# Resident Advisor Exchange, an interview with Ricardo Villalobos (2012)

> - In RA Exchange 100 from around 2012, Todd L. Burns talks to Ricardo Villalobos about his back, vinyl, the internet, parties and his ECM album with Max Loderbauer.
> - Ricardo says belonging and dependency make people happy, not independence.
> - He calls staying out of competition the most important sentence in his life.

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Canonical: https://emin.de/posts/resident-advisor-exchange-an-interview-with-ricardo-villalobos-2012
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## Resident Advisor Exchange with Ricardo Villalobos

This is a summary of RA Exchange 100, a talk between Todd L. Burns,
Editor-in-Chief of Resident Advisor, and Ricardo Villalobos, broadcast
around 2012. You can hear the original on [Resident Advisor's
SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/ra-exchange/ra-exchange-100).
Everything below is what Ricardo says, not my opinion.

RA Exchange is a series of conversations with the artists, labels and
promoters that shape electronic music, and for the 100th one Todd
spoke to the Chilean-born, German-bred DJ and producer. Ricardo is one
of the most popular house music producers in the world. He grew up
near Frankfurt, because his parents left Chile in the 70s, and that
was a lucky choice.

Frankfurt was one of the hubs of electronic music in the 90s and
Playhouse was one of its most important labels. Ricardo first made his
name there and then built just as important ties with the Cocoon
family and its booking agency, with London's Fabric club, where he
released a mixed CD in 2007, and with Perlon, the Berlin label that is
now more or less his dance music home.

Lately he's been doing more and more experimental music. The year
before, he and Max Loderbauer released an album where they reworked
tracks from ECM, the German jazz and classical label. In this rare
interview he talks about keeping an innocent outlook in everything you
do, why he stays away from the internet and a lot more.

## His back and the records on the floor

Todd starts by asking about his back. Ricardo thinks it's damage from
working a long time in a wrong position. It's a common problem for
taller people and also for people who did sports and then stopped, and
he stopped at twenty-four. He played volleyball, athletics and soccer,
all kinds of sports, and volleyball for the last five or six years.

Todd says a lot of Berlin DJs seem to play volleyball together, but
Ricardo says that was his time before Berlin. He relaxed because he
thought all that sport would carry him for life, and it's not true.
From a certain point you have to do sports again, so the muscles make
up for the wrong positions you have as a DJ.

Wherever he plays there's no place left for the records, or if there
is, his friends are sitting there, so the records end up on the ground
and he has to go all the way down, for hours and for many years. And
the turntables are a bit too low most of the time. In the clubs of the
last three, four, five years there's no place for records anymore
because nobody plays records anymore, which he finds very sad.

He couldn't stand for more than five minutes, so he had to cancel
everything, because playing would only have worked with a lot of
painkillers. He took a break, recovered and trained his back. No
operation was needed, which is what he feared at first, and now
everything is good.

**Basically,** Years bent over records on the floor and low turntables cost Ricardo his back, until he trained it again.

## Vinyl, privacy and the internet

Then the new 12-inch for Perlon, which he calls the pre-album 12-inch.
So another album is coming. He's not only making spaced-out electronic
jazz lately, he's been producing dance floor music all the time too,
and the album is a selection of that. They produce and produce and
swap a lot between friends who also produce, and "ninety-nine percent
of the things are not coming out."

It's a small group of producing and DJing friends, maybe ten, swapping
long studio sessions, and a selection of those tracks now comes out on
Perlon.

But vinyl stays very important to them, an original copy of the music.
It means the artist gets money for it, and so do the distributor, the
record store and the designer for the label. That's what they want to
protect, because "this is financing our whole scene and our whole
culture."

Todd says this protect idea seems big for him. Ricardo says a lot of
moral things and rules about how people live together are getting
mixed up, and some traditional things are worth protecting, like
conversations, writing a letter, reading a book, things that seem
old-fashioned. Right now the thing to protect is an intimate life that
isn't public, protected from the internet spy machinery.

In his words, "The computer knows much more about me than my wife,"
about his needs and his inner thoughts. So a lot of people talk about
not taking part in this spy machinery. He calls the internet a very
critical thing and says all the social networks are like
disinformation, and he wonders where this information goes.

