Trickski’s debut album ‘Unreality’ is a long, groove-heavy and heart wrenching journey into the deeper, slower and sassier side of house music. Go on, get lost in it.
With over a decade of musical experience behind them, you can turn to Trickski for a night you’ll remember or an album you can’t stop playing. Trickski are producer and DJ combo Yannick Labbé and Daniel Becker as well as MC Jack Migger a.k.a. Fna. The group joined forces in 2005 after growing up together in the Freiburg region of Germany and then settling in Berlin where Yannick released his first 12″ hotbox/gallieni on Daniel Paul’s Cabinet label. The three began playing out thereafter and quickly honed their rougher, sexier house and techno sound.
After Carl Craig (a personal idol) selected ‘Sweat’ for his fabric 25 compilation and turned it into a small underground hit, the boys continued working hard and a few remixes later, Jazzanova – impressed by the unique sound of Trickski – decided to give them the responsibility for a new club series on their label Sonar Kollektiv and behold, ‘member of the trick’ was born. Tickski DJ sets have to be experienced and enjoyed to be understood. The boys see the house and techno genre in a broad context and will move between all kinds of sounds from techno to disco all in one night, breaking all the rules!
i-D online met Daniel and Yannick to hear about the album party and the day jobs as well as their passion for ‘silly fun websites‘, and to understand a bit further what the Trickski hope to achieve in the future. Listen in to our exclusively extracted Trickski mix, ripe for your Friday night.
Last time we saw you in London you were playing at a loft party in Shoreditch, how do the crowds in the UK compare to the rest of the world and your home city, Berlin? The crowd is actually pretty different. We do love to play in the UK, somehow it feels like people are a lot more open minded and eductated in pop music, not in a way of knowing all the artists, labels, years etc, it is not about knowledge, but it feels like they understand music. People do not complain here but appreciate it if you do something unexpected. Sometimes we wish there was a little bit more of London in Berlin and all over the world, maybe it is due to all these different subcultures and scenes you have, people dig into it.
Tell us the story behind your recent album… The story behind the album is something that we, as humans, face every day: Unreality. It’s on one hand that day-to-day reality that you don’t really want to be true and on the other hand the state that we long for but does not exist. It doesn’t really matter if these two sides are about love, about nightlife, your job, your body, your friends, money or whatever, unreality is pretty much everything that is not pure fact and has some tension between what you feel and what there is. This can lead to escapism, which then can bring you into a para-reality. Club culture has a lot to do with this topic. But Unreality is a huge part of our regular life too.
As for what awaits you music-wise, we’d say it’s pure Trickskiness. We wish for people and critics that don’t care about genres and just want to listen to the music and what we have to say, emotionally and musically. We know that in reality you need boxes to put it into, so here are some: slow house, dub, techno, soul, sample based music, darkness and light. It is a journey of uncertainty, like life itself. Fritz Kalkbrenner, Ernesto and Irfane are on vocals, as well as ourselves. It is simply our very own Unreality.
What do you both like doing in your downtime outside the music world? We are both pretty busy. Yannick is working for an advertising company as a copywriter and Daniel is running his own graphic design company with two partners called Goldener Westen. We both like our jobs, but work is obviously not everything. Yannick is also getting to be a wine expert and loves silly fun websites. Daniel is into football, his favourite team SC Freiburg is constantly struggling against having to go to the second division. We talk a lot about society, politics, the crazy economy, conspiracy theories, the way people are.
Where is your favourite place to play in the world? I don’t know if there is one particular place. Many places or clubs can be magic one night and pretty sad at others, it is always about the combination of places, people, moods, weather, states of mind, good luck, maybe even the moon. Slowpoke in London, run by our good friend Jaime Ritchie of T-Bar fame is one place we would love to go back to. Fabric is always great fun. Cookies club in Berlin gave us some real magic moments during the years of our residency.
What dreams do you still plan to accomplish? The main focus right now is to prepare a Trickski live set. We are planing to have our debut night at Watergate in Berlin at the Suol label night at the end of August, we are getting pretty excited about it since this way we will be able to perform the trickskiness in a much purer way.
Text: Laura Hinson
