Community: Hypnaughtic

Inspired by nature, the desire for mental experiments and sound exploration, Hypnaughtic Is a project focused on presenting hypnotic techno in its every facet

Berlin is a city where electronic music is on a pedestal, and clubs have been declared cultural institutions. It’s a place where everyone can find music or an experience to their taste, but when it comes to hypnotic techno, one has to dig a little deeper. In my humble experience, this sub-genre is definitely not something which the majority of the people that participate in the city’s nightlife appreciate so much or deliberately look for. Throughout the years, Tresor has been a club that hosted incredible line ups with artists that play such music, and as the club itself, the opportunity to meet and connect with the hypnotic community is gone with it since more than a year now.

I had almost lost hope that I will find people with the same passion for this sound as myself, but as it often happens in life when you least expect it things change and you are proven wrong. One night in quarantine this winter, I was browsing through SoundCloud in the search of music, and I came across a really interesting platform – Hypnaughtic Berlin. I instantly checked it and it was clear to me that this is an organization that shares my passion and values for this music and culture, so I got in touch and had the great opportunity to hear their story. Stick around to find out who they are and what is the essence of their project in the second instalment of Nachtblumen’s Community feature.

The team

Elena originally comes from the south of Germany and she moved to Berlin about 7 years ago. Prior to that, she was not really acquainted with the electronic music scene, but gradually she found her way to this fantasy world and only got more involved over time reaching the point of DJing herself under the name Ilenka. Through her discovery period she got the opportunity to connect with the community and in late 2018 she met Florin at Berghain.

Florin comes from Switzerland and moved to Berlin rather recently. He has been in the local Swiss scene since he was 13 years old, participating and contributing as a DJ and producer under the name Fløbo. His affinity towards the hypnotic world and sci-fi music has led him to dedicate his life to playing and producing. Ultimately, after meeting Elena, a new idea was born and this was the beginning of Hypnaughtic. Florin’s knowledge and love for music together with his experience in the technical aspect of it, combined with Elena’s passion and creativity ensures for a powerful team.

The beginning and the importance of a network

In 2019, the two of them dedicated a lot of time to experiencing nature, as this is something that they dearly enjoy and get inspired by. In this time music was always a companion, and while often enjoying ambient under while appreciating their surroundings, the sky and the trees, they really felt the music beyond the way one does at a club. Driven by their love for organic sounds and atmospheres, as well as faster rhythms the couple decided that it was time to start their own contribution to the scene. In 2019 they launched Hypnaughtic, which is currently a podcast series that invites well-known, up and coming artists as well as people with genuine passion to tell their story through sound.

Essentially, the end goal for Hypnaughtic is to become a label. Elena and Florin decided for a backwards engineering approach to it. Florin shares more with me about that decision ‘’Starting a podcast makes it a little easier to create a network. Things work a little easier, when you try to utilize your contacts and start by inviting people that you know and you admire. Our first podcast was actually by Takaaki Itoh, who is a great artist and I had the chance to speak to him a few years ago. The moment he agreed to record for us I was really happy!’’ Elena goes on to add ‘’Without a back catalogue or anything out in the open, when approaching artists, it then becomes harder as there is a natural response of ‘’Why would I do this? What do we have in common?’’ and this way by putting music out there that we love and stand for, we already present our values.’’ What Elena and Florin are sharing is something that I can relate to a lot. Passion is sometimes not enough to make people believe in your concept and work with you. For small organizations, which exist because they just want to contribute in a way to the scene or just express their love for it, it takes a lot of determination, hard work, and consistency in order to grow and be able to also work with artists and labels that they admire from the start. Like in the business world, networking is a key to everything. Meeting someone and connecting with them on the dancefloor or through a passionate conversation about music, gear, production, the lifestyle.. you name it, will certainly bring you further than only writing an email and presenting your concept. The fact that Florin has been in the scene for the past 12 years, and had the chance to connect with different artists on different occasions whether through playing together in a club, or producing, helped a lot to give them a flying start into their journey, but that is not all. Elena: ‘’We tried different channels to reach many artists, and the list that we have currently might seem very impressive, but you have to imagine there are a ton of requests that haven’t even been answered. We realized that a personal approach matters and we started to talk to them from our name. Some like our concept and agree, others not and that’s okay. I think it’s also a way of learning how to reach people.’’ There is nothing wrong with the success of established media platforms and organizations in electronic music, but this is one of the main reasons why I created this ‘’Community’’ feature, because in the end we all love the same music, everyone is welcome to do something and it’s about supporting each other and pushing each other’s creativity no matter how ‘’big’’ or ‘’small’’ our reach is. People who never got to speak to their favourite artist or even close are boiling with passion and fresh ideas and deserve to be given a chance to contribute. It is about involving likeminded people and participating in a scene together and that is the biggest reward on its own.

