Berlin based Alex Niggemann flew into Dublin for a special Halloween show in Pygmalion 10 days ago. On such special occasions, with such esteemed guests, the guys from Pygmalion open up their doors into the Powerscourt centre and the story unfolds within those high ceilinged walls.

Having travelled in from Moscow, I met the Aeon label chief in his city centre hotel around 8pm. The hotel bar provided much needed respite from the carnage that was already taking over the streets of our fair city. With a glass of sparkling water at his side and the promise of a prosciutto pizza at the end, we sat down for a chat.

WWD : So you’re on the water here now, but I have to ask, do you like Guinness? Have you tried it before?

Alex : Well that depends on whether I’m having some really Irish type food. If so, then yes but usually I prefer German beer. But I’m not a big beer drinker even though I’m German.

So what’s you’re drink of choice? 

My drink of choice. Vodka, usually.

Ha, you were in a good place in Moscow last night so! 

Yes, yes that’s for sure!

So tonight you’re playing here in Dublin…halloween night, are you a fan of Halloween? Are you a fan of geting in the spirit of things and dressing up?

Well actually Halloween is like something new for me in a way because in Germany it popped up a few years ago, but we have our carnival which is actually kinda the same in a way. Actually it’s a like a mixture of carnival and this certain time of the year when the children go around ringing doorbells, singing songs and getting sweets. So the kids get two occasions during the year.

Ehm, dressing up. No actually. Even though I’m from Düsseldorf and it’s one of the big carnival cities and everybody usually dresses up and gets hammered, for me in my teenage years maybe, but right now not so much. I’m a little bit boring in that way I think!

Well I think it could be seen as quite commercial if somebody from the underground scene like yourself was seen to be wearing a mask no?

Well I mean it’s fun. Like if I was with 10 other people who were all dressing up and you were at a party and there was a certain theme and you all decided to go as monsters or whatever, cool. But just me on my own, no.

Very good. So recently Ireland played Germany in the Euro 2016 qualifiers. Are you a football fan?

Yea I am.

So did you get to watch the game ?

Yea I think I it was a good game. You guys really deserved to win and I’m really hoping that fight wasn’t for nothing and you guys make it in the play-offs.

Yes, fingers crossed now. Bosnia will be tough but we can hope!

I mean we were struggling in the last games, you saw that, and I think we were a bit too sure that we were going to win, but yea if you can play against Germany like that you never know what might happen in the play-offs.

Do you have a team back home that you support? 

Yes actually Fortuna Düsseldorf because they’re my local team. They’re in the second league at the moment. Always going up and down. 1st league, 2nd league, 1st league, 2nd… so it’s a lot of stress! However, I’m a real fan…unlike if you support Bayern Munich or a team like that where you know they’re going to win anyway.

Any other hobbies that you have?

Well I try to balance my lifestyle a lot with sports even though you can’t really see that! I actually have played tennis my whole life and I still play that. In summer I play some beach volleyball. We have a bit of a crew in Berlin with lots of Djs like Steve Clark, Marco Resmann and we play every Thursday during the summer. I mean I love sports but unfortunately I just don’t have enough time.

You’re playing tonight in Pygmalion, you’ve played in Dublin before right ? This year even.

Yes for Melodic in Grand Social. It was a good party. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the venue because there was different areas and they divided the club up. I have seen that a lot actually, especially in the UK. I don’t know, for me I prefer spots where people only have one choice and they just really go for that one thing instead of hopping between rooms. But it was still a good party. We had fun! I definitely played here before too but please don’t ask about what venue or the promoter. I can’t remember!

Now Pygmalion is a pretty cool club. But for big nights like tonight they kind of do something different and open up the Powerscourt centre. So by day it’s a shopping centre and tonight it’s gonna be mad. What’s the weirdest venue you’ve ever played in?

The weirdest venue I’ve played in…actually a church! In Amsterdam at the beginning of this year in April. That was really weird because it is actually a real church! So if you go in there and you see all the party heads, you’re like where do I go to confess my sins!? It’s also weird because you see everyone having fun drinking and people hooking up with each other and in a church, it was kind of a weird feeling. But I liked it because of the audience and because of the venue it was a really special day that’s for sure. So yea I’m really looking forward to tonight. I don’t really know what to expect, but it should be good!

(Next up at Pygmalion/Powerscourt is Hot Since 82, December 11th)

Now, your Divergent EP is out now on your own label Aeon. I really liked it. 2 very different tracks?!

Yes on purpose. 100%.

You know the way you can get into a routine of producing similar sounding tracks, did you make them around the same time?

