As a kid, Ellen Allien idolized David Bowie. She learned his pop star language–the art of reinvention–early on. More explicitly, he taught her English: “My teacher said we should begin learning English from the translation of our favorite band texts. Bowie was thereby the first pop star for me. He has enchanted me because of his constantly slipping into other roles.” Not surprisingly, Allien is probably the closest person techno boasts to Bowie–an ambitious innovator and powerhouse, she shapeshifts nearly as often as she packs a crate of twelves and jumps on a red-eye.

An internationally renowned producer, DJ, independent label head, and soon-to-be fashion ingénue (she’s starting a line called Thrills), Ellen Allien is a pop star for the post-millennium. She’s also visually unforgettable: her album covers depict a fierce, intelligent lady lording over imaginary computer landscapes, and they’re often analogies for what’s going on inside. Her last album, Berlinette–designed by Berlin collective Pfadfinderei–showed her fixing a steely gaze skyward; the record explored being a native of Berlin and a citizen the world. The cover of her third full-length, Thrills (released in Europe in May), shows a two-headed Ellen Allien (realized by Steffi+Steffi) whipping her hair all around, free, while a mini Ellen peeps out from under her armpit. Clearly, Thrills is a philosophical record about self-discovery, an exploratory mission of uncharted internal landscapes–perhaps Allien’s version of Ziggy Stardust? “I am still on the search for me,” she explains. “Meanwhile my self-definition comes, to a large extent, from my work [and] my creative output. That also means discovering new in old and [vice versa]—like Bowie does and did.”

Growing Up Allien
Allien grew up with her mother in West Berlin. “I learned to play flute,” she says, referencing her musical background, “and in the corridor of our flat stood a small organ, on which I always hammered wildly. But I lost making music over the years until I was 19. Then I tried out all possibilities; I had a practice area, where I played drums and saxophone. I [did] that for three years, until I noticed something else was happening. When I bought my first vinyl, my saxophone sunk into dust.” Living with her boyfriend in a squat on Berlin’s Westside, she became addicted to mixing. Luckily, her “hobby” jumped off around the time techno was really starting to pick up in the ‘90s–just about the time she was getting bored of Berlin’s chauvinist hip-hop scene. “The main reason I moved from hip-hop to techno [was] it was the first time that [sex] really played no role [in the scene]–whether you are man or woman, whom you love, the way you love, why you are doing it,” she explains. “The only thing which counts is the love for the music, and thus a special [bond] of respect and friendship is created.”

This bond forms the modus operandi of Bpitch Control, the label she founded in 1999. It’s one of the more successful independent labels in Berlin, releasing a host of boundary-pushing techno, electro, and breaks by European producers like Sascha Funke, Smash TV, and Sylvie Marks, but it’s structured like a family. She and Funke listen to all the demos together and release albums by consensus–it’s less a collection of employees than a group of friends collaborating on an art project. No doubt her new Bpitch offshoot, Memo, will operate in the same way.

Bpitch’s mentality derives quite a bit of influence from the collectivity of Berlin counterculture. The label’s offices–comprised of two simple, loft-like rooms in an old building on Oranienberger Strasse–even have the air of a squat, albeit one with a lot of records. “I lived five years in an occupied house [squat],” Allien explains. “The exercise area [practice space] was in the cellar, the studio in the dwelling, and a Brazilian cultural center was on the ground floor. That was the first time my life that I could out-rave myself in an artistic and social way.” Though Allien has moved on, she holds on to the ideals of the underground. “We are all a little bit similar to street kids at Bpitch,” she says in her press materials, and she’s quick to clarify: “This refers to the fact that we are always out on the streets, on the roads of life. We carry the key around our necks so we can decide for ourselves when and where to return.”

Heartcore
As if an extension of Allien’s street-wise philosophy, Bpitch albums share the trait of being incredibly human. Beneath all the floor-pounding synth rhythms is always the frisson of vulnerability, even among Kiki’s Bauhausian grumblings and agoraphobic beat snapping. Allien’s affection for great melodies undoubtedly affects what artists she chooses as much as it does her own work.

