Label-founder / A&R @niewiederschlafen.
Deep House Bucharest · DHB Podcast #106 – trustless
We would like to start with a question regarding the Never Sleep Again (Nie wieder schlafen) label. Could you share with us how did you get inspired on finding this name?
The name was established back in 2013 after a long night/morning at a festival, when the core founders of the label were ready to head back to camp, but David August was about to play at the early morning.
It was a never-ending marathon of good music and we all had this wish of just not having to sleep anymore, so we could attend all the wonderful sets. It became sort of like a running gag at every night out and then ultimately the name of a New Year’s Eve Party we had.
That first party became a series of events as well as our Youtube channel and then it all start to expand and become and label and a Burning Man camp.
Do you feel that this pandemic affected your projects and the label’s projects? How? We look forward to hear your point of view on this matter, with what did you have to deal with.
I think it in a way it certainly affected the label. But not so much from the inside, but rather from the outside, as it affected every member our of family and that ultimately infected the label, rather than the other way around.
The Pandemic also hit us at a time, where the Nie Wieder Schlafen label was or is still going through a crucial development, which forced us to pause in the summer and reflect on the goals and the direction we want to head towards.
The pandemic underlined our move and give us the chance to step back for a moment and reflect on what we are happy with and what we would like to change!
If we choose to see the good side in the pandemic impact within your projects, what would that be?
As I just mentioned, I think the pandemic gave us the opportunity to reflect. It gave us a better understanding of what really matters. It also gave a lot of artists time in the studio and maybe even some time to distance themselves from the music. I truly believe that in order to make honest music, one has to move away from it sometimes, give it a break and return to it with a fresh mind. Keep in mind, music is a form of art and art should never be about quantity and making thousand tracks, but rather about the expression of a human, what he wants to say and share certain emotions and themes with the listeners. Everyone who choose to see the pandemic as an opportunity surely received something positive out of it as well. Also the fact, that most of us have the ability to be at home and be safe is a privilege, we should not underestimate.
May I ask you about what you prepared as projects to be launched in the near future? Is there a plan of action or some scenarios taken into consideration?
There is lots of ideas and cool projects in our heads, but the question remains which ones will be fulfilled. When it comes to releases, we have two vinyls in the making, which is always rather exciting, but also quite an investment.
We also want to focus on more events again and of course continue to shape the future of the label, as we are still very much in the beginning of finding ourselves. We have rough concepts of collaborating with other labels to combine communities and potentially plan events with other wonderful creators.
To think more about self-promotion rather than putting our work on other third-party platforms and how we can reach our audience in a better way. Another big goal is to start donations project and affect the world a tiny tiny bit with what we do. Other ideas involve unique release concepts and documentary-like release formats, that give a little more inside to the story of a release.
But these are all things, that take time and money and if you aren’t a label trying everything to get some income, you don’t really have the financial power to fulfill all these ideas, unless you put in a lot of your personal money, which is sometimes already happening.
Last but not least, please express the focus of the Nie wieder schlafen label, what does it aim to promote in particular?
Nie Wieder Schlafen promotes a lot of thing. Talking about the music itself, it tries to convey a very specific idea of sound. A sound that we haven’t quite reached ourselves yet, but one that we continue to shape and get closer to capture.
On a human stand point, we try to convey the idea of equality in every possible way, not only in the mainstream sense, but also on the dance floor. We despise the idea of DJ’s playing on huge Podests and prefer an environment, where the listener is seen as equivalent.
We value and continuously live the idea of a family label, one that supports small artist and then grows together with them and tries to keep the relationship for many years to come.
Our approach on a collaborative effort is also very unique in the scene I believe. We hate signing finished music. We prefer to be with artist from the very first version of the track, share opinions and collectively approach a finished product, that feels like a team effort, which further strengthens the idea of the family.
One of the big things we wanna continue to push in the future, is more family label events, where the artists meet each other and become friends, play music for each other and discuss all sorts of things.
To cut it short. We are a label that wants to reflect on things, we want to have patient processes and truly build meaningful relationships, rather than a platform that simply releases music from random people.