Morphosis and Pole guest at CDR

Give me a basic summary of what happens at a CDR event. We always do workshops in the beginning of the night: experienced artists talk about their production techniques or how they started making music, what they did right, what they did wrong. It's always a bit on a technical level but also on a personal level. Everyone in the audience can ask about production techniques, and then the rest of the night play we play the tunes that have been submitted by people. We encourage people to bring music they are working on, it doesn't have to be anything finished, just works in progress or music that they want to try out in a club and get some feedback. We also encourage the artists that lead the workshops to play a set here that we then project onto the wall. For example Henrik Schwarz did a live set, and everything he did was projected onto the wall so that people could see what he is actually doing on his laptop. We also ask the artists only to play music that they've done or that they are working on at the moment, so the whole thing also transforms in to a club night. It's not supposed to be only geeks sitting around listening to their own music—we want to keep it very freestyle and just listen to music that has never been played anywhere before, but also have a bit of a party vibe going. And it's free? Entry is free, yeah. Basically we rely on our sponsors who support the night. Otherwise we couldn't do it. We just get some support from a few people and they basically cover the costs because we also film the workshops so people can watch it online as well if they don't have the chance to come. Basically I run it together with Benny, John B, and we do it in our free time. He runs an agency, I'm a doctor during the day and so we basically just take from our free time to do it and we don’t make any money with it. All money that we get goes back in to the nights. What makes it worthwhile for you? Well I think it's interesting. I'm always curious about progress, whether it's in technology or in science or in fashion or music, I think it's always interesting to hear where things are heading. I think as Tony, the guy who's been doing this in London for ten years at Plastic People, he always said that he doesn't believe in the idea of the professional versus the amateur. Because I think there are so many different ways to learn from each other in a lot of different fields, but somehow it doesn't really work in music. Music is a very isolating thing: you're sitting in your bedroom studio and you don't really have anybody to tell you what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong. There are all those online communities like SoundCloud where people give you feedback, but we thought it’s nicer to personally interact with people and get feedback on a more personal level, where you can see that people are actually dancing to it. We've seen so many smiling faces during the night, that's basically what keeps us going. Or when people say "oh wow, that was so inspiring, what Theo Parrish said about making music. I just want to go home straight away and start working." That's what really keeps us going. I don't wanna say that we inspire people, I think that would be a bit much, but sometimes it takes a little to connect people and that's what the joy is for us, to just get some people together and exchange ideas. And then for example people who have come to the night have done remixes for each other... to see new music coming out of the night is super cool. Do you think there's an especially difficult barrier to entry in Berlin, or perhaps in electronic music in general? Yeah I think so. In the age of social media—which I also embrace, I don't wanna talk bad about it—sometimes you have the impression that the people who shout the loudest or post the most or just send out the most newsletters or whatever, they are the most successful. It’s not always about the quality of music anymore, because most of the musicians just sit in the studio and they don't really want to shout at everyone "listen to my music." That’s why I always think that there has to be a forum for those people, so that they have a chance to play their tunes for other people without having to send out 10,000 emails in order to be heard. And so that’s what we did the night for. It's basically SoundCloud offline, if you wanna put it that way. To go back to your question: I have the feeling that sometimes you have to be out in the club a lot and in the nightlife you have to know a lot of people, but it's not really coming down to your talent in the end. It's about the people you know, if you're in the right place, if you are fashionable or controversial enough or whatever, but it doesn't really come down to if your music is really good, or if you have talent for DJing or producing. And that’s why we kind of try a different angle. So would you say you want to help create an environment that's more merit-based? Well, I don't know. We don't really have quality control. I mean of course, in the end it's about quality of music, but it's not that we judge the music to be good or bad. We try and leave it open to the people who come to the night and we don't really rate the music or anything. We don't have a Twitter account or something where people can leave comments. We don't really give a prize to the best tune of the night or something. It's not a competition. It's just where people get feedback, I mean you always hear your own tunes through different ears when you hear it in a club. It's just about getting reactions that might help you improve your own music. That's basically what it is about.