Interview with Marc Snow (Tresor) from 2001

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This is a short interview I did in 2001 with New York native Marc Snow, the then A&R of Tresor and resident DJ at their club. Marc is a cool guy and was really helpful in my visit to Berlin that year, it’s a shame he left Tresor as I think they had their shit totally together when he was at the helm. Anyway, this is a short set of Q and A (based around his background, Tresor and the Love Parade) that I found when clearing out my Yahoo email account yesterday. Am really glad I did now, as I thought I’d lost it. Not all of the stuff may be so relevant to now, but what the hell! I like to read interviews from 30 years ago, so maybe some of you won’t mind reading this one from 5 years ago ;)
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So Marc, you are from the States but now residing in Germany. What was it that brought you to Berlin?
I met the Tresor label manager in the States in 1992 and stayed in casual contact over the years until I came to Berlin for Love Parade '95. I liked living in Manhattan NYC then but Berlin struck me as much more thriving, music and scene-wise. '94-'95 was an unhealthy period for the NYC club scene but the deciding factor in my move was Berlin's people and clubscene: I hadn't been to a place where people are partying all the time, pretty much let you do whatever you want, AND know their records too. I moved here six months later in late '95 and was hired to do A&R and promo for Tresor. I still have great friends in NY and go back as often as I can, but the whole NY thing personally wasn't my bag.

Was the strong techno scene in Germany an important factor in your move?
That and European culture in general definitely swung me this way. I'd followed the Germans' lean towards electronics early on and the development and open acceptance of Techno proved way more appealing here than the States in general. I'm proud that Techno's roots are American but thought the European club, rave, and travelling party scenes elaborated on it more effectively than anything we could put together in the States at that time. Reading the UK press's reports about massive parties featuring American DJ's who were for the most part still unrecognized in their own country was really frustrating since we couldn't seem to put up a similarly scaled party scene together on our own, at least where I was growing up. Since I couldn't read the firsthand accounts in German, my only real knowledge about the German scene was from a DJ's standpoint picking up records form labels Tresor, Force Inc, Labworks, and Harthouse. Berlin itself is kind of weird but the music is alive and really has a voice here. Buildings here still have bullet holes left over from the war in them so for me they were all interesting bits in the decision to come here.

DJ-ing, when did it start for you?
I started in 89 doing underground radio at university, played a mix of stuff since the first wave of Detroit Techno was still in the making. The station didn't have decks proper but that's where I first met Carola, the Tresor label manager. I started club DJ'ing here in 1997 but it seems to be really taking off this year especially.

Detroit, Chicago and New York standout on the American techno map. Which one of these movements were of particular influence (if any) to you?
Definitely all of them. Detroit is the soul of Tresor but we try to keep the label sound 'round' and representative of a lot of cities since we're all affected personally by them here. Dimitri Hegemann, Tresor's founder and owner, met Jeff Mills and Mike Banks in 1991 and eventually worked out 'X-101' "Sonic Destroyer" and the following ten or so Tresor catalog numbers. The label history since still includes strong American strains (Jeff Mills, Joey Beltram, Juan Atkins, Drexciya, Blake Baxter) and UK Newschool via Brighton, Scotland, & Birmingham (Cristian Vogel, Neil Landstrumm, Surgeon, Karl O'Connor/Peter Sutton, Tobias Schmidt, Dave Tarrida). New additions to the Tresor catalog in recent years include contributions from London (The Advent, James Ruskin, Ben Sims, Subhead, Matthew Herbert) and Tokyo (Fumiya Tanaka, DJ Shufflemaster, Chester Beatty). Myself, I'm definitely down with all of the above people, I like to play loud and nasty but I have cleaner Minimal and House sides I enjoy working with too. With label A&R I keep an open head when compiling projects and don't worry too much about geography. If someone in the Yucatan sends me a slamming and original demo, I'd definitely prefer working in that direction rather than some leftover tracks by a better-known producer.

The involvement of foreign artists with the Tresor label has always been paramount to its existence. Do you feel Berlin's importance has sometimes been over hyped considering that there aren't that many Berlin based producers making their mark on the scene?
Good question. There are a lot of people involved and not all of them 'good', but those who are sometimes really good and have earned their recognition. It's an opinion thing of course but take the case of Basic Channel/Chain Reaction: I've never been much into hero worship but some people need their celebrities and do all they can to popularize their idol's cause. But Berlin's a chill place really and luckily those producers 'at the top' are not into hype status at all and as we've seen with Underground Resistance, prefer to be themselves and stay low rather than resting on their laurels. That shunning of fame makes me like those guys and the city even more.

Love Parade is the most well known dance music event going. Does the fact that it has risen in popularity make it good thing or do you feel the original idea and ethos has been hijacked by those who see it more as a business opportunity?
The whole Love Parade experience was pretty shocking for me initially, as I was living in NY then and just visiting Berlin that weekend. My first reaction was pretty disgusted with the obviously big money involved but it was so disgusting that it was luckily more comical than harmful to the scene here; people who didn't have any idea about the music or its origins. That and the openness of the city toward the music and scene was a good part of my reason to come here: I hadn't seen that open-minded cooperation from a city government anywhere in the States so politically and for us, LP
is a 'victory' where in most other places it was impossible to put that size & nature of event on. The continually growing popularity is still kind of weird but I'm hoping that it's also introducing more people to the music rather than giving them an excuse to first-time imbibe in Berlin. Backlashes protesting LP's supposed 'peace protest' agenda have existed for a while but this year specifically were well-targeted backlashes against the LP philosophy by the organizers of rival parade/protest the "**** Parade"; making points specifically meant to educate people to the overly RIDICULOUS amounts of money that HUGE organizations were dumping into LP for their own advertising benefits as well as whatever 'cool' status they were trying to walk away with. 'Underground' orgs for the cause don't have a chance to participate anymore. Tresor has never had a wagon but the way things financially go with the LP, we probably couldn't considering the costs for truck/trailer/sound/security rental and insurance for a lot of people. The LP organizers have supposedly vowed to keep things more realistic in the future but we'll see.

Besides Berlin, where would you feel is the most happening city in Germany for techno of places you may have played? Anywhere else in Europe you'd like to play?
The "Neue Heimat" guys in Stuttgart do a really great job with "Club Prag", in Kassel there's "Stammheim", also top-notch. I haven't played "Ultraschall" in Munich but I've heard that's also good. There are lots of mini-outposts all over Germany and Europe but I also want to go East to Russia and around. I've been to Kiev in Ukraine which I thought weird but I'd definitely go back and do it again. The people were great and really up for anything you threw at them.

What plans do you have for the future?
We're still an independent firm and proud of it since we have the same profile as many major-backed commercial orgs. We have an extremely fortunate position to do what we want and work with our artists how they prefer and without having to promote Besides continually cranking out the records and discs, we're always busy setting up Tresor nights all over the world, giving people the chance to get it Berlin-style. It's been going over extremely well since our concept places the MUSIC before anything else. Unlike other popular clubnights also on the road, Tresor doesn't really care about your dress-code or bankroll: if you're down with the sound, you've definitely got a place to hang, enough said. See you soon!

ENDS
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