Ida Engberg & Adam Beyer
Back to back with the first couple of techno
Meanwhile, their first daughter made an appearance. Then the second. Then the third. One look at Engberg's Instagram (beautiful sprogs in luxe hotel rooms and by the lake) suggests they're doing a pretty tight job of maintaining the work/life balance. However, bringing the two together hasn't always been easy, especially when she was expecting. "For me, coming to a gig was always connected with having a cigarette and a drink. Suddenly it was like – pfff – everything was very real and very clear," she says. "When you're pregnant you feel really odd being in a club. I was walking to the DJ booth in DC10 and a girl was like, "Oh my god! There's a pregnant woman on the dancefloor!" People are so amazed at the sight of a pregnant woman DJ.'" Is that it, then, we wonder? No more all nighters unless it's teething time? Beyer: "We have a rule where we don't do excessive partying without each other. Like all relationships it's about trust and honesty and openness."
It sounds naff, but their back-to-back sets are an extension of these. Beginning as a casual afterparty event a couple of years ago, they've become a main room draw. Engberg puts it down to their relationship: "There's a really good energy between us, a really strong bond on a personal level." Any arguments behind the decks so far? Engberg looks horrified: "No!" For Beyer, it's all positive. "Ida inspires me," he says. "Maybe more than I do her. She has an ability to find music that I tend to overlook, then I'll hear it played out and think it's the best thing I've ever heard. She'll be like, "Yeah, I played you that yesterday at home and you said it was shit."
At the ENTER afterparty, Beyer and Engberg relax into a much more loose-jointed set than at ENTER itself, Beyer's technical prowess and Engberg's spontaneous selections – their personalities, very different – meeting in the middle. That they're both in a really happy place is obvious. "Now's the time to really enjoy," declares Beyer, definitively. "Before, I've never been able to be happy with what I've had. Now I actually am." One thing: they do know they're going to get called techno's power couple, right? Beyer rolls his eyes before cracking a rare smile. "I'm not sure about power couple, but techno's couple, maybe."