Looking at the impressive catalogues so far, I am interested to know if Hypnaughtic plan to support more upcoming talent on both their podcast and soon their label. Florin: ‘’I think it’s super important because I also know the feeling when I send my tracks to labels and don’t get an answer.. In the future I really want to support upcoming artists or people who are just starting and are completely unknown yet. Here in Berlin everyone has equipment at home. Some guys have output on Instagram and SoundCloud and others don’t have anything online, but they create wonderful tracks for themselves and for me it is super important to pick out these guys and release their music.’’

The sound of Hypnaughtic, shared values and hypnotic techno in Berlin

In my eyes ‘’hypnotic’’ is a very broad definition. There are so many nuances to hypnotic techno starting with deep, organic atmospheric sounds, through more raw repetitive noisy experimental scapes, to sci-fi, bleepy kind of techno. When I think of hypnotic, I associate it with labels like Northern Electronics, The God’s Planet, Hypnus Records, Semantica, Thule Records, Prologue, Dystopian, Spazio Disponibile to name a few, and as you can already tell, each of these labels represents a different nuance or two or more of the sub-genre. So I wonder what is the core sound of Hypnaughtic that Elena and Florin are striving for and if they are going to explore the entire spectrum in their podcast and label? Florin: ‘’We would like to focus on the deeper realm, as well as sci-fi techno and mental music experiments, which doesn’t need to be this four to the floor techno and it can be purely experimental as well. There are these two guys from Buenos Aires Translate and Pulso, who are doing exactly that and they inspire me a lot.’’ Elena: ‘’We definitely don’t want to tie it too tight how ‘’hypnotic’’ exactly should be, because there is still the creative freedom in it to explore. For example, ambient music isn’t that bleepy sound, but we still really like it and it can also be very hypnotic.’’ While I agree with what she is saying I couldn’t help but wonder when as an organization you have already communicated strongly in your name something which defines your sound, and in a moment in time you decide to deviate from it, how do you deal with the controversy that you might face? Elena: ‘’If something sounds hypnotic to you or not it is still a feeling I would say. Everybody has a different feeling about it and that’s why we also never said to the artists that released a podcast for us ‘’We want this kind of hypnotic or that’’ but rather ‘’Please interpret what is hypnotic for you and record it’’ and as long as our listeners feel the music is hypnotic to them in one way or another this is what we actually want to achieve.’’ Florin adds that when it comes to the label they would like to maintain this authenticity and explore all hypnotic sound.

‘’If something sounds hypnotic to you or not it is still a feeling I would say. Everybody has a different feeling about it and that’s why we also never said to the artists that released a podcast for us ‘’We want this kind of hypnotic or that’’ but rather ‘’Please interpret what is hypnotic for you and record it’’, and as long as our listeners feel the music is hypnotic to them in one way or another this is what we actually want to achieve.’’

I feel like we are on the same page with regards to this otherwise overly debated matter of sound definition, but another important question comes to my mind concerning the values that they are looking for in artists. Whare the most important values music-wise and on a human level that they are looking to share with the people they collaborate with? Elena: ‘’Definitely the passion I would say. For us it is not about fame or being Instagrammable, it’s about the music and the feeling it gives you and the worlds you can enter with it. That’s something that is really important to us. When it comes to releasing music, it needs to be good quality and we need to be on the same page. If an artist sends us one great track, but then another 20 which are all different genres, then it won’t really fit. We have a broad range of hypnotic that we want to be in, but still not the entire electronic music palette.’’

