Q+A: andhim

Cologne's andhim have risen to electronic music’s top tier with their self-described brand of “super-house” whipping dancefloors into a frenzy from their native Germany to Ibiza, the US and all the way down under, where the duo have just landed for a week-long stretch of shows, including their debut Australian festival slot at Electric Gardens, Sydney.

Mixmag dropped by for a chat with Simon as Tobias manned the decks with soothing laidback house in Melbourne's summer heat at an intimate Monday night barbecue, with Kolsch, Monkey Safari, ANNA and Wehbba, streamed on Facebook Live.

Fresh from launching their own label, Superfriends, in December with the melancholic Tosch EP, we found out what was in store for 2017, including a heavier-hitting new release expected by mid-year and some previously under-wraps remixes.

I thought we’d touch on "super-house." I know you speak about the meaning of the term all the time but as journalists we love having a tag. I’ve heard you describe it as a feeling and something that’s really uplifting in the past. Where does it have its roots and what are its major influences?

It’s hard to explain, you know, when we started to do music together we, and obviously other people, realised it was a little bit different and not easy to tag, and so everyone was asking us “What is this kind of music you’re doing? Is it house, tech house, whatever, sunshine house, I don’t know!”

As you said people love to tag things. Then we thought we can answer the question ourselves actually because our songs can be happy or can be deep or melancholy, or whatever, but you would hopefully always recognise this andhim fingerprint on it, and so we said “Hey, you know what, and especially for you journalists, we call it ‘super-house’,” and then everybody will understand what we're doing because we just created our own genre.

It was more to satisfy the journalists. It was actually a fun thing to do but then it became like a thing and then everyone was like “Hey, they’re doing super-house” and nowadays when we play a set, which can vary from very housey to techno, or whatever, actually sometimes people come and say “Hey, that was not a super-house set!” Which is funny, you know, because we made this up.

You touched on the fact that your music can be melancholic as well. I’ve noticed with your latest Tosch EP that it is a bit deeper and darker than some of your other work. Is that something you consciously wanted to explore or did it just kind of happen?

It always happens, you know, we are very bad with going to the studio with a vision like “Hey, let’s do like a real summer tune now or let’s do a club banger or something” and this is the fact I really love about making music. I mean in our case, other producers work differently probably, but we never know what will come out and it’s so driven by our own feelings at the moment we’re in the studio, so it can be everything.

The Tosch EP fits the winter mood, the 'German Winter' song for instance, but the whole EP has this kind of melancholy touch. But we don’t know yet what the next EP will sound like.

'German Winter' is a really stunning, beautiful, pensive track. Can you tell me a bit about how that came about?

Actually it’s funny because it’s like the 10^th version or so and in the beginning it was something based on samples we had, or Tobias had, in his archive, for like 10 years maybe, the chords and the samples … what I like to do, is to dig in the archive and see what’s there because we have a huge library because we’ve been digging for so many years and then I was like “Hey, man, we really have to do something out of it!” and then we started to work around.

Actually, we started to work on this track one-and-a-half or two years ago and it changed so much during this time. The final result we’re very happy about but it has nothing to do with the first sketch we did. But sometimes it’s like that, you hear something and then you try and make something out of it, then you're not happy with the result and it stays there for a year or so, and then you start working on it again. So it was a long process.

Are you working on material for an upcoming EP or have you got anything else in the works?

Now with the new label, with our own label, we’re super motivated to make music and to get it out. I mean, we’re always motivated but sometimes it’s just too hard with all the touring. But now we have a lot of stuff coming this year, a lot of remixes already finished, we’re working on some other remixes and we already have the next EP finished.

So there will be a new EP, I don’t know, in April or May, coming out. This again is very different. It’s more like techno but still has the andhim groove.

So was Superfriends a label you set up to explore some different kinds of sounds? What was your vision for the label?

The label is, at the moment, only for our music and our output. We’re not aiming to become the next super cool house label or whatever. I mean, of course! But only for us, and our music, because I think it makes it easier to show people our vision of house music and our diversity and variety of sound.