Actually no. Not at similar times. To be honest, Divergent was the track I did first this year and I was back and forth with other labels to release it there but decided in the end that I wanted to do it myself. I just saw that it was played throughout the Ibiza season very often by various big artists so I thought why should I give one of the best tracks I have done this year to other labels when I could support my own label with it. With the second track Luminance, my first thought was it might be an album track but because Divergent was very techno and straightforward, I thought it might be good to have something melancholic on there, something that could be played at the beginning or end of a set. I really like those kind of EPs because I don’t want to have another track which is competition for the lead track on my own EP so I just find it’s better to be diverse and get the best of both worlds.

You say the big guys are playing it in Ibiza this year. Generally, how has it been received?

Actually it’s been the biggest and best feedback we’ve gotten for our Aeon EPs so far. So I’m hoping that it will give me another boost because I know a lot of people were waiting for that track, asking who it was from and so on, so when I played it on my Boiler Room people were really happy when I announced it as my own.

I saw your Boiler Room actually. It was pretty cool. You know the way you usually have the crowd behind you, but you had the water behind you? It was different.

Yea it was different! It was fun. I liked it because I had the people in front of me. I don’t really like to have the people in the back. It’s like everyone wants to stand next to the DJ but for me I grew up in the time when everyone was just dancing and there was no cell phones. I mean I’m not old, I’m 30, but I’d prefer people to dance throughout the whole night instead of putting their hands up the whole time you know? And taking pictures and videos….because I dont know if you can really see something on a video the next day apart from like ‘oh man I was fucking hammered’.

So you’ve the Divergent EP out now and from your socials it looks like there’s lots of new stuff coming?

Yes! There will also be another EP before Christmas or beginning of January I’m not really sure! The EP contains another 2 tracks which I also played in the Boiler Room – ‘Angular’ and ‘Convection’. That’s definitely coming up soon because as a follow up, I really wanted to put them really close together because people recognise those 4 tracks so it’s good to put them all together. I’m also working on a few collaborations with singers at the moment and while I can’t really give details, they will definitely be something that’s coming in February/March as well.

2014 was a huge year for you. You had Materium, Earth Symphony, Tarkus and more. 2015 you’ve definitely had good releases too, notably the Virgo EP on Sasha’s label Last Night On Earth. Have you found yourself touring more following last years success?

Definitely Materium gave me a huge boost. That’s all I can say. I don’t know. As a dj or producer you have that one track that everyone knows and for me that actually happened with Materium. So I’m happy that I had that, but it’s also tough as an artist. You always want to repeat or top that. Which actually made it quite hard for me at the beginning of this year until I just said ‘fuck it, just be different’. Just try make stuff from scratch again. I’m definitely playing more this year and hopefully even more again. I mean touring is a tough thing but I just like to go out and play music for people, make them happy and enjoy parties!

So how do you balance that touring with the studio time ? I mean you’re touring a lot but you have lots of new music coming. How did you squeeze everything in? What is your work/life balance like?

Well I had this discussion with a friend of mine just last week. He’s also djing and he said – how can you make so many tracks and also tour and do all that other stuff too? For me, it’s a bit of a compromise. Right now, I really focus on making sure I do everything for this career so it can hold as long as I want to or as long as it can happen. But balancing, I mean, I do sports 3 times a week. That’s something where I just get away from the whole music scene. But further to this, trying to be healthier, which is more or less working I guess.

Do you have a plan for your time away from work? Do you lock yourself away for a couple of weeks? Do you schedule a couple of weeks in the diary?

Yeah, I started like that actually. I started a little bit late because this year I only had one holiday and I really had to mention it in June just so I could take 1 week off in October! But I’m definitely going to do it more. Maybe every quarter of the year, just to escape for a week or 2 because I could really see it helping me a lot. I was just sleeping, reading books, having good food and that’s the best balance you can have. Because the rest of my life is really stressful and hectic.

Where did you go on holidays?

I just went to an apartment in Spain which my mother bought before she died and I just went there on my own actually because I knew there was a few things to do and fix up a little bit. For some reason I really enjoyed fixing things around the house. It calmed me down or something. Like I was fixing something in the morning, then I did some DIY shopping and went to the beach until 5 just reading books. I’d actually fall asleep at 8 or 9pm and wake up at 6 o’clock in the morning when the sun came up. It’s totally different to my usual lifestyle and I really liked it! You could call me a really boring guy when I go on holidays, but I just want to sit on the beach, have a beer and relax!

We’ll move onto the label. Aeon. Can you tell me a bit about the name?