Melody was the real grabber on Berlinette; with its glitchy breakbeats gracefully layered with swathes of guitar, synth, and vocals and its discernible hooks, it was as much a pop album as a dance one. “Berlinette tried to integrate my inspirations and influences from other people, nations and musicians,” Allien explains. “It had noisy, experimental elements and poppy, ravey melodies. Thrills is so much clearer in contrast to it. I found a way to concentrate on me. Now depth, fat basslines, clear beats, electro, and techno are simply merging.”

Allien says it was necessary to do some personal rejiggering to get into the mood to make Thrills. “In January [2004], I canceled all gigs and went instead to the studio each day,” she explains. “It is such a beautiful feeling from my ‘on the go’ life to return from traveling and DJing and so many humans around me to make music, to finally get out the ideas which accumulated themselves in my head in the course of time.”

Thrills presents another side of Allien, one more in touch with “elechtech”–the moniker she’s given her own music. Bookmarked by the deep sound of her new keyboard, an analog Arp 2600, Thrills is a dark, heavy, and isolated-sounding sojourn into the impermanence of self and time. “Future is dust/flesh makes me blind,” she sings, the vocals ground down and heavily processed to sound like the voice inside her head. “Don’t break me down” she implores on “Down,” as a chorus of snipped-apart breaths crest over cable-shock twitches of electro.

“[The darkness on this record] is not [meant to represent] emotional darkness,” she explains. “It’s the opposite. I just love melancholic music, it eases me…but the mourning I feel over the destruction of our world flows into my work and my music. The political situation is a drama for me; the history of mankind consists only of violence and wars. Nuclear policy, Bush, and [all] the prohibitions make me sick.”

Getting Her Kicks
Though influenced by global living and the precarious nature of our planet, Thrills is an album about Allien more than any of her past works; there’s practically Buddhism behind itslaser breaks and ping-pong sequencing. It’s full of self-reflection, allusions to a dual-self, and wire-tight production and EQing (thanks to Smash TV). It’s less obvious and immediately compelling than Berlinette, but much deeper, the sound of a woman taking stock of her accomplishments and unpacking who she’s become. “It’s a journey of the head into the heart, an ‘emo wave,’” she affirms.

“Music is my isle and my wave at the same time,” she professes. “I was always on the search for something that creates a thrill,” says Allien, “and it’s completely simple: it’s music!”

On Pitch
Four BPitch artists sound off on their fearless leader.

Sascha Funke
“As a producer, Ellen’s music is surprising, never standing still and never sounding the same–it’s constant musical change. And it’s always interesting [working with Ellen]. She’s not only the BPitch boss, but also a good friend; our constant musical exchange is very important.”

Tomas Andersson
“I really like Bpitch’s open-minded, across-the-board approach to music. It’s not like other labels, where every record sounds more or less the same regardless of who made it.”

Kiki
“We first met in a club in Berlin when we were accidentally booked at the same time. We ended up playing back to back for six hours! It involved a lot of fun and vodka, which gave me the name for my first release on BPitch, “Vodka Lime.” [Ellen has] the guts to try new things and to push things forward, and actually makes it all work on a big scale.”

Feadz
“[Ellen puts] a big touch of sensitivity into this dancefloor shit!”

“Who’s that gigolo on the street/With his hands in his pockets and his crocodile feet.” –Neneh Cherry

It’s 10AM, Brazil time. I’m given the hotel alias of DJ Hell (born Helmut Geier), the mastermind behind the International DeeJay Gigolo label, and told I’ve got a one-minute margin to get the call through or he’s going swimming. South America’s long been a hotspot for German tourists, but Hell doesn’t have much time to rest. He’s come to rock Rio: promoting his company, his recently re-released album, NY Muscle, and, as always, “looking for new Gigolos.” Brazil is where he’s found the label’s third Gigoletta, Romina Cohn, and he’s always on the prowl. “I don’t know what will happen once I stop travelling,” he nervously projects. “I found most of the artists on the way.”

