The Time Bandit: Roman Flügel

Mixmag is sitting in what was once a family campsite in Yugoslavia. Now, it’s a festival venue in Croatia. Fifty yards away is a 130-year-old boat once used to transport drums of new supplies to local businesses. Now it’s used to transport drums of new disco to hammered Londonites. We’ve just completed a shoot involving a 70s style glitter ball. Last night, that same ball shimmered over a dancefloor comprised mostly of 20-something Brits wearing 80s French tennis gear and drinking 2016 craft beer.

“Good music is about re-interpretation. Mostly the re-interpretation of history,” says Roman Flügel. Arguably, he’s at precisely the right festival.

The tall, thoughtful German is the musical equivalent of déjà vu. Even if you think you haven’t heard of him, you’ll have heard his music. He’s operated through around nine aliases (“Perhaps nine, yes,” he says. “I mean... gosh, I really don’t know how many”). He’s released on a succession of labels, three of which were co-owned by the man himself, and he’s done remix duty for the likes of the Pet Shop Boys, the Human League and Kylie Minogue. Oh, and Alter Ego – the early 00s group that essentially kicked electro into the mainstream? One half of that was Roman Flügel.

We sit in a formerly eye-wateringly ugly, now eye-wateringly pricey cafeteria overlooking the assisted unreality of Love International festival. It becomes clear over a string of coffees that Flügel isn’t interested in the cross-referencing, cratedigging and genre trainspotting elements that comprise the backbone of his native industry. “You know, people are really into making these deliberately old fashioned house tracks right now.” He shrugs a set of thin shoulders, a look of academic amusement flickering across his face. “Why? I mean, why would you make a 90s house track, out of 90s samples? That’s been done, so what’s the point?”

Roman grew up in the German town of Darmstadt. His teenage years coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hindsight is always resampled, but it’s arguably this that set the tone for Roman’s attitude to music. In 1986 and ‘87, at just-about drinking age, Roman began exploring both his local and the Frankfurt and Berlin club scenes, all of which had begun to play electronic music imported from the US. A present from a friend in ‘87 of a Chicago house vinyl compilation series was the next step. “It was the energy,” he says. “The abstraction. It was sexy, and very powerful”. By ‘88, Roman had abandoned his previous pursuit of drumming in a local rock band and was now playing as part of a “local DJ crew” in his hometown, another member of which was emerging local star Ricardo Villalobos. But it was the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990 and the resultant subculture revolution that really got the young Roman fired up. He deided to drop out of his music degree at a local university because classical composition and learning the traditions “just didn’t seem right anymore”.

“The Wall coming down in Berlin signalled the beginning of a very intense time. There was this huge DIY ethos in Germany. People were opening their own record shops, starting their own labels, their own clothing lines.” Roman approached the new world from all angles. He toured with his unofficial DJ collective, soon getting as far as the UK. “I think one of the first parties in the UK we played was at Sabresonic for Andrew Weatherall in London in ‘94 or ‘95.”

Meanwhile, from 1993 three record labels were formed out of one small Frankfurt outlet, of which Roman was to play a part, having moved to the city. “I was part of the crew that ran the Delerium Records shop in Frankfurt,” he explains. “Our labels Playhouse, Klang Elektronik and Ongaku Musik were all born and functioned out of that tiny record shop.”

The small team’s output and schedule were prodigious. He says: “Our business back then was one hundred per cent vinyl. ‘Proper’ records sold quite a lot back then, and even the experimental ones sold between a thousand and twelve hundred copies. So I think we could make records without money pressure, knowing we could at least finance the next record. And If what we made turned out to be a ‘big tune’ well, sure, it would make us all happy.”

Part of the reason for the group’s dedication to consistently pushing new material was the heartfelt belief that “this whole style of music was gonna be over in the next year or so.” It wasn’t, but their way of doing business certainly was. “At the end of the 90s we had the internet. We had Napster. We had our tracks being downloaded and we had no idea how they even got there. We lost sales continuously for five to six years. Our distribution partners went under. We simply weren’t prepared.”

There’s no diatribe on the death of vinyl and no discussion of the way music continues to grow while producers lose money, however hard Mixmag pokes at the enigmatic yet friendly figure in front of us. “The internet will be remembered as our generation’s industrial revolution,” he says, with the same signature nod and amused shrug. Time changes. That’s the point. For better. For worse.

