Tone Glow 147: Shed
An interview with René Pawlowitz (aka Shed) about DJing in his school cafeteria, the fall of the Berlin Wall, dub techno, and the problem with good PAs.
Shed
René Pawlowitz (b. 1975) is a German producer and DJ who has spent more than two decades making house and techno music under a variety of aliases, including Shed, EQD, Wax, Head High, and WK7. His first 12-inch, Red Planet Express, came out in 2004. He dropped his landmark debut album, Shedding the Past, in 2008 on Ostgut Ton. He would continuing releasing albums in the years that followed under the Shed moniker, including The Traveller (2010), The Killer (2012), The Final Experiment (2017), Oderbruch (2019), and Towards East (2022). More recently, he released a 12-inch as Wax, which can be purchased at Hard Wax and Bandcamp. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Pawlowitz on April 30th, 2024 via Zoom to discuss his childhood, his first time playing Tresor, and why he isn’t as interested in going to clubs anymore.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: How’s your day been?
Shed: It’s like summer in Berlin already. It’s 29 degrees centigrade—it’s really hot. I’m at Hard Wax and it’s empty and quiet.
Are there specific plans you always try to make during the summer?
I try to spend as much time as I can with my family. We’re with each other almost every weekend.
How many children do you have?
I have two kids—a boy and a girl. The boy is nine and the girl is eleven. It’s really exciting. It can be hard but there’s always enough love and it’s an adventure. They’re actually coming by later because they’re helping to stamp the new vinyl—the new Wax is coming today and I made represses of the other numbers. There’s a lot to do.
I wanted to start off by asking about your childhood. You were born in East Germany in Frankfurt. What are the earliest memories you have?
I can still remember kindergarten when I was four or five. I have a good memory. My parents tell me that they can’t believe that I can remember things that they can’t. But sometimes, I don’t really know if something was actually real or if it was something I just imagined. When you look back to the past, you may think it’s one way but it wasn’t. I still remember some things with my grandma, too.
Did you spend a lot of time with your grandma?
I went there every holiday, every summer. I was there for seven weeks sometimes. She didn’t live far from Frankfurt. She lived right along the river, Oder, which is right on the border of Poland. We go there almost every weekend now because we still have the house.
Do you have any early memories related to music?
I was always interested in music—that’s what I can remember. Maybe in the beginning it wasn’t the coolest or the best, but I was listening to music that my grandpa played. He played the accordion. He would play some old German folk music from the ’40s or ’50s and he would play the piano as well. I remember it had a big impact on me. I can remember that I was spinning all my parents’ vinyl. They weren’t super into music but if there was a record they would buy it. I would listen to all these records, and this is from the early days when I was around seven or eight. I will not tell you the first record I bought (laughter). It was when I was ten, and I still have it, too. It’s funny.
Did you play any instruments growing up?
I started to learn a lot of instruments but I couldn’t play anything. I can play around a little bit on the keyboard and I can play some tiny melodies, but that’s it; I’m not really good with that.
What were the first concerts that you went to?
I wasn’t really into concerts. It was much more about going to the discotheque. You were only allowed to go in when you were 14 and older but I tried to get in when I was 12. Sometimes I’d get in, sometimes not. The doorman would know me and sometimes he’d be like, “Okay, c’mon, get in.” So, I wasn’t really into concerts, it was all about the DJs. When I went in it was really exciting. I was curious about what the DJs would be playing.
I grew up in a very small town in Eastern Germany and there were about five DJs in that town. We were always curious about who was playing which night, and depending on the DJ, it would determine the mode that the party would go in. Sometimes it’d be more of a Depeche Mode or an EBM thing, but there was one DJ who was into UK-oriented dance stuff like Soul II Soul. That was always good. We had a strong scene with Depeche Mode and stuff but I wasn’t really into that—I was more into dance and Eurodance at the beginning of the ’80s.
Obviously around this time you were around 14 when the Berlin Wall came down. Do you mind talking to me about that? What do you remember feeling?
It was strange that the GDR was ending. When I think about the GDR, it wasn’t really comfortable, and it was not easy to do what you wanted. When I was 15, the Wall came down. It wasn’t easy for my parents because they didn’t know if they could keep their jobs or if they had to find something new. A lot of people didn’t know if they could work anymore because they closed down all these companies and factories. It was a mixture of excitement and uncertainty. I was young, too. I was looking into new music and I wanted a girlfriend. There were a lot of things happening in that period.
Everything changed. When you went to school, you had the GDR flag with the Russian symbols and then the next day everyone wanted to remove everything. We got all these new books. It felt like we had lost something, but of course we were happy that the Wall came down. We were happy we could travel around and buy new televisions and have a new car and whatever.