The name just popped up because it stands for something new, like a new generation and it also can be related to the zodiac signs. It also can be used to describe a new era and that’s one of the reasons I liked the name, because it was like a new era for me. For example compared to the other label that I run, Soulfooled, it’s something completely different.

So you set up Aeon in 2013 and you’ve had some great artists feature. How have you found it progressing? Running a record label is quite tough these days!

Yes it is actually! And with that in mind, it’s actually doing really good. Right now we’re on the way to catalogue number 20 and I can see a steady progress that I’m really happy with. Also really happy that I have the second label Soulfooled because all of the mistakes I made in the beginning with that, I didn’t repeat with Aeon, so I can see a lot of things are going better. I’m also really happy with the artists I have on board. Speaking Minds, Denis Horvat, Jona….They’re making great music which fits perfectly with the label.

You’ve got those great guys signed to the label already. Have you anyone in mind that you’d like to sign?

Well I mean there are always artists that I would like to sign. Like one of my biggest idols is still Laurent Garnier but I think I have to work a little bit harder to make that happen! But things like that happen usually with remixes and then you book them to your parties and you get closer to them so there is always a chance!  For example, Matthew Johnson is just doing a remix for me and he will be playing at some parties as well. That’s the first really cool thing.

I will also bring Aeon in a slightly different direction too. Like doing an album for example. And besides the techno or peak-time music, there is also going to be some more experimental stuff so there is space for everybody on Aeon. Let’s see!

You’ve mentioned an album there a couple of times now. Do you have a date in mind? 

I’m actually starting to work on it. I have 1 or 2 tracks already but you never know in the end if it’s going to happen or not because it takes time. I remember last time, when I did my first album, I had the time. I took the time off to produce it. So I think for now, I have to think how many tracks I’ve done and work on it across a longer period.

At this point we were greeted by the ever pleasant Baba Robijn and Dublin’s own Gavin Francis. After a brief interlude we were just 2 again and in the words of Pete Tong himself, ‘we continue..’

The next question I have is Ibiza based. tINI, your fellow German, hosted her party at No Name. A really cool party I was lucky enough to catch there one of the days it wasn’t cancelled this season! That’s been a big issue hasn’t it. The cancelling and the commercialisation of it all. What do you think about that?

It’s politics. It’s nothing else other than politics. I believe it’s not something to do with the real politicians on the island it’s just something like certain promoters don’t like certain parties that are happening at a certain time so they complain to the government. I mean Ibiza was always a bit like that. They always had trouble. There was always strange things like that happening so this is something which isn’t unusual. I mean I know tINI, she’s a really nice girl, and I’m not wishing cancellations on anybody, but with Ibiza you just never really know. Plus, Ibiza has become so big now I don’t think they were the only ones that were suffering. I know some of the really big parties didn’t have the success that they wanted because of the offering that’s on the island right now which makes its a little complicated. Prices are getting higher and higher, everybody has a night and everybody has the same djs but on different line ups, on different nights, in different clubs. It’s a promoter’s risk and as I said, I’m not wishing any more cancellations on anyone and I really wish those day parties work out next year because they are really cool.

Yea it’s a shame because they’re really cool. Especially tINI and her party. The whole concept is really cool.

Yea that’s the thing. It’s such a shame because it’s actually a little smaller and that’s exactly what Ibiza is missing right now. I know there were a few small clubs which tried to be a little more underground but it’s difficult there you know.

On the subject of police cracking down. Are the police in Berlin getting stricter? Like they did with Sisyphos in the past and recently with the closure of Stattbad? 

Well that was something to do with the area that it’s in. It’s actually a residential area so that was probably the reason. To be honest I don’t really know why they shut it but I assume it had something to do with that. It was actually a really cool club. I don’t actually know if I can call it that because they had different events too. Like it was not always open every Friday and Saturday. Boiler Room was down there you know. It was really nice and I had some really really crazy parties in there. Its definitely a loss but realistically, this is the entertainment industry. The same would happen if you owned a restaurant. A restaurant would not work for 80 years straight. It might shut down after 10 and you start something new. I think that’s what everyone’s going to do again and that’s just what happens. It’s a pity.

Oh and police, no. Everybody knows Berlin is a party city. It’s a tourist city and people who go to visit, go to party. So if police were to get stricter, it will just hurt Berlin in it’s heart. So I don’t really think they are. For example, everybody knows what is happening in Berghain, everybody knows but it’s kind of a tolerance thing. It’s politics. Like it’s an institution and they tolerate it. If people do drugs in there or they do whatever, they tolerate it, because they know if it’s done in there, it’s better than outside and everywhere else. So as long as we have our gay mayor, I think everything is going to be fine with those kind of clubs!

