ELLEN ALLIEN: LABEL, MUSIC AND FASHION

Ellen Allien is the artist name of Ellen Fraatz, a succesful Berlin based dj, producer and fashion designer. Her career started in the early 90s with dj residencies at several renown clubs including E-Werk and Tresor. In 1999 she created her own label called "BPitch Control"; home to talents like Sascha Funke, Tok Tok and Paul Kalkbrenner. Together with Tresor and Kanzleramt her label is considered as the core of Berlin Techno .

Besides dj'ing and running the label, Allien has also released several albums under her own name while more recently she collaborated with Apparat (another Berlin based producer and one of the owners of Shitkatapult Records). This resulted in one of the best albums of 2006: "Orchestra of Bubbles".

Despite her busy schedule we got the opportunity to ask Ellen a few questions.

How has touring with Sascha Ring (Apparat) been so far? Is the combination of doing a live-set and singing very different from your DJ-sets?

"Travelling was a lot of fun - not having to travel all by yourself was sooo nice! Playing live is a big kick - it transfers the energy immediately and it therefore has to be 100% quality. When you DJ you have much more time to build up something.

"We played a lot of festivals. I like how well we communicated with each other while playing. When you dj it's more about to pull the right record and to do a perfect mix. Playing live is a different level - it's different to sing live, to really present yourself on stage. For me it means to present myself and to feel what I felt during the process of producing/writing that track again."

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