One of the most recent projects that have risen to fame in the last years is Delta Funktionen [Niels Luinenburg]. Although we covered some of his work [his debut album, Traces, and the compilation Inertia] we did not have the opportunity to get to know him better. We have taken advantage of his first gig, at the anniversary of Hipodrome,  in Romania to fill in this gap. 

[translated version here]

© @ Anna Massignan, mssnna.com

We are very curios about the start of your dj career, did your first track come naturally from start to finish or was it a result of a complex process in which you combined and recombined elements again and again until you got the desired product?
I was making tracks and beats for quite some time. So the first release wasn’t really about my first tracks ever. And I don’t think it’d be a good idea to let those first sketches hear to anyone haha! It was more a spontaneous process. I had the Nebula track ready and thought it was good enough to release. There was no thinking behind it, just stuff I felt at that point in time.

From your first release in 2008, Electromagnetic Radiation Part I, till the most recent release that you have signed, Sun Storm, what do you consider to be the biggest changes that your sound has suffered over these years?
It has changed to a more hardware based setup, incorporating the classic drum machines and now slowly starting to collect the synthesizers I’d like to work with. Working with hardware is more fun for me. The live and jam-kinda approach to it is really appealing to me and gives me certainly more fun than clicking with a mouse.

Though I like my beats a bit firm, with balls so to say.

You still have a fresh career yet you have already managed to be known for creating a unique atmosphere from the dj booth and we would like to know your perspective on that. What do you look for in music in order to decide if a track is practical for your djset?
Hmmm, it’s pretty much related to what kind of feeling I have with a track. Though I like my beats a bit firm, with balls so to say. I always try to blend a lot of different sub-genres together in my sets and I try to put it all IN the mix, take a bit more risk. Mixing an Italo track with some Surgeon track or so. I don’t think many DJ’s do that, they try to keep it a bit safe. I don’t like that. I like to take risks and play stuff you’re not likely to hear all the time.

© @ Anna Massignan, mssnna.com

Do you follow the same standards when searching for sounds to be used in the production process? To be more precise, how do the standards applied in the dj booth differ from those applied in the studio, music-wise?
Since I switched to an almost hardware based setup, mostly my drums come from my 808 or 707. So in that way I don’t change that much, even though I like to run them through some pedals to add a bit of my own character to it. Working with a few synthesizers also forces you to get the best and most out of it. So searching for sounds is more related to what I can get out of these machines. I’m not really interested in going out on the streets with some field recorder or so. I do like to get some geeky sounds or dialogues from movies or documentaries. But thinking about the differences between the DJ-booth and the studio.. hmm.. well in the studio it’s really a solo process while in the DJ-booth it’s all about the people on the floor.

Do you already know what kind of music will you be producing five years from now or do you just pick up influences along the way and try to integrate them as soon as possible in a track? In other words, do you work towards reaching a certain utopist sound?
Wow, things change so rapidly and at the moment I’m more thinking (and living) the now. There’s no such thing as a masterplan behind what I do. The last few years I’ve been picking up sounds and influences along the way, and tried to incorporate it in my tracks. But I’m feeling that now I have more and more found my sound and I want to explore that in a deeper way and expand it.

I’m not really a fan of the whole digital revolution

We are not highly accustomed to a dj/producer work environment, but we know a thing or two about it. In your regard, what are the technological breakthroughs that get you excited about the future, music-wise preferably?
To be honest, I’m not so much interested in technological breakthroughs. I’m not really a fan of the whole digital revolution. Sure it brings something good, but it also brought some really bad things. For me, analogue drum computers and synthesizers have proved themselves regarding sound quality and workflow. Even though that’s also a matter of taste. But working with an 808 or 909 is simply something completely different than working with samples. The groove, the slight modulations, the listening process versus the watching process to name a few. Especially the watching to a screen and programming your beats, or working with a stepsequencer and do everything on your hearing is something completely different. So yeah, actually I don’t really care about digital/technological breakthroughs. It’s mostly based on emulating the hardware stuff, or creating new effects. But if you need a whole lot of effects to make an interesting track, I believe it’s smarter to go work for gaming or movie companies and make soundtracks for that. As long as the soundsystems in clubs are pretty primate, there’s no use for using all these heavy processed FX things, because nobody will notice it on a mono system.

Also, generally speaking, what do you think would be worth looking forward to on the electronic music scene, be it an artist or any other promising developments?
I heard Actress doing a live set last summer in Berlin and it was something completely futuristic. Much more techno than his previous albums and I really cannot wait to hear some of those tunes! Really one of the best things I have heard this year!

You can catch Delta Funktionen in Sibiu on the 9th of  november: facebook.com/events/553606511370232

More info: 
facebook.com/delta.funktionen
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