Tube & Berger have been around for over a decade and have released on the creme de la creme of tech house labels with their legendary 2013 hit ‘Imprint of Pleasure’ hitting No.1 on Beatport and remained in the Top 100 for over a year. We catch up with the Kitball label owners following the release of their new album We Are All Stars and try to delve deeper in to their characters.
Tube & Berger (Arndt and Marko), Thanks for taking the time to speak with us. First of all, tell us why you chose the name Tube & Berger and how would you define your sound?
Tube & Berger: Ha, not really! Just nick names from school and I guess it sounded cool when we became a DJ duo. We have always defined our sound as Hippy House & Esoteric Techno! Kind of meaningless but it sort of encapsulates what we are trying to do.
Who would you say are your biggest influences in music are and why? Is there anyone you’re still following to this day?
Tube & Berger: From Rock: Pink Floyd, The Who, Johnny Cash, Rage Against The Machine, Faith No More, The Misfits, Nirvana.
From Electronic: Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers. We always loved & respected the older German originators like Westbam.
Obviously the focus right now is on your new album, ‘We Are All Stars’. Is there a specific meaning behind the album?
Tube & Berger: The idea for the title ‘We Are All Stars’ comes from everyone being a star in their own right and also that everything in the Universe is made up of the same matter. So we are literally, all stars!
Your current single ‘Dust Feel’ features Richard Judge, and you collaborate with him on several tracks on the album. Guessing you must love his vocals?
Tube & Berger: Richard has became a great friend and collaborator since we worked with him on ‘Disarray’. He features on 3 tracks on the album. We found that his great storytelling lyrics and vocal really fitted our tracks especially on the ‘wide screen’ melancholy ones.
Your previous album single ‘International Corporate Motherfuckers’ is definitely a politically charged banger. You wrote recently it’s aimed squarely at those people and those businesses that are messing it up for the rest of us who just want to live free and dance in peace and harmony. What particular event / moment led you to record this song? And, who are the motherfuckers?
Tube & Berger: We have tried to incorporate the rebellion from our Punk Rock past with club grooves and our video has a very ‘fuck you’ attitude towards how modern society is being run……… you know who they are – watch the video! Our lawyers say we cannot explicitly ‘name & shame’! 🙂
Talk us through the production process on the album. Do you both like to work on one idea or work on something separately then combine?
Tube & Berger: We always wanted to try to fuse the two sides of our backgrounds (Punk Rock and dance music) and become a live electronic band. All the collaborations have been different. Kyle was a singer we knew from a remix we did of his track with Junge Junge. He became a friend and we realised we could make music together. White Lies’ manager is a friend of our manager and we did a remix for them two years ago. It seemed natural to ask them for a collaboration on our album.
RBBTS are a new Indie-tronica duo out of Berlin, they have just come out of indie bands through wanting to make electronica so this fitted us really well. Kingdom are Australians like Kyle who have an amazing ethereal vocal style, and Richard Judge is already well-known and someone we always like to work with. He’s pretty much part of the family!
Do you prefer playing live to djing?
Tube & Berger: We would like to evolve into a live electronic band but we love DJing and club culture too! There will always be the balance in Tube & Berger between the two sides.
What kind of stuff have you been playing in your DJ sets recently? Are there any artists or labels you want to mention that you really look out for?
Tube & Berger: Regarding the labels we are really liking the output of Anjunadeep, DIYnamic and Green for the more melodic side and we we like artists like Patrice Baumel and Yotto.
For Tech House we like labels such as Snatch! and Suara and artists such as Detlef and Latmun.
What’s happening with your label Kittball Records and what releases have you coming up?
Excited with a bunch of new signings like Jupiter Moon and of course our lovely label partners like Juliet Sikora and PACO
Tell us the track you’re most proud of and why?
Tube & Berger: It is “Free Tribe” which was a part of the second It Began In Africa compilation and our first number one on Beatport. That was back in 2012. Crazy how time flies.
Finally, let’s move away from business talk. Tell us one really crazy or funny thing that’s happened to you whilst you’ve been on tour and how you dealt with it.
We played this huge festival in Kiev / Ukraine shortly before the civil war started over there. We had a great chat to the promoters about the political situation in the country and got pretty drunk. In the morning police forces arrived and shut down the festival and Berger couldn’t accept that and climbed on the roof of the stage and shouted: Revolution! Unfortunately the roof was just a plastic tent and he fell through it. Luckily a few security guards caught him.
This revolutionary act didn’t help. A few minutes later the stage was closed.
You can download/stream Tube & Bergers ‘We Are All Stars’ here
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