The concept of time plays through Roman’s own production as well. As he says: “The best music should sound like it’s out of time – like it’s from any and yet no time period at all. That’s why I liked both Bowie and Prince so much.” As for his own albums, his 2014 record ‘Happiness Is Happening’ was, he says, all about “a connection I felt between electronic music and the sounds and themes happening in Germany through the 1970s. The whole project was an attempt to look back and try to reinterpret all that energy.”

Normally, that would all strictly be against his own personal philosophy of simply never looking backwards. “Electronic music is like painting,” he declares. “You can only reference what you’ve already experienced. But you must interpret it differently.

At least, that’s the plan.” Perhaps a forthcoming 12” based on nothing but a 16-step sequencer on a friend’s experimental label in Frankfurt is penance, then. At any rate his new album, due at the end of October, is much tighter to his principles. Sparse, at times unnerving and at times warm and enveloping, it’s a record that manages to simultaneously sound completely of the moment while still referencing key electronic music touchstones such as Kraftwerk and ambient synth music. Or as he puts it: “Less and less notes I would say. Less notes, more connections between what’s there, a deeper resonance –
without thinking about any of it.”

It sounds contradictory, but watching Roman put his principles into practice on the main stage, something esoteric does click. Opening with ‘Your Love Away’ by Massimiliano Pagliara before drifting through sequences of French disco, US house, injections of techno and Midland’s ‘Vigilante’, the underlying theme was joined melodies, rather than a house set’s tempo or a techno workout’s riser and hi-hat assault course. The glitterball, main floor and the dress sense below it all could have been taken from the 70s. Glitter and large bushes are everywhere. It’s a syncretic fit with the nu-disco, heatstroke and euphoria of Love International.

14 hours later, Mixmag is on a Hypercolour boat party with Flügel and A Sagittariun. “I still get a bit nervous before my sets. Especially when it’s such a good vibe on the warm up.” Roman is yelling over the Funktion One system (yes, on a boat) with a bottle of prosecco in one hand. Dressed in cut-off jeans and a white T-shirt; he looks like a cross between a Berlin cafe owner and a Canadian summer camp volunteer. He opens his set with ‘Dresscode’ by DJ Jenifa, his shoulders rolling while his head remains down, looking for the next stage, the next step, the next genre switch. And all of the time, there’s a slightly distant and distracted expression on his face.

“Maybe there’s more niches today,” he suggests. “When it was purely vinyl, it was perhaps just d’n’b, techno, house and ambient.” Asked how he prepares his sets – so far, the pre-drink vibes of this boat party one is substantially different to last night’s wander through the suburbs of house and disco – Roman goes back to time as a component once again for his answer. “I think that’s part of my history. When I started to play, DJs played eight hours. We didn’t [again, the shrug and amused laugh] tell a story or any of that, but we did at least start at one point and develop something into something else.”

In many ways, Roman’s all-encompassing sets, even ones like this on a two-hour boat party, are the sharp edge of that. “I was also quite diverse. That’s why I had so many aliases – labels didn’t like you playing different styles. If you’re a techno DJ then people know you for that, and you’ll be booked for that. That doesn’t suit someone who wants to play to consistently different crowds.

Today’s crowds are different. “It’s harder when you start out today. You have such a weight of history and comparison in front of you. And gentrification means you’ll probably have to move all the time. I’ve been in Frankfurt my whole career.”

It’s sunset on the boat party. There’s an opiate calm on deck despite the growing wind and choppier waters. Electronic music. Tribes, genres, cliques, clans, fashion movements, haters and low-key prejudices. Are we in flux? Roman Flügel manages to be both wise sage and amused teenager in his expression. “When you’re younger you’re determined to only expose yourself to certain things. You become deliberately nerdy, and hate the things you’re not in line with. I used to storm out of parties if the DJ played tunes I recognised, in an order I didn’t approve of! It was just as over the top then as it is now.

“At the end of the day,” he concludes, “everyone in music just needs the same thing: a little patience.” The Croatian captain nudges the sound tech. It’s getting dark. Last three tracks. Roman Flügel switches back onto the decks with 14 minutes until docking, a few weeks until his new album his released and all the time in the world.

‘All The Right Noises’ by Roman Flügel is out on Dial on October 28