He has said in interviews that George Orwell's Big Brother idea is a
cold joke compared to what's happening now. "At the moment, Big
Brother is coming into your house, fucking your wife and guests." It
goes into your most intimate situations.

He sees the internet as a big gift, a free playground where everyone
can exchange, but he thinks it will disappear. You'll have Facebook,
Google, Apple TV, four or six or seven giant providers, you'll pay for
all information, and the internet as we know it will be gone. In his
view it was used for twenty-five years to spy on the needs and most
hidden wishes of every person.

Todd points out that the internet also helped him. Ricardo says every
form of communication helps, but the most important promotion for what
they do is the party itself, the record you make, helping other people
and spreading information directly. "The only promotion is the party
where you're playing for the next party." The distribution network
matters too, so a record can reach someone in Jakarta, but he thinks
the party decides about the next party.

**Basically,** Vinyl pays for the whole scene. The internet, to Ricardo, is a spy machine that knows more than his wife.

## Parties and the doctrine of dependency

Todd remembers him saying a party is one of the few places where
people get together in a peaceful and fruitful way. Ricardo agrees.
There are concerts and soccer games, but not many situations anymore
where people get together voluntarily for a common reason, and what's
nice about parties is the get-together and that there's no aggression
and no conflict.

That's why he wants to be there and be part of this collective
get-together, and he says it's the only reason he DJs. He wants to
belong to something and be dependent on a whole group. In his view the
promotion of independence is used to create values, needs and products
to sell, and he follows what he calls the doctrine of dependency.

You have to be dependent on people and aware of it, be necessary and
belong to a special place where you're necessary. He thinks
dependency, like in family systems or a child depending on its mother,
leads to happiness, and belonging to something leads to happiness, not
independence. "The promised freedom of independency means to be
lonesome at the end."

Todd asks where this philosophy comes from and if it's from his
parents. Ricardo says it's not a philosophy. We all get a socially
responsible education, otherwise we wouldn't have friends or family,
and it's based on belonging, dependency and social behavior. Making a
career is another story, but with friends and family you're social and
you don't try to do business.

He says the saying "never mix business and friends" is very true,
because you shouldn't look for an advantage over the other person, or
you'd have to buy your friends. It's the family idea. Later you swap
your family for friends and your mother for a new girlfriend, but it
stays the idea of belonging together and being interdependent, and you
see it every day.

When his little child cries, the mother runs right away to find a
solution, with no discussion and no transaction. People who belong to
each other just do things for each other, and he calls this "the most
important thing rescuing our world."

**Basically,** For Ricardo a party is a rare peaceful get-together, and belonging to a group beats independence.

## Darmstadt, kitchen parties and Frankfurt

He grew up in Darmstadt. Making friends is hard in general, he says,
because you have to invest a lot of time and find common interests.
His common interest with his father was playing, being as innocent and
as irresponsible as possible. His father was a mathematician and
"irresponsible" in a way, he jokes, but after he had to leave Chile he
couldn't work as a mathematician.

He worked as an engineer or whatever came, because he was in a new
country and the family had to survive.

The area was very nice. There was a lot of information about
electronic music and a good school system, and it was a bit in the
countryside, so he saw a lot of nature but also technology and
culture. Of course it's a different mentality than the Spanish or
Latin one in South America, and there were moments where you notice
someone from Northern Europe reacts differently than someone south of
the Alps.

One example is how you handle truth. In Latin culture there are
different ways of explaining reality with different truths, and
there's always a little back door to get out of a situation. In
Northern Europe people always try to say the truth, their own personal
subjective truth, and he says that right can be very useful for
scientists but not very useful for human relationships.

His first parties were his parents' kitchen parties. Always music and
always dancing, when Chilean people in Germany came together to
celebrate and listen to South American dance music. Todd asks about
Violeta Parra, and Ricardo says they listened to all kinds of South
American folk music, but what he remembers most is the parties, the
dance and the rhythm.

That impressed him the most. Todd asks if his house is also full of
dancing. "Of course. I try to."

Roman Flügel once told Todd that Ricardo used to have after-parties in
his basement. Ricardo confirms it. At twenty, out of school and still
living with his parents, he was DJing a lot. They invited friends,
people from Detroit or wherever, made parties and then had their own
little after-hour in the basement of his parents' house.

