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It's hard to talk about something else except music with such people as Tomcraft and Lützenkirchen - both extremely active for quite some time now and doing lots of things with the music itself. So both of the leaders of the label "Great Stuff", celebrating it's 5th anniversary, were on the phone with me telling me stories some of them are much older than the five years.
What do you think are the biggest achievements during those five years of "Great Stuff"?
Lützenkirchen: I guess it's really the point where "Great Stuff" made it through the really bad times of the vinyl industry, with a lot of labels dropping off, and "Great Stuff" managing to release a lot of high quality music. I think also a great achievement is our top class artists.
Tomcraft: And we still have a lot of different artists. Many good and high quality artists, and they are also different. So it's always interesting to wait for new releases.

Compared to all the records you receive as demos, how many do you actually release?
L: This is very difficult to answer. We get lots and lots and lots of demos, and ... maybe we release one of a thousand in the end!
T: The track should have a quality standard, it should always be innovative and kind of new and interesting. When I listen to a demo, it must be cool and wicked from a very first time. So when I like it right after I turn it on for the first time, it's a good sign.
The series of events you are doing now, "5 Years of Great Stuff" - how is it different from the regular nights that you play?
T: The big difference is that we play together. Lutze and me are already very much looking forward the tour, because we'll have many days together, and this is something we don't normally have when we are not on the tour. Each does his own shows, and when we play together, it's always big fun for us. There were maybe three or four times in the last four years, I would say! And now we have ten gigs together in three months.
L: There's also a few nights when there's not only two of us playing but a couple of other "Great Stuff" artists, and this is also very special. Four one label artists playing on a new party - this is more like a label showcase, it's pretty different from a normal booking.
"Great Stuff" is much more than a record label - could you briefly present all the other activities you are involved in under the same name?
T: Well, we do the record label, then we do the second label and a few more labels, haha, we do the managing and the booking of our artists. Then we have a film company, so we do our video shoots, we produce films for advertising, for TV or cinema... These are the main points.
So no economical crisis for you yet?
T, L: No, not really!
How long have you been working together as a team in the studio? How does your work look like?
L: Three years now, a little bit more, I think... We've worked together in the studio since the beginning of 2006 and we started working together a bit earlier, actually. Tom flew a couple of times to me even before I decided to come down to Munich. And our work, I guess, it's like everywhere. It's normally split like someone is more the technician. And I've started out as studio sound engineer, technician, like ten years ago, so ...
Why don't you use the name Lützencraft anymore?
L: In the future again... Now we try to focus on our own projects, and it wasn't the right time then to do the Lützencraft, actually, because we wanted to do only Lützencraft and the sound of the project was very special and had nothing to do with neither mine or Tom's sound, and we decided to keep it in on hold until we find the time for the special sound.

L: We are actually not so often together! We normally meet like two times in a week, and sometimes on the weekends. Other days each of us does his own stuff.
T: So every week, but not all the time. But we do work together everyday.
Styles. Your music can be defined by many of them. So I'll just name a few and you tell me your relations to them. Let's start from house.
L: I like house, but a special kind of house. Not the typical old stuff, French house, vocal, la la, chick house, but more the really credible house like "Strictly Rhythm" stuff and any other kind of house, I can say, I really hate, haha.
T: I'm not a big house friend as well, because that's not the music for me which transports the energy I want from a track, that's why it's just the wrong music for me.

Electro.
T: Here we're at home!
L: Yeah, kind of, in the special way of electro... Like in the last years, the typical UK high energy electro is definitely my cup of tea, because it's for me too pressing on the ears. Normally you can say that electro is a very big word, and every electronic music is in a way electro!
T: I like, for example, the Hardy Hard stuff, this kind of electro, but I can't really play it that often.
Techno.
T: Yeah!
L: Yeah! Techno is my cup of tea, actually, the darker, the better! For me sometimes I listen to really hard stuff. Not schranz, harstyle or jumpstyle, but dark, driving, percussive techno. Like Adam Beyer, for example, couple of years ago. It's really great, I think!
T: I'm a big techno fan, but it must be not that hard or dark, it still has to groove, that's important for me.
Trance.
T: I did trance...
L: Me too! Haha!
T: ... for a long time and a long time ago. I really enjoyed that time, but I needed to have a development with the music, because I don't feel it anymore. I feel more comfortable with the sound we do now in the studio.
L: I never really did trance for myself, but I did a lot of trance records when I started doing production in 1999 or 2000. There was a time when this was still a little bit special, so we both started from trance, and this is very normal that you evolve ... but that trance is some kind of oldschool now. The trance that is actually done right now, I really can't stand it because it really sounds the same like 8 years ago! It is very disturbing for me that there is no evolution.
T: And no development.
L: Really strange!
Last one - minimal.
L: Minimal has lost the hype, but I still love it, I listen to minimal quite often at home or stuff like this. But I think there are very, very few minimal records that really stand out in the thousands of the clic clac clic clac sounds that have nothing to say. So I think the typical minimal sound of last years is really over now.
T: Hopefully! I really just have three or four minimal tracks that I play. In a club, when somebody plays minimal, I'm like "What's happening, give me something!". For me, it's too boring.
Lütze... You make music for advertisements, for example, "New Yorker". How is it different to make a track for a certain brand from making a dancefloor track?
L: The major difference is that this is really producing. If you just sit in the studio, and do a track and feel it's good and send out demos, this is not really music production. The production is when a brand, like "New Yorker", comes, and you try to implement what they want to have and how it has to sound and hot it has to support the picture and transport the content, and stuff like this, and in the end deliver what they want. So this is the major point in music for ads and even films, which makes it way more difficult than just making music for your own. For "New Yorker", for example, it was little bit more easy, because it was really electronic music and the brand is like this. I did, for example, something for "Microsoft", also for "Audi" or "BMW", I don't remember now... This was a little bit more harder, because you had business people sitting there in suits, and they tried to explain you how to make music! It's really kind of hard. I personally can't make it too often. If something comes around, it's ok, but it's for today. I would like to keep those business connection for the future, because who knows what I might do in 15 years or so!

