Kana Broadcast 052 Lars Hammerling

What this episode covers

http://okkana.com/Download/Kana_Cast/Kana_Broadcast_052_Lars_Hammerling.mp3Download me - right click "save target as" | Open Player in New Window The schisms of the Cold War brought about a fractured Berlin. It was a city of two divides that produced very different stories for those who were still relatively young and testing their imaginations. As an East-Berlin resident at the time of the wall being torn down, it created an opening in time where incredible possibilities were able to be realised through a period of intense social change. It’s no secret the cultural opportunities were an injection deep into the underground of electronic music. After a short period away in Hamburg where he established his first techno residency, he returned to Berlin where his incursion into production perpetuated a deeper sincerity to contributing something unique. His work with Dasha Rush that formed the LADA project continues to reinforce that vision. With releases across Dock Records, of which he is an label co-founder and Fullpanda Records, it has acted a strong foundation that has warranted bookings at not only both Tresor and Berghain, but across Europe. So with that, this mix is a little special. All of it was produced live in the studio. Lars Hammerling paints his own sonic adventure for the next 70 minutes of Kana Broadcast 052. – EC: Lars we know a little about your time growing up in Berlin with music. To take a different approach this time, I read something recently about how our younger years define what we do later with how we interact with others and our ambitions. What was life growing up in Berlin if we put music to one side? LH: Of course, the environment where you grow up defines your personality later. Despite from the city where you grew up, I think the most important part is your family and the education, and with education I don’t mean school education. If your parents try to find a reasonable way to bring them up as an independent person who thinks for themselves, then you already have a huge advantage. But to switch the focus back to Berlin. I was born in East-Berlin. I was 12 years old when the wall came down in 1989. The end of my adolescent age was characterized by the transformation process from east to west, if you saw society in those terms. Especially the years 1990-1995 in Berlin, there were years of anarchy. The economy was fucked up in Berlin. The public institutions had no structure to understand what was going on, and many places like former factories and public buildings were empty and out of order. It was the perfect conditions for subcultures to evolve. I remember my first visits to Kreuzberg, because the best record and fashion stores were located there. For me as a boy from East-Berlin, it was really exciting to explore West-Berlin with all the freaks (in a positive matter) and foreign people along with my twin brother. At those times there was also always the hazard that you got beaten by skinhead groups or get your jacket ripped off by some street gangs, whom pretend to be hip hop gangsters. And sometimes it was really funny to watch those people after the experience of a first techno party on ecstasy and how they changed afterwards. Furthermore, there was a certain aura during these years after the cold war. The military presence got less and less, because the allies left the city, the Red Army, the American Army etc. It created a feeling that the military got obsolete and it felt like all the remains of it (like empty army bases) are just traces of a really stupid, extraordinary expensive, useless thought process. Events like the -love parade- just amplified the feelings that from this point we are going to follow a new path for a peaceful world. Unfortunately, it did not remain for very long. EC: So it’s hard to separate the politics and movements sometimes. What personal beliefs of yours challenge the social reality of the world we live in? LH: Well this is a tough [...]