Interview: Anselm Reuter

"Heizkraftwerk", Anselm Reuter's first album, is out on Friday 4 October on three LPs, five years after GLB001. I have worked with him for two and a half years, and we have had few conversations longer than a phone call about a train. I went to his rehearsal room with a recorder on one of the last hot afternoons of the summer. The bass was against the wall.

The building

LV: The record is named after the power station on Köpenicker Straße. Why that one?

AR: I walked past it for years. When I came to Berlin in 2005 it was the first thing I knew by name, because I was going to the wrong place. Then Tresor moved in, in 2007, and everyone thought of it as the club. But that is one end of it. It is an enormous building that was made to heat half of the city, and it has this feeling of something that is still warm after the fire is out. I wanted to make a record that was warm in that way. Warm like a wall.

LV: The first record has the same street in it.

AR: "Köpenicker Dub". Yes.

The cold

LV: Tell me about the two winters.

AR: The first winter I tried to record in the flat, and the neighbours complained, and they were right. So I moved here. This room has no heating. The first day, in January last year, I think it was seven degrees in here. A double bass does not like that. The wood moves, the strings go flat. Over a two-hour take you can hear the pitch going down.

LV: So you stopped?

AR: No. I have been trying for fifteen years to make the bass stop behaving, with the tape delay. Here the room was doing it for me. "Kühlturm" is about twenty cents flat by the end and I did not correct it. Tom asked me if I wanted him to correct it.

LV: What did you say?

AR: I did not answer the email.

LV: And the second winter?

AR: The second winter I knew what I was doing, and that was worse. I threw away most of it. In March this year I went back to the first takes for three of the tracks. So it is really one winter, and another winter to find out that the first one was all right.

The contact mic

LV: People ask you about this constantly.

AR: It is a piezo disc, about two euros, held on with gaffer tape just below the bridge. I have had the same one since 2011. It goes into a Space Echo with a bad motor, then a second delay, then to tape. The problem with a contact mic is that it sounds horrible, like a telephone, only the wood and no air. So you take away everything else and find what is under the horrible part. Most of the record is me doing that with my left hand.

LV: "Köpenicker Dub (2024)". Why go back?

AR: It is the same bass and the same mic, five years later, and I am worse at the fast parts, so there are no fast parts. I wanted to know if it was still a good idea. I am still not sure.

Length

LV: You have turned down every festival slot under two hours since I started. I have the emails.

AR: I can't do anything in an hour. In the first hour I am finding out the room. What the low end is doing, whether there are people at the back, whether it is a room where you can go quiet. If they give me sixty minutes then I have sixty minutes of finding out, and then I say thank you.

LV: When Mark came up with The Long Count, three hours minimum, was that for you?

AR: He says not. He booked me for six at the first one.

LV: You gave him a CD-R in the summer of 2018. Do you remember why?

AR: I had made six copies. He was standing there at five in the morning explaining something to someone about distribution, and I thought he might know what to do with it. Then for a year he sent me emails, long ones, about how good it was. I did not reply. Then one day he sent one line with a quote for pressing 300 copies and how much he would lose. That one I replied to.

"Warm like a wall. That is all I wanted." Anselm Reuter

LV: Three LPs is a lot of vinyl for nine tracks.

AR: It is the bass. If you put it on two LPs the cut has to be quieter, and it is not a quiet record. The last side has one track, "Abschaltung", and then it runs out. I would like people to have to get up.

LV: The tour starts on the 5th, at fabric, and then Kater Blau the week after. And you will have read about Watergate.

AR: Yes.

LV: They announced this month that the lease will not be renewed, and they close at the end of the year. I am trying to get you on the Waterfloor before then. Do you want to say anything about it?

AR: You are trying to get me on?

LV: Yes.

AR: OK. Tell me when.