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Do you often have the "3 tage wach" syndrom? How did the idea for the track come up?
L: Hahahaha! The idea was of course born between me and my friends, during the afterhours, and partying hard... of course. But now to stay awake for three days is not really possible for me anymore! I can't take it anymore! But it's quite typical and quite often that I don't sleep for one day, for example, like when I don't go to sleep after a party, just next evening, but no more. Maybe I'm too old, maybe I've already punished myself too hard, hahaha!
Why did you decide release also an English version of the track?
L: I didn't decide anything! They were really pressing on me, and on the other hand, I really quit thinking about the track, because it went so, so super over the top with all the ringtone charts and everybody talking, and so on, so I just said: "All of you, you can do anything you want with this track, I don't care anymore!". That's why there was the English version, and remixes, and so on... For me - I really didn't care any more!
Sorry!
L: No problem, hahaha!
I've counted 17 aliases of yours on "Discogs"! Why so many? How many of them are active?
L: When I had all those a.k.a's and different projects, I hadn't really started making my own records under my own name, Lützenkirchen. All those aliases come from the time when I was doing a lot of stuff for other people, producers or projects, even for such groups as "Paffendorf". There were a lot of producing teams, I used to be a co-prdoducer and stuff like that. And this is why there are so many names, but none of them is active. LXR and LK-Pro have been still active for some time, though, but LK-Pro I quit as well, Alex R is some kind of still valid, but I am not sure I want to do something with it anymore. Because, in these days, it doesn't make sense I think.
About "Paffendorf"... Were you just a producer or you maybe climbed on stage as well?
L: Oh, no, no, no, no way! We were a production team of three guys, I was in it because of whom I learned sound engineering, he was the main producer of "Paffendorf", so he just gave me a chance, and I had really good ideas, and wrote something and even wrote the vocals, but actually nobody knows it! But it was just like a job! Like doing a regular job, I was never into that music.
As a performer, you are quite young. Why did you decide to start doing that?
L: This was quite funny. In the beginning of 2006 my manager from the "Great Stuff" told me "Hey, man, you have to do this, because there are so many booking requests, just try it, you can do so much"... So I had to say ok. Tom was also laughing at me these days, because at the beginning I was asking for maximum one or maybe two times a month, then I started, and in two months I was DJing every week! And now I just play my ass off. Actually, I never wanted to be a DJ or liked it, because I come from a production background, and I never went through record stores and listened to thousands of records, think about styles... So I quickly decided to switch to playing live, because it's way more interesting for me, using my own production and techniques. Since live performing is the case, I really love it.

T: Yeah, that's about me! I met President Bongo a lot of times when we played together, and we were together skiing. My wife was with me, and then he decided to write a track about us. That's it!
Any more collaborations with him in the future?
T: Yeah, maybe, yeah. He's a good friend of "Great Stuff", we see him very often, and if there is a track and his voice, I think, would be suitable, of course we will do it again.
Four albums is quite productive for a producer who is also a DJ and a label owner! How long does it take for you to produce an album?
T: It's different. I never have to release it, so I decide whenever I want to start producing one. Sometimes it takes very long! My first album took, I think, seven years, haha, because I never had plans to release one. And then I said "OK, now I have so many tracks (those were all the old trance productions!), let's do the first album". Then the second album came quite fast, because I really wanted to do an album. My producer at that time, Eniac, moved to Berlin, so I travelled for 8 months Munich-Berlin-Munich-Berlin- all the cities I played-Munich-Berlin and so on, so this was a hard travel time. The other albums were a bit faster than that, two months to half a year I think.
Looking from today to your first album, how big is the change of your music?
T: Mmmmm... I think, it's big. The trance is away, but I'm still working with melodies, like my last record "When I was Sixteen" has a strong melody part. So I still love melodies, but in a more techy or electro surroundment.
So what were you doing when you were sixteen?
T: I was watching the movie where the melody is from, "Basic Instinct", hahaha! When I showed the track to a good friend of mine, and he has nothing to do with electronic music, he said "Hey, that's the music from that film!", and I said "Yes", and he was laughing because he remembered when I was sixteen and told him I wanted to do a track with this melody some day. And then I told him "That's why the track is called that way!"
You run both "Great Stuff" and "Craft Records". How do they differ?
T: "Great Stuff" is more the pioneer label, it's doing new artists and new sound, new styles sometimes, it's a bit more commercial. "Craft Music" is more the club label, we are looking forward club tools, faster music, more techno music, but we also have big hits there.
You have been to Lithuania quite a few times.. The first one, when you didn't even play, must have been quite a disappointment - was it ok for you to come back again?
T: Ha, I have forgotten about the first time! It was so unbelievably stupid... So this guy who didn't pay me, I just had to laugh because it was just ridiculous. Then we found other people in Lithuania we could work with. Of course I wanted to come back, because I'd heard you have nice cities and nice people whom I'd seen. So I had no regrets. I always enjoy being in different countries.
What do you think is Germany's greatest export, if not music?
T: Hmmm, internationally, I think, we definitely make the best cars. I myself drive a "Mercedes", haha.