Impact: Mechatok

Can you explain why the last year has been special?

I finished high school, left my family and my very distressing hometown Munich and moved to Berlin, which totally changed my life, obviously. I guess this is a phase that almost everyone goes through, but it might hit every individual differently. It made me redefine myself to something that's probably more true than what I was before. Also, since I got to travel, a lot the input I got was, like, 50 times higher than all the years before. That somehow is always going to affect my output I think.

What's so bad about Munich?

I just never managed to make that place work for me. I think a certain kind of ignorance and insensitiveness dominates the vibe there, which makes life a bit hard. The segregation between immigrants and Germans feels way more intense than in Berlin. I guess it has its cute sides somehow, especially if you're really well off financially. But to me it also felt like – culturally and musically – only established and easily-digestible things get an audience there.

That's why I have a lot of respect for Alberto [aka visual artist, DJ and promoter Kyselina], who is the only one there who always keeps trying to put on amazing line-ups, even though that whole city works against him, pretty much. I also can't deny that I met some of my most important friends there, like mobilegirl and Niclas. Some of their new songs are in my mix.

When you say you had "input" from travelling more, does that mean inspiration from other artists or from seeing new places?

Both. There was way more exchange with friends who make music or some kind of art. But also just being in many cities on my own that I haven't been to, that flipped my view on things and created a need to process this new information somehow.

The EP might surprise people because there aren't many drums. Can you explain your approach?

I guess I’m less of a producer and more of a songwriter on this EP. With most of the songs on [the record] I just felt like they didn't really need a lot of drums to work, maybe because the melodic elements already had a strong percussive quality to them. If I felt like there was a need for some kind of percussion, I’d keep [the percussion] quite minimal so they wouldn't distract from the song's essence.

Your 2015 EP for Public Possession is more metallic and industrial. How did you end up making what could be called an ambient record just a year down the line?

I made that EP when I lived in Munich. That probably made me want to write songs that feel a bit more directly confrontational and compensate for missing excitement [in other cities] somehow.

During the last year in Berlin I was traveling a lot and was just potentially always distracted, so I felt like focusing and creating something that’s way more in touch with myself and my emotions, just more me basically. In an environment where everything has a triple meaning and art is being done out of very twisted and sometimes even worrying motivations, it felt necessary to create something honest and true, which for me found its form in these sounds.

The sphere of club music that you inhabit can often be really noisy and distorted, but 'See Thru' is the opposite. Did you set out to make something that exists out on its own?

I definitely didn’t have any plan like that. It just ended up sounding this way as a result of how I felt and a certain honesty towards myself. To me making music is almost purely emotional, so there is naturally not much space left for any strategic thoughts or comparisons to other music while making it.

It's coming out on Staycore. How did you link with the crew and what influence have its members had on you?

Ghazal and Cristian got in touch with mobilegirl on SoundCloud and made her part of Staycore, so via her I started talking to them and we decided to do something together. We all got really close and I think I learned some valuable, very general lessons in life from every single member. Also learning to keep a healthy balance between me as an individual and as a group member definitely helped me grow a lot.