in his home town of Bremen slowly dissipate.

"We used to have a pretty strong techno and house scene here in the early 1990s, but that's disappeared, basically. Now, Bremen's more well-known for German hip-hop culture, reggae and other things, which I personally like, just because I see so many techno clubs that I don't mind not seeing them in my city. Apart from that, I just really love it here, I have to say. It's a really beautiful town. People who come here from all over the world get quite amazed at how beautiful it is. All my family and friends live here, so I don't see any reason why I should leave here."

Having always lived in the north German town, Bremen was where Schumacher got his first taste of DJing, albeit an indirect one. "When I was at school, we used to have these school-class parties," he says. "We were 14 or 15 and we were sort of DJs. But we just compiled tapes at home and recorded our favourite music in a particular order and just played it. No one wanted to dance to it, of course."

How things have changed.

Thomas Schumacher plays at Transatlantic 5 at QBH, South Melbourne, tomorrow night. His Selections compilation is out through Hardware.


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