In this FRONTPAGE story, the Berlin DJ collective looks back on their remarkable rise from local heroes to international party-starters, in conversation with Benji B.
How do you get Egypt — the country — to let you play the first-ever drone-enabled DJ set at the pyramids of Giza? For Keinemusik, the European DJ collective and record label, the answer was “be really charming.” Oh, and also be really famous. Over their decade-plus collaboration, Keinemusik has steadily built a devoted following of international club kids, but in recent years, the five-person crew has seen a rise that can only be described as meteoric. Now they’re the subject of memes, they’re working with Drake, and they’re playing the big spots like NYC’s Brooklyn Mirage and, well, those pyramids.
In honor of Highsnobiety’s recent collab on a series of products with Keinemusik (which will be sold at 2 shows at the Brooklyn Mirage on July 4 and 5 and available at the KidSuper Brooklyn Store from July 3-7), fellow DJ and radio personality Benji B sat down with three of its five members — Rampa, &ME, and Adam Port, calling in from Zürich, Athens, and Berlin, respectively — to talk about how they maintain the energy at their shows, the meaning behind the kloud logo, and how getting bigger doesn’t always mean getting better… but it should.
BENJI B: What was it like playing at the pyramids?
RAMPA:
Yeah, it felt super surreal.
&ME:
I couldn’t feel anything because it was so overwhelming. So it was, like, two days later when I saw everything on IG and TikTok. I was like, “Wow, that’s how it looked?”
ADAM PORT:
Same for me. It was the first time a drone [music] show in Egypt had ever happened. For us, it’s quite normal, but in Egypt [there] had been none because the border with Israel is around the corner.
RAMPA:
Yeah. It wasn’t easy to pull that off because around the pyramids it’s a military base, and you have to do some magic to get licenses and all that. You can go crazy with ideas, but you have to be really charming to execute all of them.
There were so many challenging components. The sound system came from Dubai, but because of the flood, it didn’t arrive. And there were millions of little things that didn’t go so well. A few times I was like, “Mm, maybe it can’t happen.” But luckily it turned out all fine.
BENJI B: Don’t you find that when you’re organizing shows, the last thing you get to think about is the music?
&ME:
We don’t really prepare, so that’s what I’m getting least worried about. The only thing I worry about is whether I have enough new tracks on the stack that we can try. But in general, music-wise, I think we are prepared. Luckily we’ve been DJing for a couple of years now, so we kind of know what to do. When we play together, we cut it into three pieces.
RAMPA:
You only have to worry about a third of the show.
ADAM:
It gives you more freedom to try things out when you’re playing with three people. So it’s easier to take a risk. When you play the wrong track, you have to try the new tracks and sometimes it’s not working out, but you know at least, okay, some of the other guys will manage to bring the vibe back in the next track.
RAMPA:
You can play it and then just step aside. Like the Spider-Man meme when they all point on each other.
&ME:
But if you get the first track, it’s kind of easy. The rest just flows, I guess.
BENJI B: It’s clear that you time when you play your respective hits — the crowd really reacts.
ADAM:
In that way it really has become a concert. We know that a lot of people are waiting for those songs.
RAMPA:
One time [we] saved a song for so long that the party was over and we hadn’t played it. People were singing it at the end, like, chanting it. I was like, “Oh, shit. Totally forgot.”
BENJI B: What’s the kloud show? How did it begin and what’s the concept?
RAMPA:
We wanted to have a visual part of our performances that transmits the vibe we play and the energy we have. And then the kloud felt like the right symbol: the freedom of just being in the klouds, of being blurry, somewhere in the space. The kloud is the main symbol, and our logo is the peace sign in a kloud shape, so like a kloudy peace logo. Last year at the New York show was the first time we had the production budget and know-how to build these huge peace klouds which can move up and down. And from there on we were really motivated to try, on each show, to do something special. In Egypt for the drone show, we brought that symbol. In other shows now we bring similar things, but all based on that core idea of having the kloud or the peace logo at the center of the show.
BENJI B: You’re now starting to play in arenas typically associated with Top 40 or even Top 10 US artists. Are you still involved in every element of the show production and crowd experience?
RAMPA:
We’re very closely involved in the whole thing. We have a core team that helps us to bring the vision to life and to build all the stuff, like the klouds and the stage designs. We’re really close, and it’s a really good team. We are very much involved in that: the experience, the look, the feel, the stage height, the size, everything. We really want to keep the feeling that we’ve been building for 15 years now. And growing is a nice thing, and it’s flattering and it’s fun and it’s exciting, but at the same time it’s a little bit scary because we don’t want to lose that feeling. And scaling up is not necessarily the goal. The goal is to keep the energy, the fun, the joy. And that’s why we are also planning on doing a few smaller shows for the really core community that’s been following us for a long time. I think if you focus on getting bigger, bigger, bigger, it’s a dead-end.