Hell didn’t just pull up to Gigolo’s first release: David Carretta’s 1997 “Innerwood.” There was a lot of fahren auf die Autobahn before becoming an A&R man and label owner. It started with Hell driving to Munich from the bumfuck town in Bavaria where he was born in 1962. By the late ‘70s, he was a teenage punk rock DJ, and eventually he was exposed to the experimental yet automated sounds of Detroit techno, Chicago house, and UK acid. Hell’s irreverent sets earned him a reputation, and a slot at Berlin’s Love Parade 1992, where he unveiled his first single, the self-pressed white-label “My Definition of House.” Showing off a fascination with Juan Atkins’ style of motor-booty bass and Jeff Mills’ “punishing beats,” Hell says he “liked the idea of funk being raw, but also being new and futuristic.”

Offered an album deal with Disko-B, Hell constructed the full-length, Geteert & Gefedert (1994), with Gigolo-in-waiting Richard Bartz. Hell continued to perfect his industrial and darkwave-inspired techno but his sophomore release, Munich Machine (Disko-B),four years later, showed an artist who had loosened up enough to admit his love of Euro-disco (via an updated version of Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana”). “[The stage] was already set for [Gigolo’s] silly/serious approach,” he declares, “but we had no idea how seriously people would take our silliness. It’s okay to be comedians, but we never sacrifice the art.”

Overexposed But Underground
“In the beginning we started [International DeeJay Gigolo] with a ‘from a DJ to a DJ attitude,’” Hell explains. “We were trying to [make] exclusive material that DJs really appreciated and played in clubs.”The zeitgeist began in the year 2000. Hell was simply following his instincts, putting out the new wave of electronic pop artists, but by 2001 his stable looked like the Superfriends of electroclash. “We had Miss Kitten, Fischerspooner, Mount Sims, Vitalic, and Tiga,” he says, listing each with the pride and prejudice you feel for a pair of kicks that may have been the rage last year, but you’re now reluctant to flaunt.

After electroclash exploded, Hell and NY promoter/impresario Larry T exchanged public quotes and criticism over who created it and why it should be killed, though much of the hype/bickering seemed contrived. “I don’t want to say the name,” Hell starts in on you-know-who, “but if you look at the artists they were trying to push, some of them don’t even exist anymore. You can’t fake the funk. You need something more than just a cover of a magazine.”

“There’s no sellout shit,” testifies Canadian DJ/producer Tiga, a former Gigolo. “That’s a big deal for a label that got as much hype as Gigolo did. Other labels would’ve been doing that cheesy Eric Morillo mix,” he says, recalling the success of his electro cover version of Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses At Night,” “but Hell makes music that’s not fucked with.”

Even though Hell used T’s Williamsburg club Luxx to film his video for “Keep On Waiting”–and got dissed even more for including P.Diddy and Princess Superstar in the clip–he is keen to prove that Gigolo has always been about the music. He insists that, for every accessible dance track he’s put out, you must also “talk about The Residents, Throbbing Gristle, Tuxedomoon, or D.A.F.” And he hopes listeners won’t buy into the pigeonholing. “I hope that after the electroclash hype, especially in America, they don’t just focus on the big names,” he states. “There’s always something avant garde behind the door.”

The Gigalo Factory
While they call theirs the “Gigolo style,” it’s hard to pin down. An artist like Savas Pascalidis plays a sort of neo-Italo, in-house producer Abe Duque makes jacking, Newcleus-meets-EBM techno, and Mount Sims is on a concept album desert trip. And that’s not even considering rock acts like Psychonauts and Crossover–shit, they play guitars. “Every artist has their own fantasies,” confirms Hell, “but I can recognize what’s right for us in two seconds, and we all believe in the [concept of the] ‘Gigolo Factory.’”

