Jammin’ Master
If there’s anything remarkable about German producer Cem Oral, it’s that he’s a down-to-earth realist without a bone of pretention.
“I just came in from a cold, cold rainy outside, and am happy to be back in my musical submarine,” Oral recounts from his base of operations in Berlin. “Besides my mastering work, I’m focusing on movie sound design at the moment, which is real fun for me. Sometimes I think that my band, Air Liquide, is more a sound-designers’ project than an electronic band.”
The same goes for his special message to all the people reading this interview when it’s finally published: “Stop reading and start drinking hard alcohol, ‘cause times are getting tough,” he espouses, with tongue most definitely in cheek.
This is the man who almost single-handedly redefined German electronic music in the 1990s, and subsequently hit other scenes in America and Australia hard. So hard you’ll still hear his influence 15 years on.
Oral unleashed terrorizingly funky acid techno (he calls it “Kraut-teckkno”) through Germany’s legendary Force Inc., Pharma and DJ Ungle Fever labels, and via New York’s Smile Communications, under aliases like Jammin’ Unit and G104; he also collaborated with Caspar Pound, Ingmar ‘Walker’ Koch, Roger Kerosene, and brother Can Oral, as Ultrahigh, Electronic Dub, Zulutronic, Free Radicals, Cube 40, Madonna 303—and Air Liquide.
These days, the list of production monikers is much simpler.
“I don’t do that much music anymore,” Oral demurs. “So just Jammin’ Unit is fine. I also have a band called Mutfak (www.myspace.com/mutfak4). In Berlin, we have a nice crowd. Our rules are simple: No Recordings—here think commercial releases—and just live shows with no ballads and no pop. I got deadly bored when I tried to make pop music a few times. Maybe because I was a pop, rock and hip-hop producer when I started my career.”
Way back in 1995, the two brothers Oral—Cem and Can—got together under the alias of Cube 40 and released a black-label record called ‘Bad Computa’. It ended up that year in my record crate, and has never left over the 14 years since. Personally, I love Cem’s output and continue to be a huge fan; I’m also in awe of the man’s mastering touch.
So, while he’s reduced his output to focus on mastering and sound design with his innovative studio called Jammin Masters, Oral was the first person I asked to remix the recent Little Nobody track, ‘Robota’, which bears with it wind-up tech-breaks and some eccentric vocoder vocals by Toshiyuki Yasuda.
“I like the original version,” he says, “and have been a fan of robots since I saw my first science fiction movie on TV—‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’, in B&W.”
Jammin’ obviously also digs his own remix of the track, which is the latest from the remarkable Sydney label, Hypnotic Room – Special Edition.
“Open a bottle of beer, raise the volume to 10.5, and start the engines,” he recommends, with a hearty laugh.
His brand new remix of ‘Robota’ is a lifetime away from the grit/funk/electro of ‘Bad Computa’, but bears all the hallmarks of classic Jammin’ Unit tracks; it has a sensational breakdown and FX on the vocals by Yasuda, while that screamin’ synth/guitar sound is quite simply awesome, reminiscent of Cem’s other work as Ultrahigh.
Oral is equally respected for the ouput of his wonderful label, Pharma, which he ran with Roger Kerosene from 1995. The last of the wonderful Pharma releases was in 1999, but are there are no new plans to resurrect the label.
“Today I wouldn’t start a label again,” Oral admits. “There are so many, that it just doesn’t make sense to start another one. Besides that, we loved our colored vinyl, and it doesn’t pay back nowadays. It’s no fun to have a ‘digital only’ release—when one of our records came out, it was always like Christmas!”
Then he steers course into the positives, with a necessary disclaimer or two.
“The new generation of music lover mostly doesn’t care about vinyl, and listening behaviour has changed. Maybe soon there’ll be no labels in the former way, and the artist will be the artist, his own producer, mixer, mastering engineer, label, promoter, distributor, and buyer all on his own. Maybe music will remain just a non-commercial hobby in the future. Fact is that the days with time-consuming and expensive productions are over. This means a liberation for many artists, but also decreases the average quality. A band like Pink Floyd would have problems starting a career today, I guess.”
So is vinyl dead? Or just becoming more of a select option?
“Vinyl is an option as long as the cutting heads still exist, and people have fun with the Haptic aspect of records. However, some people think that god owns a vinyl pressing plant.”
© 2009 Andrez Bergen @ Zebra DMC