Any recommendations for unknown spots in Berlin? Any hidden gems? 

To be honest I’m the wrong one to ask! You know why? I’m spending like 3 days a week in Berlin and I’m not spending them outside of my house! Like when I have a free weekend, you will find me on a couch with a pizza on my belly and the remote in my hand watching soccer! So I’m not really out. There’s always cool new spots popping up and as a recommendation, just follow the young Berliners. Meet people over there and they will tell you what’s going on. I think that’s the best thing. That’s what I do when I’m touring and when I have time off. Just go with the people and ask them to show you the real city. Ask them “How do you live?” That’s culture for me. I think that’s the only recommendation I can give!

Have you seen any social changes happening in Berlin over the past few years ? With so many people moving over, does that have an affect ?

I mean I’m in Berlin 10 years now. I actually came there when Berlin was already a hotspot and people had already started moving there because it was so cool and whatever. It has become even more international because 10 years ago there was young people from all over Germany coming, and now its more international. People from Mexico, Canada, France, Spain, all over. Right now it seems when you come to a club and you don’t know someone you better not talk to them in German because the chance they speak German is like 20%. It’s very multicultural which brings a lot of influences from other countries and a lot of creativity and that’s what I really like about the city.

You’ve been doing a lot of touring of North and South America. What do you make of the scene over there? It seems to be developing a good bit. From my own eyes, the US seems to be slightly more receptive to the underground scene that what it might have been a few years ago?

Yea that’s for sure but the US is still more so in the commercial bubble. When you go to the big shows, you have some of the cool people playing there, but usually the people that go there for the festivals, don’t go for the music. So the cool people, the people of say my scene, they’re going there to educate.. and maybe also for the money! But yea the US, it’s definitely still difficult but it’s growing. There’s definitely much more happening than before. Also I think WMC has done a lot to educate the people over there.

With South America, it’s always been big! Maybe more so with progressive and trance but it has developed a lot. I really like to go to South America. Argentina and Brazil right now are for me some of the biggest markets and it’s always great to go there. People are always very enthusiastic and it’s totally different to the North. You could actually compare it to the weather. Like the further South you go the better it gets. The more people you get and the more energetic they are. I really love it down there.

What’s your favourite city to play down there? 

Oh, Buenos Aires is always really, really good! There’s some really big clubs down there. I also like to play small clubs though you know. Like for example Bahrein. Well I mean, it’s not too small. They still fit in maybe 1,000 people but it’s very low ceilings and it’s dark. Kind of techno-ish in a way. It’s really nice over there. But yes, you can play the big clubs there as well and have a lot of fun but I really like if I can communicate with the people in the small clubs!

Finally, just a few quick questions for you! What have you been digging this year. Any artists or tracks in particular? 

The big ones…hmmm. Actually there is one track coming out from Marco Resmann which is release number 100 for Upon You. It’s called ‘Hundert’ – hundred in German. What else? ‘Yaoundé’ from Speaking Minds on Aeon was very big! Probably one of the tracks I played in every set this year. ‘Cedevita’ from Denis Horvat was big too! A lot of the big djs were supporting that! What else? It would be easier right now if I could go through my record box! There are a lot of tracks I’m digging right now but I try not to play things too often because if I like something and I play it too often, I can get bothered by it and you can easily go from love to hate with a track.

Anyone we should look out for in 2016 ?

Well you definitely have to check out Jona! He has already released on Carl Craig’s Planet E a few times and Get Physical but he was gone for sometime. Now he’s going to release an album on Aeon that’s really good.

Again, Denis Horvat. He’s going to have a huge, huge EP coming out in February I think. It’s got one of my favourite tracks, it’s called ‘Exit’ I think. Oh and Speaking Minds for sure.

I mean those are the people that are close to me, and that’s why I can see their development and that’s why I know what’s coming up. From other people, I don’t know too much at the moment. People should just keep their eyes and ears open for what they like!

And with that we concluded the interview and made sure the pizza was in the oven. After spending a few minutes afterwards for a more informal chat, it was time for Alex to get ready for Pygmalion. But first, that pizza!

Big thanks to Alex for stopping by to chat with us! Genuinely nice guy, who just happens to make and play genuinely great music! Grab your copy of his Divergent EP on Aeon HERE!

Follow Alex : Facebook // Twitter // Soundcloud

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Words by : Hugh G