When it comes to the Berlin scene, as I already mentioned in my introduction, my experience shows that hypnotic sound isn’t so popular or in demand here. I am curious to know if the guys had a different experience and what are their plans to influence this in the future? Florin: ‘’I see that in the last few years this hype around the faster 140+ bpm techno really came over Berlin and I feel like young people that are just starting their journey into techno kind of get the wrong picture.’’ Elena: ‘’Yes to them it seems like this is the only kind of techno there is, and in Berlin there are a lot of events like that but the hypnotic sound is definitely not as popular as you said.. there are some nights at Tresor indeed and sometimes certain hypnotic artists in Berghain, but it’s because there are not that many people that go to these, and it is mostly the very young ravers that choose for the faster harder kind of music. We definitely want to organize events here in the future, maybe even in a collaboration with someone, but we have not done that yet due to the Pandemic and also because we really want to make this right and take our time and make sure that the final result will be incredible.’’ In the end it’s about connecting with different people, accepting one another and opening up to new worlds for each other to appreciate. The fact is also that this community is not too present on social media constantly like others, so this is also a contributing factor to the level of popularity of this sound, but we are all hopeful that in the future this will change, while we maintain the quality of the music and experiences. In addition to that I want to know whether Hypnaughtic is also striving to make connections and support likeminded individuals or organizations within this realm? Elena: ‘’Of course we got to know people here and there who also started their podcast series especially now in corona when people have time to explore themselves and what they can do with music, so they started projects and we definitely love to share our experience and knowledge and help them in the process.’’ Florin: ‘’I am also connecting with some guys from this scene, there are some cool guys from Leipzig, their collective is called Nebula and the owner is Kontinum. I never met him in real life, but we’ve been in contact over the internet and this is definitely an organization that we would like to work with in the future and we already have plans to meet when the current situation allows it. We are really looking forward and I actually think that in Leipzig there is a bigger influence in younger people for this sound. I know a few collectives that are definitely pursuing this sound and ambient and also a lot of young newcomers that really want to start in the mental and hypnotic realm of techno. ‘’ I am very pleased to hear this and even though I live in Germany for a while now, I didn’t have a clue that Leipzig is such a hot spot for this sound. I guess just like the majority of people, I also associate Germany with Berlin and the sound that is being pushed here, but there is so much more to the entire country’s scene and I am excited to discover!

Creativity, inspiration during the pandemic and what happened in Switzerland

Obviously, this is a hard time for everyone, but just like everything it has both positive and negative sides. It is inevitable for me to ask how did Elena and Florin handle the past year and how did it influence their creative output? Elena: ‘’We used the time wisely!’’ Florin: ‘’Actually for me it has been a great period. Before coming to Berlin, I was more into software and when I came here I started to explore hardware and analog music, and I also took the opportunity to take some harmonic lessons with Hüseyin (Magna Pia), and I really put a lot of effort on improving myself, my sound and my skills. Looking back at how much I learned about music in the past year I definitely think that it did me good. ’’ It warms my heart to hear the determination with which Florin describes his learning process in the past year, but I cannot help but wonder doesn’t he struggle with inspiration sometimes in a world where we are repeating more or less the same activities daily since months? As much as I love what I do, the longer this situation goes, the more often I get motivation dips and I struggle with my output sometimes. Elena: ‘’Yes definitely, we also experience that, but we also realized that now the only way to stay connected to the scene is to follow some streams and projects of others and try to get inspired by that as much as possible, and of course trying to get out in nature at every possible moment helps us a lot to get a fresh mind.’’ Since Elena mentioned the live streams, I wanted to know what’s their opinion on the overload of such content in the past year and since this is literally the only way to experience our scene what is the solution to it going forward? Elena: ‘’On the one hand I am very happy that these exist because it’s a great platform for artists to show themselves, and for us to connect and sometimes on a weekend it can give us a glimpse of what we felt back when we were able to go out. On the other hand, as you said by now, we are kind of ‘’over it’’ to listen to streams all the time. It’s strange somehow, I think without it, it wouldn’t be good, but with it, it’s sometimes also not really good. A year ago, when it all started, we also had a live stream once a week, where Florin or me would play a set or even together, and it was a nice routine to have something to look forward to and be able to be in touch with our friends.  We don’t do it anymore, and I think in smaller doses it’s nice to have these streams but for us right now it is not a priority to do them anymore.’’