BENJI B: It’s an agent-promoter myth that bigger is better. No, better is better. Bigger is not always better.
RAMPA:
Exactly.
ADAM:
That’s a good sentence. Can you pretend that we said it?
BENJI B: You guys are rock stars now. You have a huge megaphone, speaking to a very wide audience. Some people have been with you the whole way, some people discovered you five years ago, and some came to their first show last summer.
RAMPA:
It’s funny because I hear a lot of people [say], like, “Wow, you blew up so fast. Crazy.” I was [like], “No, bro, we’ve been sleeping on promoter couches for years. We’ve been doing this.” We grew really slowly and organic, actually.
BENJI B: You’re not the first to do dance music on a big scale, but you’re the first to really successfully blur the club experience and the stadium experience — you maintain the intimacy of the club experience in these massive spaces.
RAMPA:
Yeah, that’s a challenge with growing, because the energy we’ve had from the beginning is very intimate and very close. We want to be close with the people. We have people in the booth, so it feels like the energy can transmit easier from us to the people, instead of having a five-meter gap in between. And that’s the challenging part, because when you have bigger shows with all these fire marshals, security, and barriers, how do you still make it feel close and sweet? The kloud is a good center point, where it can start the fire. As soon as there’s a gap, it’s more difficult to transmit the energy.
BENJI B: Some people like having a clear space when they DJ, but you guys literally like having people standing on top of you.
RAMPA:
If we want to keep the energy up for seven hours straight, it’s better to have the people close instead of having a gap or having one or two meters behind you. If they’re close, you feel the energy right away and then you’re more up to keep on going for the next two, three, four hours.
ADAM:
Yeah, it gives so much back. And also you blend in a little bit more. It feels more secure, safe, and cozy, instead of exposed.
&ME:
And also we’re a part of the party, because when we’re DJing together, we have, like, 10 minutes where we can just talk or mingle or whatever.
BENJI B: Who were the DJs that really influenced you?
&ME:
I was super hooked on Carl Craig because of how the arrangements were and the super-long songs that were still super energetic.
ADAM:
He was blending proper dance music and pop music together, and it was on a very real but still accessible level. I really liked it as well. Not many other examples like him.
BENJI B: Let’s talk about the formative clubbing experiences you’ve had — together or apart; special nights that helped you bond; moments with club culture or in particular venues.
&ME:
For me, it was when I played my first official gig at Cookies in Berlin. I was super nervous, but when I was finished, I was like, “Wow, this is such a nice feeling, like, playing for so many people for three, four, five hours until the sun rises.” And from that point on, I was super hooked onto electronic music, and I slowly started DJing more.
RAMPA:
When we started, the money was way less and so we always shared hotel rooms or we stayed at the promoter’s house on the couch. Those experiences probably glued us more than just the club experiences. I don’t want to do it again, but looking back, that time was really good. It was a really important foundation for what we’re doing now.
&ME:
And living in Berlin at that time helped, because Berlin was really cheap. The rent was cheap, the food was cheap.
BENJI B: The Rolling Stones famously at one point had separate dressing rooms, never met unless they were onstage, and then they’d all leave the venue separately. Do you guys have separate dressing rooms or are you still best friends?
&ME:
We don’t even have dressing rooms. We have one trailer, we just come to the party, and then we’re gone.
BENJI B: So how the hell do you find time to make music?
&ME:
That’s a very good question. The most productive season is the end of the year, November until February, I guess. I usually take off a few weeks and try to sketch out everything I want to do the following year.
RAMPA:
Now that we all live in different cities, we’ve just been talking about staying a day or two longer when we tour, set up in a villa or something. If we have a day or two where we can meet and make music, it’s usually very productive. But we don’t release that much, so three, four, five tunes over the years, that’s usually our output.
BENJI B: What’s your process, as DJs, for staying on top of new music? Where do you look?
ADAM:
Most of the time we get stuff sent, I think.
RAMPA:
Or we use Dropbox. Now we use Trackstack, where people can just upload stuff.
&ME:
It’s just a demo most of the time or some edits that people are doing.
BENJI B: Berlin has produced so much amazing music and culture and nightlife. What’s it like there now?
ADAM:
I live in Berlin, but I don’t know. We’ve always been disconnected from the scene. We’ve always done our own thing. I know the rent is getting higher, but I don’t know where the cool clubs are right now. I think people are still coming here and doing their careers — like Peggy Gou started in Berlin, right? Honey Dijon did the same thing. So it was still happening, and probably it will still happen.