“It was a whole different approach for me. To have time – it took me seven months to come up with and you see the results.” Whereas Touch was a collection of singles this album was conceived as a unified piece. “It was such an amazing experience to really focus on studio work. I didn’t play as many DJ gigs as I usually do. I stayed away from the office as much as possible and yeah, it made the dream come true.”
Juggling his record label, Kompakt, and production has always been a challenge. “It’s got to be the story of my lifetime that I always try to get more room to do studio work, and it never worked. If we got someone else at the office, the work has just gotten that much more again. So I couldn’t stay away but this time it worked.”
Mayer was born in the Black Forest in 1971 but he moved to Cologne in his early twenties. He had already been DJing and involved with music but the relocation stimulated a change to a straight house and techno sound. Alongside Tobias Thomas, he played as Friends Xperiment and started to build a great DJ reputation around the town.
He started to frequent the record store Delirium, part owned by Wolfgang Voigt and Jürgen Paape who would later become his partners in Kompakt, and very quickly earned himself a music buyers position and then a partnership as an owner. The next few years saw him hone his DJ skills and start producing. He was getting more shows around Cologne and even venturing out to other cities.
In 1998, Kompakt records was born. It was inspired by Andy Warhol’s Factory, with the aim of creating complete creative freedom in the music business. Today Kompakt includes the label, a record store, recording studios and booking agency as well as being a distributor. Whilst other German labels from the same era have faded away Kompakt has gone from strength to strength – partly due to the diversity of music on the label and their business diversification. Mayer appreciates the support of his label colleagues whilst he was working on Mantasy.
“It was a hard time for them but you know, they’re musicians. They’re artists, a lot of them and they understand that kind of pursuit. I was able to prepare a lot of things before I left. Release wise we were all lined up for the first half year so things were already organised.”
So how did Mayer approach the writing of his new album? “It was about inspiration but the way I was approaching it was in the first few weeks was that I just did a new track every day. I didn’t bother about the arrangement. I just left the details. It was about getting the ideas out and have this long list of notes I made over the last few years. I just wanted to try everything first. It was really almost child-like thing, like, ‘Wow! I wanna play with everything, you know’.”
Mayer’s exuberance for the process reminds me of when he spoke about the joy of his daughter turning one this month. “In the first two months it was about getting a track every day. It’s very enjoyable. It was great! Then came the moment where I had to decide what I like and then there was all the hard work, the less enjoyable part. Cleaning up the mess and doing arrangements.”
That process of editing is an essential part of the musical process though. “Yeah, I guess so. It’s a bit like sculpture. You got this piece of rock, and then there’s an idea. Like, it’s going to be a monkey but it’s real craftsmanship to really make it look like a monkey.”
Mayer’s creativity strikes him late at night. “I usually work the very long shift. It’s always the same with me, at 11 o’clock at night the greatest creative juices begin to flow. Before that, I’m useless! I can wash the coffee cups, clean up but with music, nothing really comes out before 11 o’clock. At 11 o’clock I’m sure of this, some thing’s gonna happen!
“You know, I have a classical education and I have almost lost everything. I was close to perfect pitch at some point. Then came DJing and pitching records. Everything was out of tune from then on!” he laughs. “That was the sexy thing though – that was my punk rock moment. That was what was so exciting about it! Bye bye Johann Sebastian Bach well tempo-ed piano! Nowadays it makes me sad that I forgot all these things but I’m still able to play my clarinet and saxophone a little bit. I lost all my piano skills – that’s what’s bothering me most.”
Things don’t stop here for Mayer: “I’m getting remixes lined up for the album. What else? I’m working on remixes for other people as well. I’m really excited about this French artist Benjamin Biolay. He’s an amazing songwriter, singer, producer, and he did a track with Vanessa Paradis. I get to remix that track but I can’t stop listening to Vanessa all the time!” Mayer is looking forward to returning to Melbourne. “It’s actually in Melbourne that I had amazing times. I remember Honkytonks and good people.”