Since Florin comes from Switzerland I was wondering if there was a connection between Hypnaughtic and the Swiss scene or any plans in the future to do events there? Florin: ‘’There is not a big techno audience in Switzerland, especially in Zurich, and I definitely want to go there and explore other cities like Geneva. We already had our first event there last year during the corona crisis actually and that was incredible. It was allowed to organize something with up to 100 people so we did.’’ Given that we have not seen a proper event since such a long time I immediately wanted to know more about it and what went down! Florin: ‘’Actually, I have some friends there from Void who are really cool, very Berghain influenced and they were planning an event with myself and SHXCXCHCXSH, but sadly in the last minute he cancelled, and then the club owner asked me to organize an event with them, so we went ahead with a label night. The same weekend after that we threw our first Hypnaughtic label night in my hometown where I played b2b with Elena for 5 hours and that was incredible for me after a year living in Berlin returning to my hometown and making our label night!’’ Elena: ‘’It was amazing indeed, but I was really nervous because while Florin is a professional, I only ever played at home and it was my first time playing in front of an audience, but in the end after the first 15 min we got our groove and I had an awesome night and people danced so much! The flyer which I made for the event was even up on the screens in the club and it was surreal for me.’’ Florin: ‘’So yes, to come back to your question, we are definitely going to organize events there too, especially because for me it is easier due to the fact that I have a lot of contacts through my time as a DJ there. We do everything with love and everything has to happen naturally and it’s only a matter of time!’’

I couldn’t agree more with that! Through my own experience, I learned as well that it is okay to take your time and not succumb to the pressure to constantly produce content or do something just so that you stay out there. It is about putting your heart in your work and eventually it will pay off. I hope that more people who are starting any kind of project related to the electronic music scene would adapt this approach and will thrive on their own driven by their passion and love for the music like Elena and Florin are.

Future projects and Hypnaughtic label launch

It is not often nowadays that people in our industry are doing things with no commercial interest, but Hypnaughtic is an example of an organization that comes from genuine love for the music and wants to nurture and support the world beyond electronic music through their output. The Hypnaughtic label will be launched in late June or the beginning of July with a digital only VA compilation, the profits of which will be fully donated to the charity organization ‘’Viva con Agua’’. This is an organization that provides clean water and housing for children in poor countries, and as the couple believes that our future is with our children they choose this as their first donation of many to come.

Hearing this I feel a huge smile crawling up on my face. Some of electronic music culture’s core values is about being open, sharing, accepting, helping people, enriching each other in every way we can musically, culturally, but also on a human level. It is a culture that unites people in hard times and gives a platform for a different way of expression when it comes to our feelings towards modern life and global events. Normally, we see a lot of charity output being pointed towards supporting clubs that are facing closure, or in general the wellbeing of our scene in every aspect, but I find it also admirable when people take it a step further like Florin and Elena do.

‘’Nowadays there are so many things out there on the internet, but with vinyl you create something which is timeless and you can even hand it over to generations afterwards and it will still last and sound the same. ‘’

Elena: ‘’We definitely want to focus also on EPs not just VA compilations. We already have some artists that we’ve confirmed for EP releases in the second half of 2021. For now, we are keeping things digitally, but when time and budget allow us, we will definitely release on vinyl as well.’’ Florin: ‘’I want to make my dream come true and have a vinyl release one day. It`s still a long way and it’s all a process, and I surely need a couple of more lessons. We are on a good way and we have no pressure for the moment.’’ As the ‘’vinyl junky’’ that I am, it’s important to me to hear their opinion specifically on that, why vinyl? Florin: ‘’I am very inspired by history, traditional art and nostalgic things, and vinyl is the best output. With digital you can press a delete button and it’s all gone, but vinyl stays forever!’’ Elena: ‘’Nowadays there are so many things out there on the internet, but with vinyl you create something which is timeless and you can even hand it over to generations afterwards and it will still last and sound the same. ‘’

With that on a positive note with a romantic thought about sharing the music of today with the generations after us we concluded our conversation. I am happy and energized to be able to speak to members of the community who are sharing the same values and are trying their best to leave their own unique imprint on the scene! The full announcement for their debut VA will come in June, so stay tuned, but in the meantime Florin recorded a special mix for me, where he showcased some of his favourite nuances of hypnotic techno! Enjoy this deep journey!