Anja Schneider: Room at the top

Anja Schneider is a little stressed, and it's not just because of the white-knuckle taxi ride we're taking through rush-hour Barcelona. "Sometimes it's better if it's not your party, if you are just a DJ and you just turn up and play," she confesses, clutching the door strap tightly as our mobile phone-toting driver rockets us past a bus on its blind side. "Actually, all the time."

Ever since their first party on the rooftop of the Silken Diagonal Hotel, back during Sónar week of 2011, Barcelona has been a second home to the Berlin-based Anja and her label Mobilee. But this is perhaps their most ambitious homage to Catalonia yet.

It starts with a Saturday show at El Monasterio, the old monastery in the manicured grounds of the El Poble Espanyol complex, with the label hosting the fourth in the summer series of gigs that's already seen sell-outs from Flying Circus, David Squillace's This And That and Pampa Records. And unfortunately, we're running a bit late.

But Anja needn't have worried. Her partner in Mobilee Records, the charming, frequently barefoot Ralf Kollman, is setting the scene with a late afternoon set, and we enter the grounds to the strains of a cheeky Mobilee bootleg of Fleetwood Mac's 'Everywhere'. The crowd, laid back yet anticipatory in the still-bright early evening sunshine, lounges about on the manicured grass of the gentle hill that overlooks the dancefloor and DJ.

As Ralf finishes up and Venezualan duo Fur Coat take over with their brand of hypnotic groove, more of Barcelona's better-looking house and techno lovers start to stream in through the huge gates. The golden twilight is lending the Monastery, which resembles the kind of Mexican chapel that used to serve as the scene for the climax of innumerable Westerns, a slightly unreal, film-set feel - perhaps because this building is actually a 1929 reproduction of various medieval buildings from around Catalonia. The canopies of the eucalyptus trees overhead even seem to resemble marijuana buds, but that might be something to do with the smoke that's drifting over the area. As the sun goes down the genial, sturdy figure of Alan Fitzpatrick steps up with an incandescent, relevatory set: every tune a different vibe, but somehow flowing together, transforming a chilled day in the park into a fevered, dry ice filled rave. As he finishes off with a rapturously received Chemical Brothers remix, the chanting begins: An-ja! An-ja! An-ja!

And suddenly there she is, framed by dry ice and looming monitors as the lasers bounce off the trees, defiantly slowing the tempo as if to establish that this is her groove, her party: get on board or get out of the way. Somehow the soundsystem seems warmer, louder, crisper: within a few bars of her first track even the industry scenesters, promoters and DJs have emptied from the 'backstage' bar behind the DJ booth and are dancing away.

At first she is a minimalist behind the decks, smiling with concentration like a boxer in the early rounds of a fight, feeling out their opponent's defences. But by the third or fourth tune she is dancing along with the crowd, this veteran of a thousand gigs all over the world bouncing and beaming infectiously behind the decks to Athea's 'In The Beginning'. The set is sleek and classy but also joyous, wheeling through Reset Robot's 'Lost In A Duvet', her own 'Circle Culture', the Danny Daze remix of Terranova's 'Tell Me Why' and, just when it seems she has taken the vibe to its zenith, a knockout, one-two combination of Carl Craig's remix of Theo Parrish's 'Falling Up', and, with a smile to Fitzpatrick, the Jel Ford remix of his 'For An Endless Night'. If only, think the crowd.

The next afternoon we meet again on Mobilee home turf: the rooftop of the Hotel Silken Diagonal in downtown Barcelona that the label has made famous with their parties. While Mixmag was nursing a hangover this morning, Anja was up early and off to the beach and back. With her petite frame full of energy, golden-brown bob, easy smile and friendly yet inquisitive hazel eyes, she radiates far too much youth and vitality for someone who's been involved in Berlin's dance music scene since a few years after the wall came down.

Anja was born in the small, dull, conservative town of Bergisch Gladbach, 20km from the city of Cologne ("I used to hang out outside the ice cream parlour, that was the most exciting place"). In early adulthood she worked for a big advertising company in Dusseldorf, and had her life seemingly mapped out. "I was living in Cologne and I was almost married. I worked for a huge company. But I wasn't good at it, I couldn't be myself," she recalls. A few trips to the old Capitol changed her life completely. "Berlin was so free, there was so much space. The wall had just come down – there was anarchy. Where I came from the parties ended at 4am. If you wanted to go somewhere after 4am it was always a really dark scene that you didn't want to be in. When I came to Berlin it was people like you and me who were doing afterparties; I didn't have to go to a seedy discotheque or somewhere they were selling women!" She lasted half a year at the ad agency before throwing it over and moving to Berlin in 1993 to plunge into the world of techno.