You mentioned going to the discotheques when you were a kid, but when did you actually start DJing yourself?
I was recording DJ sets and I started to buy records in ’92 in Berlin. I think I was a DJ since ’91, actually. I was working for a construction business and it had nothing to do with what I do today. I wasn’t really good at school because I was always out. I had to get a job because I had to rent a flat; there wasn’t really a decision about whether it was the “right” job or not. I did it for six years until I found something else. I feel like construction was not right for my mind. My coworkers were listening to radio stations that were very boring and I was really happy when I got to do something else. It wasn’t the right place for me.
I had actually started DJing in school already. We would make these parties for these other classes because we were into these girls (laughter). It was actually very funny. It wasn’t a proper DJ thing—there was no vinyl, it was on audiocassettes. This was around ’85 or ’86. This would happen in the lunchroom where all the people would come together. It was really big fun.
It wasn’t that easy to skip tracks. You had to go backstage and rewind the cassette to go to certain tracks. There were three DJs at the time—two of them were spinning the cassettes to the right spot while one was at the front and doing the mixing. It was funny. It wasn’t easy to go to the right spot. I was born in the GDR and we were not able to buy vinyl and we always had to record from the radio. We knew that someone on the radio would come on to say the weather or whatever, and we would know when to stop and we would wait for the next song.
The first time I properly DJ’d was at Tresor. They had something called “New Faces,” and I think that was the first time I DJ’d in Berlin. This was in the middle of the week on a Wednesday night.
Do you remember what tracks you were playing at these high school DJ sets?
No, I couldn’t tell you. I lost all these cassettes that I had at home, and I moved so many times during the ’90s and later on. I’m still very sad that I lost all these audiocassettes. It’s a shame. It would be something like Michael Jackson and Jennifer Rush—’80s US dance pop and stuff like that—but I can’t really remember.
Do you see any positives to having moved a lot, or was that mostly just a nuisance?
I thought it was a good idea at the time, but really the better decision would have been to just go straight to Berlin. I moved around Germany and moved to the Netherlands as well. I felt like I wasted time moving around. For two years, I was living in Western Germany and I didn’t have a lot of friends there, but I was making music all the time, so maybe that was a positive thing.
When were you in the Netherlands?
That was ’98 or ’99. Too many people in Germany were not satisfied with the current situation and I had to leave because there was no positive energy.
Did you feel positive energy in the Netherlands?
In the beginning, yes, but at the end it was the same thing—just on the other side of the border (laughter). As I said before, the best thing would’ve been to go straight to Berlin.
You mentioned your first gig at Tresor. How was that? Were you nervous?
Technical-wise, I’m a really good DJ with vinyl. I was excited about this situation, the loudness, to be in a completely different environment. And it was Tresor! That was big. If I remember right, it was 2000 or 2001 because I moved to Berlin around 2002, and this was shortly before I went there. I played two evenings, I think. We’re in the building of Tresor right now and they still have “New Faces” on Wednesdays.
Before this you were in the military, right?
I had to go there. I wasn’t really taking it seriously, and I thought they would never get me, but they did (laughs). I was there for 10 months. I wasn’t shooting or marching anywhere, I was involved in entertainment. I was behind the bar—I was a bartender.
What were you doing in between this first gig and then having your first releases? You had the Red Planet Express 12-inch in 2004.
I made that in 2003 and it was the first record I made. I received the final product and when I listened to it, I wasn’t really sure about it. The sound wasn’t good and I thought that it wasn’t good enough to release, so I left it in the basement for half a year. And then I thought, there’s nothing to lose, so I took it and went to record stores in Berlin and tried to sell some copies. And that was history. I went to Hard Wax and they took 10 copies. The day after they sent some mail and said to send some more. That was in February 2004, but I actually made them in June the year before.
What did you feel wasn’t good about this first release?
I didn’t know that music on vinyl sounded different than on the computer. There was no knowledge on my side and I knew nothing about it, the mastering process, the cutting process. I just made it without taking care for how long the tracks should be and the equalizing. But it was the first record and, in the end, it wasn’t that bad.
You had a bunch of records that came afterwards. You had Soloaction that was released on Delsin in 2004, and then a bunch of stuff on your own label of the same name. What do you feel like you learned from Red Planet Express that you fixed on the releases that came after?
It was step by step. I changed something with every record and I wasn’t trying to get better so much as trying to do something different. My job was also changing—I was working for a magazine in Berlin and it was all about electronic music, so my views on music were changing too. I wasn’t just a boy at home listening to music; I was listening to music from a different point of view. I was watching other musicians and I was learning a lot and a lot of the magazine had to do with the technical side of things.