Greatly inspired by that other “Factory” foreman, Andy Warhol, Hell’s a collector of characters in the best sense, right down to his transsexual muse/mascot Amanda Lepore, who he’s sure “would’ve been a ‘Factory Superstar’ if she was around in Andy’s time.” He’s also got Warhol’s prolific work ethic: now approaching 160 releases, he promises a lot more in 2005; “We’re putting out a new record almost every week!” he says.

In German, the name Hell doesn’t have anything to do with the devil; in fact, Geier’s moniker closer translates to something that shines brightly. Perhaps this Gigolo’s future is so “hell,” he’ll have to wear shades…at night, of course.

International Sin Set: Six Essential Gigolos

Abe Duque
A former Marine Corps mechanic, producer Abe Duque now calls his Hollis, Queens garage his studio. Duque was in on the ground floor of NY techno and met Hell through notorious DJ/drug dealer Lord Michael when he had a residency at the Limelight. His new album, So Underground It Hurts, collects the singles he released on Abe Duque Records, and he describes it as “jacky techno and electro that’s on the bang-bang tip.” He also produced and contributed to Hell’s NY Muscle.
On Amanda: “Hell’s got something for her, but all I got is conjecture”
On Miss Kittin: “She once told me she was a supermarket checkout girl.”
Pick This Gigalo: “Because I skip the bullshit and cut to the good stuff!”

Amanda Lepore
David Bowie and Bryan Ferry had cabaret diva (and rumored hermaphrodite) Amanda Lear. Andy Warhol had the first transsexual movie star. Candy Darling. DJ Hell’s in good company with Amanda Lepore as his muse. This former Pat Fields employee/club kid likes the fact that her face has replaced Sid Vicious as the new label mascot. “Hell knows that I dress like a movie star, but have punk sensibility,” she says. “I’m an icon, too.
On Hell: “He’s never pimped me out, but he’s got good taste.”
Pick This Gigoletta: “Because I’m the most famous transsexual in the world with a fully functional vagina!” [And one of NY Muscle’s bonus tracks is “I Am Amanda Lepore.”]

Play Paul
Paul de Homem-Christo–the younger brother of Daft Punk’s Guy Manuel–has his own achievements to tout (“I found some polyphonic ringtones of [my single] ‘Be Right Part 2.’ What an honor!”). He also cites differences between his and his brother’s music: “I quit sampling, like, five years ago. They didn’t.” His “Lalaland” single (Gigolo #142) will hopefully inspire a whole album. Paul enjoys “being paid to travel around the world, playing clubs, and sometimes going back to the hotel with girls.”
On Savas Pascalidis: We once had a contest making phrases out of his name in French: How are you? = Savas (Ça va?); Don’t play the vinyl! = Pascalidis (Passe pas les disques).”
On XLover: “Their singer has the longest nails ever!”
Pick This Gigalo: “Women, if you’re looking for some action with a tiny, firm butted young boy, call Play Paul at 1-555-TINY-BUT”

Miss Kittin
She may be an Astralwerks artist now, but Caroline Herve will always be remembered for her Gigolo turn. Her collaboration with The Hacker, “Frank Sinatra,” helped tip an avalanche that is still claiming victims.
On Meeting Hell: “We met in Marseille when we played together in a rave. In the afternoon we went swimming and Hell cut his feet on a mussel. He was bleeding and limping all night. The next day Hell drove my diesel car to David Carretta’s house in Toulouse, where we spent the week playing petanque and eating BBQ.”
On David Carretta: “He taught us how to have style and dress up.”
On Hell: “He’s more like an electro Don Corleone. Like the father of the family, he’s protective, convincing, and always has the last word.”

Mount Sims
With a show that rivals those mythic Klaus Nomi at the Pyramid performances, Matt Sims is hoping his Ultra success won’t tarnish him for good. Spending a lot of time in his head, the desert, and Brian Eno’s Before And After Science, Sims says of his follow-up, Wild Light, “It’s a far more personal album. I was going through a lot of things when I wrote it.” While he insists he’s “nobody’s bitch,” he concedes Wild Light has that “dark edge that all Gigolo artists have in common.” Sims met Hell over the Internet.
On David Carretta: “He’s the future of hard, dancier, more industrial music. He references Front 242’s Geography but applies it to Italo-disco, taking that industrial edge to people with large mustaches doing cocaine off mirrors on a yacht off the coast of Italy!”