Roman remembered coming up out of the basement with Ricardo's dad just
sitting there saying "Oh, hello." Ricardo says exactly, he was sitting
in the kitchen. Down in the basement Carl Craig played, 22 years old,
one of the most amazing sets Ricardo has ever heard. It was a very
nice period, from ninety-two till ninety-six.

He was hanging out with the Playhouse guys. They were very active in
Frankfurt, selling records and running record stores, the Delirium
record store and before that Boy Records. They supplied all the known
Frankfurt DJs, mostly Ata and Heiko M/S/O, and it was the central
meeting point for people into house music. A center of information, he
says.

There was a culture, a lot of record stores and very important clubs
like the Dorian Gray and later The Omen, and a lot of money for
nightlife entertainment. Those are the basics for a cultural nucleus.

**Basically,** Chilean kitchen parties, basement after-hours with Carl Craig and Frankfurt record stores shaped him.

## From an SH-101 to his first records

Asked who gave him advice when he started producing, he says "There is
no source of advice." Your whole musical experience decides what you
do, the music you listen to and friends with the same interest helping
each other. He wanted a synthesizer and it was too expensive, so his
parents, his grandmother and everyone collected money.

A DX11 or DX7 was a dream. They collected about 700 Marks for a
Christmas present and bought a Roland SH-101, and he was super
disappointed. "What should I do with this shit?" He says children are
sometimes very unjust to their parents, and he sees it now with his
two and four-year-old kids. After half a year he looked at the 101 and
said "Okay, let's start to do something." A friend bought his first
drum machine, a 707.

They started with pop music, oriented on Depeche Mode. Daniel Miller,
the producer of Depeche Mode, was behind that whole sound, and you
always heard some repetitive four-to-the-floor beat, for example on
the "Get the Balance Right!" maxi-single from eighty-one or
eighty-two. Ricardo calls it a revolution and one of the first techno
things. That was a big influence, together with Italo disco.

From twelve to seventeen he went to thirty-two Depeche Mode concerts
and followed them all over Europe by train. They were huge fans, until
at sixteen or seventeen he had to start taking care of his own life.
For him Depeche Mode was a good compromise between the pop world and
the new technology of electronic music.

"For me, they are the Beatles of our new era." They explained to a lot
of people that electronic music is also music and the synthesizer is
also an instrument, and they wrote so many good pop songs.

The way to house was natural. South American rhythm music was there
first, then disco came, and his parents took him to the discotheque on
vacation. For him it was always the same thing. Out of the whole
electronic wave scene at the start of the eighties something happened
and it became house music, this mixture, and so house was the common
base of what he was into.

Todd says it's hard for a lot of Americans because house is pop music
in Germany. Ricardo says it's not pop music in Germany. What happened
is that the song-oriented house track turned into this new dance floor
style, a very cheesy form of electronic pop based on house, and he
doesn't count that as house anymore.

But techno, house and the Euro-trance thing all follow certain dance
and rhythm rules, and seen as a whole it's pop too. What he tries to
contribute reaches so many thousands of people that he'd call it
something like pop music. pop music is popular music and belongs to as
many people as possible.

His first record was not on Playhouse in 1994, as Todd thought. It
came out on Overdrive, a label from Mainz near Frankfurt, in
ninety-two. Then they had two small labels, Elastic and Placid
Flavour, and at the end of ninety-four his first Playhouse record came
out, which was already his fifth or seventh record.

**Basically,** A disappointing Roland SH-101, 32 Depeche Mode concerts and a first record on Overdrive in 1992.

## Music as a gentle language

Todd asks when he felt he had his own voice. Ricardo says he never
tries to feel that, because he doesn't want to define what he does.
When he sits in the studio and presses record he has no concept, and
it just has to sound nice to him. He says music is like a language and
should come in a nice, non-aggressive, explaining voice.

If someone screams at you or talks too much, you stop understanding.
He tries to produce a hearable, nice and clear language. The most
important thing is to have no concept. The frequency of the bass drum
and the bassline have to sound nice to him, and then he records, and
it doesn't matter if it's house, techno or electronic jazz.

