Markus Suckut is a producer and DJ that cannot be pigeon-holed. His personal history with music begins back in 1999 when the then young Markus first discovered electronic music and began experimenting with various musical directions, spurred on by the excitement of DJing and the exploration of new sounds. It did not take long for him to find his niche in techno, and in particular with the dub side of the genre.
Just as his productions are, his sets reach wide in the spectrum of techno, characterized by an allure of dreaminess and a penchant for melancholy and thought-provoking sounds.
On March 7th Markus is slated to release Resist, a nine-track album coming out on his own EXILE imprint, which he runs with Johannes Heil. Heil talked about the album, which follows releases on Rekids, SCKT, Figure and new alias Tales Of The Machines:
It is a big temptation – whilst striving to place oneself on the map – to favor and repeat established structures and norms in order to gain fortune, fame and power. To cripple a work of art under pressure of commercial success and to trade the uniqueness of a creative spark for an egoistic idea means using a calculating mind to overrule art and emotions. But this pulse of an artist is not his mind but his heart with which he exposes his energy and vibration through frequencies. For this reason there is only one way which retains the creation in its innocent spontaneous form in order to stay true to its inspirational core. The Path Of Resistance!
On top of exclusively premiering “Ninth Movement” off the album, our personal favorite of the entire fantastic release, we had the chance to chat a little bit with Markus ahead of the album dropping next week
Hello Markus, how are you doing?
Hello, I’m fine!
Your second album, Resist is dropping early next month. Congratulations! What does the title refer to?
Thank you, yes that’s right! Well the title is a critic to the commercialization and to everyone who just copies existing stuff to reach success.
You have classified your sound as techno and dub in the past, with dub usually referring to a specific sub-genre of techno. What sound would you say Resist fits under?
Well I don’t like to think in those categories – but if you want a name for it, call it techno please!
Where did you record the album and how long did you work on it?
I’ve recorded everything in my own studio at home in the basement – i like this way of working, you can do music when ever you want and be spontaneous. If you get an idea in mind you just go downstairs and start jamming! To produce the album it took me two weeks – but i did way more stuff in those two weeks.
There’s melancholy, deep emotion and a sense of story in each one of your production. What is the inspiration behind “Resist”? What story are you telling here?
To be honest there is no inspiration, I just started to jam around and did around two – three tracks each day. In the end I did a selection which tracks fit best together. Techno was all this open minded stuff back in the 90’s, you went to techno parties to let loose, to be yourself, to forget the daily shit, to forget fucking politics, you never cared how other people dressed – I miss this rebellious way of thinking a lot nowadays. I would say the story would be about a guy who doesn’t give a fuck about common trends, sound aesthetics and just recorded music down in the basement.
You’ve been involved with electronic music since 1999, how did you discover it and was it techno right away?
I was around twelve back then, so I was not able to go to clubs, also there was no internet for me back then. Discogs, Mixesdb or any other shops didn’t exist. So first I discovers electronic music trough the radio and it was not the techno that I do listen to now. There was a show every Saturday on BFBS which featured DJ sets. At that time I didn’t knew what a DJ is doing or that they even existed – so I always wondered what those long tracks have been that they played – it turned out that it where complete DJ sets (smiles)
So that was kind of the biggest impact for me and the point when I started to explore and discover all the things.
Technology has evolved a lot since. Can you tell us a little about how differently you produce music now compared to back then?
I started to produce on a mac only back in the days – but I use a lot of hardware nowadays! I would say most of the time it’s 50/50.
Sometimes I get the feeling that whenever someone hears of a techno artist in Germany, they expect him to be from or at least live in Berlin, but you do not. Where is home for you?
To be honest, it’s horrible – everyone thinks that I am from Berlin, because I do techno and I am from Germany. There’s more than this city guys!
I live more on the countryside, near Duesseldorf.
Did you ever consider moving to Berlin? What happened?
No, never – I love to come back after a weekend, to have the chance to relax and to be able to disconnect – for me this wouldn’t work in Berlin. I mean, I love Berlin and everytime I play there I try to stay a few days to meet friends and do record shopping – but I can’t imagine living there.
What’s the ultimate goal for you as a DJ? Is there a club or festival you dream to play one day?
I don’t have any goals for DJing, I just want to have a good time on all the gigs with the people on the dance floor. Festival-wise I would definitely love to play Dekmantel one day!
We are still early in 2017, and with an album coming out this should be a great year for you. What other projects are you working on for the year?
Well I really don’t do plans, if something happens it happens, but I have some ideas in mind for SCKT, also there will be an EP on Andre Kronert’s label called ODD/EVEN and a few single tracks on a new label from Scuba. Beside all this I work also on more stuff for Rekids of course.
Have you ever played in the States? Do you have any plans to in the coming years?
No, never – I mean there are a few interesting spots to play – but you need to get a business visa for USA which is way too expensive, it doesn’t make sense to me at the moment!
By the way thank you for allowing us to premiere “Ninth Movement”. What hardware and software did you use to produce it?
You’re welcome! I don’t think that it makes sense to talk about those things – we all cook with water and everyone has to find it’s own way doing stuff.
Connect with EXILE: Facebook | Resident Advisor | Discogs
Connect with Markus Suckut: Online | Facebook | Twitter | Discogs | SoundCloud
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