XLover
Not many producers can say they’ve worked for the master of sleaze-pop, Prince–in his Paisley Park studios, no less. Bryan Black brings what he learned in Minneapolis to a new crew of sexy muthafuckers, XLOVER. They’ve got vocalist Nina Rai’s stage antics, a drummer and bassist who are adamant about touring the world, and a new debut, Pleasure & Romance. With Princess Superstar guesting on a cover of “Darlin’ Nikki,” Black promises to bring back “that perverse, yet classy pop” that Prince once mastered, and says the rest of the material is “about the rush of experimenting with your sexuality, the thrill of the chase, and the devastation when it’s over.”
Pick These Gigalos: “If nothing else, because we have the sexiest singer and we’ll lead you on, until suddenly it ends with a bang!

Outside Sonic Sounds studio, Robbie Shakespeare is gesticulating wildly as he shouts a string of expletives into a mobile phone. Someone owes him money somewhere, and he’s apparently unhappy about it. He’s a big guy with a hefty frame who once served time in a notorious Jamaican prison on a gun charge, so whoever’s on the other end of the line must be sweating. Inside the studio, Sly Dunbar is the essence of calm as he adds some live percussion to a new computer rhythm; once the basic structure is in order, Robbie plugs in his instrument and deeply locks into the groove.

Reinventing Riddim
Sly is the yin to Robbie’s yang: if Robbie represents the sonic brawn of the partnership, Sly clocks in as the mechanical brains, a human machine virtually driven by the drums. Their unique chemistry has made them one of the greatest rhythm sections in the world.

Robbie says the two first met in the early 1970s while working the Kingston nightclub circuit. “First time I see Sly was on Red Hills Road where there was one club named Tit For Tat and one named Evil People. I was playing with the band Big Relation at Evil People and when we finished [keyboardist] Touter Harvey said he’s going to check this band named Skin Flesh and Bones. I go over there and see Sly and it sound wicked. We was doing a lot of recording and I was one of the main man with the Aggrovators band, so I call in Sly and we build a lot of tracks; everybody say Sly Dunbar sound wicked and the two [of us] together sound good. After that, I was one of the main Peter Tosh bass players, so me just draw fe Sly and there was no looking back.”

“I always liked Robbie’s bass,” adds Sly, “because when we start meeting in sessions down by Randy’s studio, we talk and ask questions. In those times, every musician used to respect each and every one, so we go and check one another, sit down and work out some music, design a few chords and things. That was then in Jamaica, but it doesn’t exist no more.”

After Sly appeared with Robbie on early Aggrovators sessions, Robbie was often a feature of hit-bound sessions held at Channel One studio with Sly’s in-house band, The Revolutionaries. Sly names a 1976 concert at London’s Lyceum ballroom, in which the duo backed the Mighty Diamonds and U-Roy, as a defining moment in their evolution. “They said that dubwise music couldn’t be played live, so when we came and start doing it live–went to drum and bass and worked it–the people said ‘No, I can’t believe it! They’re really playing it!’”

The following year, producer Derrick Harriott released Go Deh Wid Riddim, the first album to credit Sly and Robbie as artists. A natural next step was entering the production field as a duo, but Robbie says the initial recordings for the Taxi label, which they relaunched as a team in 1978, met with much resistance. “We got some free studio time for ourselves and nobody didn’t want to play at first. I remember I even stand up and cry and Sly said, ‘Cool it, Robbie man, everything will just work out.’ Then one day Gregory Isaacs came and give us six songs, and in those six songs was ‘Soon Forward,��� our first hit.”

Synthetic Pleasures
It quickly became clear that Sly and Robbie were changing reggae forever. Previously, reggae was limited to strictly roots styles with spongy rhythms. Sly and Robbie slowly began to infuse harsh, mechanized action behind innovative beats, adding a rougher, more metallic edge to the music. Sly’s early tinkering with drum machines and Simmonds electronic drum pads was soon copied by others, ultimately presaging dancehall music’s computer-driven production values.