So where the Tosch EP was like melancholy the next EP will be more like dancefloor banger, techno, whatever, and maybe the third EP will be like, I don’t know, happy summer, whatever, or we’re also thinking we might do like an ambient EP, you know. So it’s just a platform where we want to be as creative as possible without any borders or without looking at other acts or artists or at the Beatport charts, or whatever, just make music and this is like how we started. Just make music and that’s a very, very good thing and I hope the people will like it.

I’m sure they will. The more techno-sounding EP you have coming out, do you have a name for that?

Yeah, you are the first one I will tell. It’s called Donner, which means thunder in German, and it’s two tracks and the other track is called 'Ebertplatz', this is a place in Cologne, where we were born, so it’s Donner EP – Thunder EP.

That’s a good name for a techno EP. Do you think down the track you might have some collaborations with other artists you’ve worked with in the past on the label? Super Flu, perhaps?

There will definitely be features on our label. The first feature was Piper Davis, the vocalist, on 'Tosch'. We will team up with a lot of friends, hopefully. It’s always a matter of time and timing but, sure, and also we’re going to let our friends do remixes of our tracks so there will then be other producers on the Superfriends record label but not with originals only remixes. But to do features is something we really want to do.

And how did the Piper Davis collaboration come about?

We played a track of her and Matthew Dear’s in our Essential Mix for BBC radio and then she wrote us like “Hey, thanks for playing the song, super happy about it, etc,” and as we really liked the song and her voice we just asked her “Hey, do you wanna do a song with us?” and she was up for it and then we did a song. It was super easy we never met in person she was like sending the vocals and the first sketch she sent was already so perfect we were like “What the fuck? This is so great.” It’s cool. It’s very, very cool.

Are you able to tell us about any of the friends you might have appear on and do remixes for your label?

For the Tosch EP we’re planning with four remixers and two are not finished yet so I can’t really talk about them because I don’t know if it will happen, but if it does it’s going to be huge, and the two remixers who have already finished the remixes are Clavis and the other one is Acid Pauli which is very cool because we love both and the remixes are great. It’s a cool thing and it’s cool that those people trust in us because we didn’t meet any of them but we love what they do and we just asked “Hey, are you up for a remix?” and they were into it so that’s a good thing to see that people trust us or like our music and want to do a remix.

You’re in Australia playing Electric Gardens a one-day festival in Sydney and then Rainbow Serpent which is a kind of like a multi-day hedonist extravaganza. Do you approach those sets differently?

I think so because I think in Sydney we’re going to play the main stage with like Basement Jaxx and Eric Prydz and like the big players and, I mean, it’s always spontaneous but we will see how big the stage is, how many people are there, etc. It always depends on what the surroundings are, what the people are like. But you know playing those huge stages and festivals it’s always a little bit different.

We’ve never been to Rainbow and we’re very excited to go and I think we’ll just go with the flow and see but we’re really looking forward to playing both. It’s actually the first time we’ll play a festival in Australia. We come here so often but we’ve never played a festival. We’ve been coming here for four years … Australia in general is one of our favourite countries to tour.

You’re here quite often and tonight with Kolsch and Monkey Safari, a few other guys, what’s your connection to Australia and specifically Melbourne. You guys seem to have a great time and we love having you here.

First of all the people in Australia are super cool, very nice, and Mike Toner the CEO of Thick as Thieves, which is the promoter who always brings us here, was the first promoter who brought us to Australia and we became close friends and it’s always a pleasure to come here and spend time with him and all the other friends we have here, and people seem to like what we do so the shows are always great, and we have a super cool time and … I mean it for real because I’ve said it in so many interviews, not just with Australian press, that Australia is one of our favourite countries and, especially Melbourne, one of our favourite cities to play in the whole world so it really means a lot to us to be here and play for the fans so it’s going to be an amazing tour.

Scott Carbines is Mixmag's Australian Digital Content Editor, follow him on Twitter