When we talk we usually talk in a gentle way, which is the best way to
communicate, and he thinks music should be like that too.

There's a lot of aggressive music, Todd says. Ricardo agrees and loves
moments of pure energy exchange, rock situations and a hard techno
track that "really crashes me away," just not all the time. He likes
dark holes and bass but also bright colorful situations. To him the
worst thing you can do is call music good or bad.

"Good or bad music doesn't exist." There's music where you understand
the language and music where the communication fails, and that doesn't
make it bad. "Music is just a language you understand or not."

**Basically,** Ricardo produces without a concept. Good or bad music does not exist, only music you understand or not.

## Convincing every dance floor

Todd says his DJ sets took in more influences over time and audiences
follow him further. Ricardo says in every DJ situation you have to
convince the people, no matter if they're prepared or have no clue,
with the language you speak in that moment. You need the energy to
convince, even when you feel bad, and if it fails maybe they won't
book you again.

"Success for a DJ is being able to explain something so people
understand." People have completely different cultural backgrounds,
but with the rhythm formula you can get anyone in the world to dance.

His example is a record he's playing at the moment by a Palestinian
guy. It's folk music with clapping hands at more or less the same BPM
as house, chanting around a fire. Even if parts of the world condemn
Arab culture as whatever enemy, when you play this music "everyone
becomes Arab," and everyone is fascinated.

First the Arab people come and say "Hey, this is Arab music!" and then
people who might think the guy on the sleeve looks like a terrorist
are convinced the music is wonderful. He calls it the universal
language of music, an anti-Babylon. It doesn't matter which culture
you come from, and if this guy convinces you with his chanting, even
the biggest Arab-hater will dance.

Music shows we all have something in common. He says we all belong to
the Indo-European culture, three and a half billion people speaking
English, Spanish, Persian and Hindi, and all these languages belong
together. So it's very strange to him when people invent reasons to
bomb the Persians, because we belong together, and music shows we can
love each other and dance together without any problem.

Todd says every international DJ gets an interesting view because they
see all these people dancing to the same songs. Ricardo says exactly,
but he doesn't want to be a politician or blow up the bubble they live
in. Their movement is a still-accepted bubble with no political
meaning, and trying to make political meaning out of it could be
dangerous.

They should protect the bubble and be happy they can make parties.
Todd says you have to work hard to create it. Yes, Ricardo says, and
defend it. They are not DJ terrorists, and as long as no DJ terrorist
gets killed by some agency they're safe, and they should be happy for
those eight or ten hours where they can meet and hear music.

**Basically,** A DJ has to convince every crowd, and a Palestinian folk record gets even an Arab-hater to dance.

## The ECM project

Around the ECM release he mentioned putting Arvo Pärt and Alexander
Knaifel into his DJ sets. He explains that there are moments in a
party where you feel very dizzy and the party loses control of the
normal state of life. It's very monotone and rhythmic, and then you
think "It would be nice to put a choir or a violin on it."

A melody from somewhere else gives it some color. He wasn't into
classical or jazz back then, but every time he listened he was moved,
so he put what moved him into the set, especially pieces without
rhythm, on top of monotone rhythmic music.

He got into jazz and classical because of ECM. As a child he bought
his first ECM record, an interpretation of Keith Jarrett's music, and
his parents took him to concerts. But when you're innocent you don't
make a difference between jazz and classical, it's just music. Todd
says he was looking for empty on the ECM project.

Exactly, Ricardo says. What he used in his sets had no rhythm, one
instrument or a choir. People from ECM heard that at parties and
suggested an evening where they play ECM records with his music, and
then suddenly it was "Why don't we record a record?"

He wasn't nervous. Working with a concept is hard for him, but he did
it with Max Loderbauer, a good friend. They listen to more music in
the studio than they produce, they sit there, smoke cigarettes and
listen. So it was clear, take this part of an ECM track, loop it and
put something on it.

They did it in a very innocent way, without thinking "Oh shit, perhaps
it's not serious enough for the jazz people."

When they met Manfred Eicher they played him the first four tracks. He
saw right away it was a good way of mixing ECM music with a new
electronic approach and said "Okay, do whatever you want." They made
twenty more tracks, and Eicher sent suggestions and went looking for
empty parts of tracks. Ricardo says it was very fertile.