Was there an initial release prior to Shedding the Past (2008) that you feel was important for you?
Red Planet of course. Another one was Well Done My Son (2006), which was number eight [on the label]. That was the first record I heard getting played by another DJ when I went to a club. That was really special. It was at Berghain. I went straight to the dancefloor and suddenly I heard my track playing. It was near the beginning of the night, around one in the morning. That was really cool.
What was the magazine you wrote for?
It was De:Bug. It was a really important magazine around this time, around 2000. They wrote a lot of things about DJs and musicians but also fashion and movies and technology—they were writing about the internet, for example. It was really cool to work there. There were a lot of reviews of music on vinyl too. It was a good time.
You mentioned how you learned a lot from the magazine. Can you expand on that?
I always like to learn everything on my own. I don’t like to go somewhere and ask someone how to do things. I was reading these magazines and it was step by step; it wasn’t fast. For the first eight years [of making music], I was just doing what I do. Things were changing but it wasn’t one big step from one new record to the next.
Obviously 2007 and 2008 were big years for you. You launched Wax and Equalized and had Shedding the Past. Can you talk to me about that time?
During that time, it was really cool to put out a record and not know who was behind it. There was the first Equalized and the Wax, and everyone was asking who it was. It’s a really satisfying moment when you know that you’re the person but you don’t tell anyone that you did it. They were really successful at the beginning. I pressed 500 copies and there was a chance to repress the records; I had the chance to learn that people wanted to buy my music. And then I had the chance to go to Berghain and release something on Ostgut Ton.
When did you first DJ at Berghain?
That was in 2005. It was a challenge. It wasn’t easy. I couldn’t sleep two nights before and I was done after that. I played for four hours I think, and it wasn’t really crowded at the time—it wasn’t packed—but it was adventurous. In the end, I felt like I did everything wrong. I still remember that night.
Was there a time at which you felt really comfortable when DJing?
No. I still don’t feel comfortable when I DJ. Today it’s a lot easier because you can take a USB and you can take so much music with you, but back in the day you could only take 120 records with you max. But now, you can change anything within half an hour. If people want to hear house, you can play house, if people want to hear hardcore, you can play hardcore. But it’s still challenging and I’m not comfortable in the booth. I’m not an entertainer—I’m a DJ. I’m not into entertaining people, I’m not shouting, I’m not throwing my hands in the air. Sometimes I feel like people wait for this—they want to see DJs as entertainers. But I don’t want to do this, and I won’t do it. I’m getting angry when I talk about things like this (laughter).
I’m really old school: I just want to play music I like that I think other people will too. Sometimes I play music that I think may not be easy and not mainstream. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I can feel annoyed when people come up to me and ask me about how I act when I’m DJing. I’m not a clown, I’m not an entertainer—I’m not someone you can go to and just ask to play whatever song. Of course I will do that sometimes, but I’m from the ’90s. I’m like a teacher. When promoters book me, they should know what kind of DJ I am.
So are you DJing with the intent of trying to educate people?
Not much anymore. At the beginning I felt like I could show new stuff. Today, everything moves so fast that if you make something today, everyone can hear it the following day. It feels as if there’s no underground anymore, at least not like how it was in the past. A lot of DJs live in Berlin—it’s ridiculous. You go to a club and there’s a DJ with 20 people dancing and all of them are DJs too. It’s no longer cool to say that you’re a DJ. Hmm. Yeah, it’s nothing now. And the internet is filled with nonsense DJs, YouTube DJs, and sometimes it doesn’t feel good to say that I am a DJ.
Do you see any positives to the contemporary DJ climate?
I can’t answer this because I’m not interested in a lot of these new things that are happening today. If you have the chance to be a DJ, it’s easy, it’s not a problem. Today, it’s really easy to just use software from the internet or with a cheap PC. But this aspect where DJs have to be an entertainer and have to fill up their Instagram account and comment every day—I’m not interested in that. Lots of people think they must do it to be famous, but that’s the wrong decision. When everyone does that, it’s silly.
The war—of Russia and Ukraine—had a big impact on Europe. And during [lockdown], it felt like from one day to the next there were 10,000 new DJs. There was a new DJ each day and they would have 50,000 followers on Instagram. And then they would become uncool the next day. Now things are getting back to normal. I don’t want to complain, really.
I know that you don’t really go out to clubs much anymore. Was that specifically because you were raising your family or because you didn’t like the music that was playing?
I mean, I was DJing a lot so there was no reason to keep going when I was at home. I really started to enjoy staying at home with my family because I already had a lot of DJ gigs in the past years. I’ve been going out since 1992, and that’s 30 years. And at the end of the day, it’s still the same.
Do you feel like being a parent changed things for you in terms of being an artist?