Sly’s growing obsession with synthetic sounds coincided with a fruitful reconnection with harmony trio Black Uhuru, leading to a contract with Island Records. Sly and Robbie’s dynamic backbeats helped make Uhuru the world’s most popular reggae act in the wake of Bob Marley’s death, and the Island link also saw the Rhythm Twins provide beats for three albums from androgynous funk chanteuse Grace Jones, including the backbone of her groundbreaking single “Pull Up To the Bumper.” Working solidly at Island founder Chris Blackwell’s Compass Point studio in the Bahamas, the team had state-of-the-art equipment at their disposal, leading Sly to experiment further with semi-electronic drums and basic drum machines.

After Michael Rose left Black Uhuru (following the group being awarded the first-ever reggae Grammy in 1984), Sly and Robbie delved further into the international arena. They made a series of collaborative recordings with genre-bending pioneer Bill Laswell in New York, resulting in the multi-textured Language Barrier, a landmark release featuring guests as diverse as Doug E. Fresh and Bob Dylan. “The Bill Laswell connection starts when we were in Compass Point and I was using the Simmonds drums,” recalls Sly. “We had done this song that was really made for the James Bond soundtrack Never Say Never Again, but I don’t think it came out too good, so we used that rhythm track to create something else and that song became ‘Language Barrier.’ Then Chris [Blackwell] mentioned Bill Laswell; I don’t remember if he was in Nassau at the same point, but we got turned on to him and we shared ideas. We did that album and the second album, Riddim Killers, which had that hit song ‘Boops.’ He hooked up people like Bootsy Collins, Mudbone, and Bernard Fowler on that album. It was great–he’s a very creative person.”

Dancehall Nice
Because they had spent so much of the ‘80s abroad, Sly and Robbie’s status had taken a knock in their homeland; by the dawning of the 1990s, they were seen as out of touch and passé. But Sly is never one to sit still for long, and his ongoing fascination with technology meant the duo was able to bounce back with innovative dancehall beats, based largely on the bhangra form made prominent by Asian musicians in the UK.

“Me realize that everything was changing,” Sly explains. “Most of the records coming out in America, they was programming beats. To get the sound that they were getting on the records, there’s no way you could get it by live instruments; the whole sample thing came in and everybody start use drum machines, so we get to change too. When I was in England, I heard bhangra and, being a percussionist, I said ‘This will be wicked to work with.’ So I went back down and we cut [Chaka Demus & Pliers’ anthem] ‘Murder She Wrote.’ When I first used the bhangra thing, I used it on a song called ‘Almshouse’ with Capleton–used the tabla, but in Jamaica they call it the water drum. I’m pretty much into the Indian and Arabian sounds.”

After re-establishing their credentials in Jamaica, Sly and Robbie reached greater international glory with Strip To The Bone, their 1999 collaboration with ambient mix man Howie B. “I don’t know if Howie B’s a musician, but Howie B is very creative–more creative with this than I would think,” says Sly. “We never met him before, never really listened to his work, but once there’s music to go in and make, we just go in and make it, do what we have to do. There was no ego: Either it work or it don’t work, but you’re not going to know until you try.”

Awarded Orders of Distinction by the Jamaican government for their services to the music industry, Sly and Robbie show no sign of slowing down. After presiding over a Black Uhuru reunion in Jamaica, they recently released The Dub Revolutionaries and Version Born. The former, cut in London, is a finely crafted album with dubmeister Mad Professor featuring live instrumentation; the latter is another star-studded, multi-dimensional Bill Laswell collaboration. So what else is next for the Rhythm Twins? As I make my way out of Sonic Sounds, Drumbar and Basspeare assure me there is plenty more to come. “I think the future of reggae depends on Jamaica,” says Dunbar, “but we need different sounds. With good songs and good singers to sing them, the future for reggae is great.”

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