They had about twenty-four tracks, edited them and had to kick out
five or six because it was too much music for two CDs.

They also play it live, always Max and Ricardo with the modular
systems plus one jazz musician. They played with Christian Wallumrød,
the first concert at Berghain was with Claudio Puntin, and the Italy
tour was with Gianluca Petrella, an amazing trombone player. They play
in old places, Puccini, Paganini, incredible Italian concert halls,
500 years old and full of gold, and he likes getting in touch with
that traditional culture.

But then Italian friends come who know the parties and never listened
to the ECM records. After twenty minutes the first guy screams "Bass
drum!" and "I want my money back!" because they think it's a Ricardo
show and he'll play dance music. There's a rhythmic part, but only for
five minutes, and everything is improvised.

Live, Max and Ricardo split the roles. Ricardo takes care of the
rhythmic sound structure and Max takes the melody and the harmonic
part. But it can go wrong. If there isn't enough light or you're
nervous, you might not find the right hole for the cable. It's
completely improvised and you can't stop the concert, so you have to
deal with whatever happens.

**Basically,** Looping quiet ECM parts in an innocent way turned into a double album and improvised live concerts.

## Innocence, modular and the future

Asked if he's getting better, he says you get less nervous. "Pressure
always causes unskilled actions. Innocence is free of pressure."
Watching his kids he sees what it means to be innocent, free of
responsibility and competition. "To stay out of competition is the
most important sentence in my life." To say "Sorry, I'm not competing
with you. I don't want to be the best or richest." Just let us do
things.

So many electronic musicians play with modular now, and Ricardo calls
it an emancipation. It's more fun to find the cable and connect this
hole with that hole. You can have the same modules digitally in
Reaktor or Kyma or Max MSP, but with modular you feel you can find a
more personal sound. On a computer a preset often pushes you
somewhere, with modular you always start from zero, and it's not
elite, because you can buy one module per month.

He uses it in his dance music too, because it's less boring for him.
"It's like playing with Lego or Fischertechnik as a child. It's like a
game."

Todd says keeping things like a child seems very important to him.
Ricardo says not losing the relationship to innocence is very
important. When we go to a party everyone suddenly becomes a child,
smiling and hugging with no competition. "Going to a party is like
going to kindergarten." His children are his biggest idols now, how
they stay innocent, how they don't use their intellect and just decide
based on subconscious information. Consciousness is sometimes his
biggest enemy, thinking about the future and the past, and his
children just decide.

So how does he handle responsibility? He gives all responsibility to
his wife, he laughs. She takes a lot of responsibility, and he's glad
he found someone different from him who organizes and plans. She gives
him a shelter where he can be free and out of competition. It's
important to find someone who protects you and says "Okay, let me do
the organizing, you go to the studio for eight hours and be a child."

Last time they talked, Ricardo said he wanted to do soundtrack work
and more jazz things, and he's been doing that. So what's next? He
doesn't know, and defining the future is complicated. The ECM thing is
nearly the same as what he does otherwise, recording whatever comes
out of the studio without a specific purpose.

For him the most important thing is to just go on doing what he does
and not try to reinvent himself. He loves the party, he loves
producing dance tracks and he'll keep doing that, and if something
jazzy comes out, okay. "But it is the worst to define the future."
Being a DJ and producing is what he'll do for the next 10, 15, 20
years, "if my health admits it."

**Basically,** Innocence is free of pressure. Ricardo stays out of competition and refuses to define the future.

## Links

The original interview is on [Resident Advisor
Exchange](https://ra.co/exchange), and there's [Ricardo Villalobos on
Resident Advisor](https://ra.co/dj/ricardovillalobos). His label is
[Perlon Records](https://www.discogs.com/label/396-Perlon), the
collaboration is [Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer, Re:
ECM](https://www.ecmrecords.com/), and the key venues are [Robert
Johnson in Frankfurt](https://www.robert-johnson.de/) and [Fabric in
London](https://www.fabriclondon.com/).

**Basically,** The original talk is on Resident Advisor Exchange, plus his RA page and the clubs he mentions.