The music didn’t change that much, but my point of view of traveling totally changed. Sometimes I’d be sad to go to the airport and leave my family. I would think about losing all this time I could spend with my kids. It started to become uncool to travel every weekend to DJ. I wanted to stay at home with them. I love being at home right now (laughs). I still love to play, but there’s so much time you waste on trains and at airports—it just makes me sad.
Do your kids like your music?
I think so. Sometimes they come by and they play around with the keyboard and I’ll play a new song and will tell me if it’s boring (laughter). I’ll play something and they’ll know that it’s something I’ve made.
I wanted to ask about the stuff you made with Head High and WK7 under the Power House label. What do you feel like you’re able to do under these monikers that you’re not able to on the others?
From the beginning, I was into different styles of electronic music. I always had a problem when I went to the record store because I would go and buy techno, house, UK hardcore. I didn’t have that much money and I always had to be very focused when I bought records because I liked so many different styles. It was only a question of time when I would make house music. But at the end of the day, it all sounds the same. There’s just more piano or vocals.
What do you feel like defines your music, then? What makes it distinct?
I always love to bring things together, like a harsh bass drum and a nice melody. I always put these different things together. There may be a warm melody and a distorted 808 bass drum. I always want these opposite things. There may be a melancholic piece and then something harsh. That’s the main thing I always try to do.
Is that something you initially learned from another artist?
Luke Slater in the early ’90s, when he made these hard techno tracks but with these synth sounds. There’s this track on X-Tront Vol. 2 (1993) called “Moave Violin” and it’s still awesome. It has these powerful drums and percussion and then there are these romantic strings that come in during the second half, and it’s at this moment that everything comes together. That’s sort of a blueprint for me.
All of this is making me think of the new Wax 12-inch. The kick hits hard but the melody is so pretty. Do you mind talking to me about how you approached those tracks?
I couldn’t tell you. I can’t really tell you what the process is anymore. I’ll just listen to a track and I’ll think it’s finished and I’m just like, okay cool. And I won’t know how I got there. There’s no process, there’s no plan. Sometimes I’m sitting there for a week and I’ll come back eight weeks later and it’ll be done.
With the Wax releases specifically, a lot of it is influenced by dub techno. Do you remember your first experiences with the genre? Was it Basic Channel?
Hard Wax put a Basic Channel record into my order. I didn’t even order it; they just put it in, and they must have put it into every order (laughter). I wasn’t really satisfied by it, the first one was really harsh. But day by day I was listening and I got deeper into it. The Maurizio records were also there, and then Phylyps Trak (1993) as well. I was really into the mood in dub techno tracks. It’s tranquil and there’s no break—it’s just floating, you know? I’m not really into harsh breaks when things are changing on a track. There’s a certain feeling that’s there at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. It’s a joy. That’s what I try to do with my dub techno tracks too, and they’re not super dancefloor oriented even though there is a bass drum—they’re just sort of going and floating.
How much are you thinking about music being good for the dancefloor given that you’re not going out to the club as much anymore?
The PAs are so good nowadays. Sometimes I think that this is good, but sometimes I’m a little bored by all this. People don’t take risks to sound good because it will always sound good. All these PAs, they go deep to 50 Hz or something, it’s really low, but I don’t think producers really think about all of the possibilities that they have because these PAs will make anything sound okay. And it all ends up sounding the same. These PAs can play everything you put through it. Of course you can make really good music for good PAs too.
So it’s this notion that things are too easy now? Like, do you feel like it was better when making music was more difficult?
You learn a lot more when things are challenging. If you spend all your time running an Instagram account, you will just end up pressing sync on the CDJ.
Is there anything we didn’t talk about that you wanted to talk about today?
No, not really. I’m going to the US next week—you’re in Chicago, right?
Yeah.
I won’t be in Chicago unfortunately. I’ll be in Mexico for the first time. And then I’ll be in San Francisco, New York, and Washington DC. We’ll see how much the US has changed since the last time I was there, which was four years ago.
There’s a question I always end all my interviews with and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?
I’m really strict (laughs). It doesn’t matter if people are trying to change my mind or want me to do something; if I really feel like I should not do something and my answer is “no,” I really mean it.
René Pawlowitz’s new 12-inch as Wax is available via Hard Wax and Bandcamp.
Thank you for reading the 147th issue of Tone Glow. Shout out to shitty PAs.
If you appreciate what we do, please consider donating via Ko-fi or becoming a Patreon patron. Tone Glow is dedicated to forever providing its content for free, but please know that all our writers are paid for the work they do. All donations will be used for paying writers, and if we get enough money, Tone Glow will be able to publish issues more frequently.
Love Rene. One of Berlin's extremely good ones...