Anja didn't want to be a DJ at first, she just wanted to be involved in the scene at a time when it was changing the culture of everything from music to marketing to art and design. Ironically, her professional background helped: "I knew how to write a letter – and how to send it". At a time and place where earning a wage wasn't a priority ("I didn't think about [earning a] living, we all helped each other") her conscientious attitude served her well. Her first job in the industry was as a radio consultant. Radio and club DJing followed, and in 2005, 10 years after moving to the city, she and Ralf formed Mobilee.

Initially pigeonholed by many as a 'minimal' label, Mobilee rode out that wave to become established as a much-loved home to acts as diverse as Pan Pot and Rodriguez Jr, and is enjoying another golden moment in its tenth year, with big tracks from the likes of Rodriguez and Miss Kittin, veteran Lee Van Dowski, Ross Evans and Anja herself, and a storming compilation from newcomer Re.You in January. If all the releases are characterised by a certain warmth and attention to

detail, Anja points out that there is a deliberate policy to avoid having a Mobilee 'sound'. "I don't like it when someone sends me a track and says, 'I made it especially for your label'. I don't want clones of Anja Schneider." The only real qualification, she says, is that a track has to make her dance.

Not that it's just about the music. "We try to get people working with us who share our personality, and we try to go a long way with it, to work on a long collaboration. If there is someone whose personality doesn't fit with us it makes no sense to have them on the label. Even if they make the best music ever." The label has evolved into a management company for their artists now, and she even finds the time to help nurture artists that end up on other labels: Citizenn and Maya Jane Coles being two who she says she takes immense satisfaction in having supported early and often.

Anja's not playing today on the hotel rooftop, she's here to soak up the vibe, support her artists and perhaps most importantly continue the label's love affair with the city: if it was Berlin that changed Anja, it's Barcelona that helped shape Mobilee: a chilled, mellow counterpoint to the sometimes stark hedonism of their home base. "I prefer it to Berlin," admits an unpatriotic Ralf as he relaxes on a sofa with a drink in hand and no shoes on again. "There's so much love that goes into the events and venues. It's not like some clubs in Berlin where they just open the door, take your money and say, 'There's the DJ'. "If I didn't have my friends and family in Berlin I would be living here," says Anja, shading her eyes from the sunshine to gaze West at the fantastical spires of the Sagrada Familia.

The rooftop events started in 2007 when, Anja explains, "We wanted to play during Sónar but nobody invited us!" Ralf found the hotel and was struck immediately by the rooftop's potential. The first parties were invite only, for friends and industry, and the gang wisely made an effort from the beginning to immortalise them in video and pictures: it was a three-minute YouTube clip of dOP's extraordinary performance in the swimming pool in 2010 that turned the event into Sónar's hottest ticket.

Now they do rooftop parties throughout the summer and even at other venues, but the Diagonal is the centerpiece and a home from home – all the Mobilee crew stay in the hotel, having breakfast with the guests who have come especially for the party. The party has evolved too – it's now possible to buy a ticket if you're quick off the mark, and Anja says she prefers the relaxed vibe of today over Sónar, with a crowd that is committed to seeing sundown together rather than having to reluctantly rush off to another event in the packed Sónar week. Indeed, if there was one way to describe the crowd today it's 'relaxed'. Dress is casual: a mixture of shorts and vests and the odd bikini at first, later outnumbered by skinny black trousers and neat, fitted tees. The music, supplied today by Leif Müller, Igor Vicente and Re.You fits the mood, familiar tunes at first like 'Bigger Than Prince' and perennial daytime party standby 'The Sound Of Violence'. But by 6.30 the music has settled into a chunky groove, a swinging remix of 'Short Dick Man' causing heads to bob while the thick knot of dancers by the pool start divesting themselves of their drinks to free up their range of movement.

By 9pm, Anja is bouncing at the front of the dancefloor, vodka and tonic swinging precariously as Leif plays his last tune, a Dead Centre remix of Jan Hammer's 'Crocket's Theme' from Miami Vice. The rooftop is jumping, the sun is setting over Barcelona and the Mobilee crew are together on the dancefloor, doing what they love, their passion undimmed after 10 years. Anja Schneider is relaxed.

Anja Schneider plays LWE NYD 2016 at Tobacco Dock on January 1