Sweet Headache

Introducing: Wilhelm Mörtzmann

As a new author for Sweet Headache, I would hereby like to introduce myself.

At first I must mention that music is my passion! Whether to talk, write, think about music or producing and playing it – my whole life music was important to me in certain ways. I grew up with the vinyls of my parents and even more important – with my father’s grand piano. Between the Rock’n'Roll, chanson and Soul LPs from my mother and my father’s fascination for classical music I found out that there is one important and fundamental thing in all music: rhythm. Not surprising that I started to play drums when I was ten and also not surprising that one of my first LPs  was The Prodigy – The fat of the Land. Till I was 18, Hip-Hop on one hand, and Indie-Rock-Punk-NuMetal on the other, were always my two spheres from where I explored the music universe. At that point I have to mention how important VIVA 2 (a German music TV channel with a mostly non-mainstream selection) was for developing my taste in music.

My understanding of electronic music was coined through excursions to the Minimal Techno Cologne, Berlin’s cellar Techno and my early inspirations like UK Bigbeat. After one year just listining to Tech House variations and a lot of (bad) Techno I realized that the music I wanna hear and make is not that straight like the always repeated club Tracks. For this development, labels like WARP or DIAL have been very important to me. In experimental sound and the borders between different genres I found what I searched for: New rhythms and the excitement I always missed in commercial productions made for the dancefloor.

My musical vita also was influenced by my local record store where I just listend to a lot of different types of electronic music and I was aware to the classic sound of Chigago, Detroit and the beat styles from Florida. I learned that a good DJ set do not have to be straight and stay on the same one BPM. Breaking genre borders and breaking the beat in the right way is in my opinion the best way to a set that stays in your mind. Floating elements, a funky groove, inspirations from dub music and a skilled hand and ear are the most important criteria for concerning DJing.

But not only DJing was important to me after I got my first turntables when I was thirteen. I wanted to be a Hip Hop DJ back then. Playing drums and getting familliar with an old BOSS drumcomputer were the things that really brought me into touch with the rhythms I was so fascinated by.  After a good friend of me started to produce Hip Hop in 2004 I was impressed by the possibilities of a music production software and learned a lot about it just by sitting next to my friend and his working processes. In late 2007 I installed Cubase on my PC and started to play with it like a ten year old boy with tons of toys. My lack of knowlege in harmony and my untrained ears were the biggest challenges, but I realized that the more I listend to music and the more I read about analog circuitry the more I could transplant my ideas of sound into my productions. The contact to musicians, producers and DJs were always a special type of inspiration for me and something that happend realy often over the record store and visiting partys in all of Germany.

For Sweet Headache, I will write about musical aspects and developments which I think  are special and trendsetting. I am really interested in the variaty of different sounds in the world of elctronic music so I’ll keep looking for my best examples to show the reader my interpretation of the abstract word “electronic sounds”. I always loved to write and I always was into music so to write for Sweet Headache is a perfect combination for me to express my ideas.