Franklin De Costa Interview

Your bio describes a time in your career when you built a lot of your current unique sound by tweaking experimental non dance music. Can you tell us a little bit about that and the impact it had on your production?

Well i was never really a purist. So mid nineties the electronic experimental music was going through the roof. There were so many interesting things coming from the big guys like Aphex, Squarepusher, Autechre, Amon Tobin and a whole bunch lesser known artists. Every new CD Album was like a new electronic adventure. Techno became more and more boring for me because that music became more and more functional and less soulful. I tried to copy my electronica heros production wise but i ended up in producing dark and experimental ambient with still some sort of funk. This stuff was never released and what i mostly learned from that time is that i produced music for myself and not for pleasing a dancefloor. I rarely played my own dance tracks when i djed in the past for example.The production stuff and the dj thing where a long time 2 separate issues for me.

What is your source of inspiration for your music? Is there a constant theme?

My Girlfriend (well she forced me to say that hehe). Listening to different styles off music is always an inspiration. Positive or negative. Negative means when a certain kind of sound gets played or produced to death than i loose interest in it and look for something else or try a different approach.

Much of your original production was in your father's studio. Did you grow up in a musical family and how did that shape your thinking?

My father is afro-american and was a soulsinger. He was also a soul dj in the 70ties. Living in germany he got influences of rockmusic so one of his bandprojects was some sort of black soulful rock music. Hard to describe. Like the band Mothers Finest. I was playing drums at that time and got interested in his homestudio. I did music with trackerprograms and an amiga 500 but this little homestudio with a 2 mb sampler, an atari sequencer, keyboards, fx and a 24 channel fostex mixer was something else. I experimented with that stuff with no real aim. Just getting sounds out of it and trying to make something. As i learned more and more i helped my father to make his homeproductions. But in the end i was going a different direction cause i loved instrumental music and was not so into doing vocalstuff in a soul/pop context. My german grandfather was also musician but coming from a different angle. He was a one man show playing organ, trumpet and singing for people. So yes it was a musical family with some strange undertone hehe. So when i grew up i heard a lot different music which later kept me open minded for different musicstyles.

Are there any spiritual/political/social commentary concepts in your music or event production? What would be a very important issue for you to address if you had to make a release or an event be focused on one thing in the aforementioned realms?

Hm not really. The Green Empire partys always aimed at people who like to hear something more than the whole night the same kind of techno-substyle. Everyone from The Green Empire Crew has is own approach to techno/house which always lead into a musically diverse night. The music in itself should have some spirit. Trying to plunch over some political attitude doesnt really work. Partys are a come together so the party in itself is a social comment. The best partys where that with different kind of people having fun together without violence or anything like that. There are some people in berlin who dont like those partytourist coming to "their underground partys". that´s stupid and shouldnt be in the sense of what it´s all about.

What hardware/software/sample packs do you use and recommend?

Cubase is my prefered tool at the moment. A lot tracks are produced software only and for some tracks i record analog sounds. I share a studio with Yapacc and he got a lot small analog gadgets to get freaky with.

Do you have any tips for producers looking to make their productions sound better based on your hard earned experience?

Hm....good sound takes time ;)

How has the event production side of your career influenced your production (and visa versa)?

My main aim was always the music. So after some events i had to realise that doing events consumes a lot of time which i prefer to invest into music. So less events in the end. On the other hand doing events gave me a new perspective about all this clubcircus which is connected to the music that is played there.

What encouraged you to begin event production and what advice would you have given yourself when you first started based on your current experience?

In the first hand it was a do-it-yourself attitude which is or was pretty common in techno. When you start as a small dj you dont get much chances to play out for people. So getting a crew together and doing partys is just a way to get over that problem. What started as partying with friends got more professional but still not so professional like trying to live from that. You can easily loose a lot money if you try to get an event to a bigger scale. Technopartys arent anything new anymore and just doing a technoparty doesnt get people so excited in germany like 10 years ago.

Who are some major musical influences past and present?

Well i think in general instrumental music or music with less pop appeal. Something like Mike Oldfield and Art Of Noise was important when i was a teenager. Putting headphones on and escaping to some far out realms. Later the electronic music in the nineties delivered that perfectly for me so i got hooked on that.

What does the rest of 2008 have in store for you/the green empire?

There are coming some new records on Leena, Resopal Red, Curle and Below this autumn. I will focus also a bit more on The Green Empire label. It´s also time for some new tracks together with Yapacc as Studiogemeinschaft.

Do you have any comments about this exclusive mix for the fwd listeners?

The mix is an excerpt from what i play when i dj but with a focus a bit more on minimal than house compared to my regular dj sets at the moment.