In Depth: DeWalta & Shannon Discuss Their Respective Roots

David Koch (Dewalta) and Mike Shannon have found fame independently over the past few years as stalwarts in the off-kilter world of minimal-infused techno. The younger of the pair, Dewalta is known for his distinctive production style, with his output championed by some of the biggest figures in the scene, while his mixing has seen him travel internationally for some years now, crossing off Australia and Romania's famed Sunwaves Festival and everywhere in between in the past few months alone. As somewhat of mainstay in the electronic music world, Mike Shannon has been around a little longer, crossing the Atlantic from his home town in Canada to Europe almost ten years ago. With releases on labels as varied as Plus 8, Wagon Repair and Half Baked, Shannon has proved himself over nearing two decades as an all-round talent. Upon settling in Berlin, the pair met at Panoramabar, in an encounter they detail below, but almost immediately began work in the studio together. It's their output as a duo that has been getting them noticed in the last few years, and fresh off the back of a new collaborative album, we wanted to get to know more about their respective backgrounds and whether their differences manifest themselves in the studio. The last interview you did with us here was more studio-based for this one we’d like to go a little more in depth about you. Tell us a little about where you guys are from and perhaps the differences in your upbringings? Mike Shannon: I’m Canadian, and this other guy is German. I come from very close to Toronto, Ontario, so I basically grew up between Toronto and Detroit. I’ve kind of been a nomad for many years now, travelling around. I ended up in Berlin and that’s how I met my friend David here. DeWalta: I come from a really small village called Gauangelloch. It’s a pretty fun name to say, but it’s about 30km up the hill from Heidelberg, which is this cute university town that was actually not destroyed in the Second World War because the allies decided to have their headquarters there. So it’s really intact, with a beautiful old town and castles, and that’s where I went to school and spent pretty much half of my life now, but after 15 years my parents got bored and as a family we moved to Potsdam, which is just outside Berlin. When I was 16 or 17, I was doing a lot of commuting into Berlin and the flats were so cheap at the time, that I told my parents that I was getting a flat for €212, which I shared with my girlfriend. It was 84 m2 and beautiful, but it had coal heating. Mike Shannon: We had a place like that too, before we officially moved over here. It was €150 a month, and we were sharing that between 4 of us, my wife and I, and another couple. Even if we were only using the place every two or three months, it was much cheaper than paying for a hotel room. I was playing a lot in Berlin at the time. It was a fun apartment, I mean, there was the shower in the kitchen. That kinda reinvented breakfast for us, depending on who was staying over. Some funny breakfasts, and could have been some kinky brunches if we weren’t more careful. The winters were really cold back then, although I guess they still are. You would order like one tonne of coal, and they would just dump it in your cellar in a big pile. You’d have to go down in your pyjamas in the morning to pick the coal up. DeWalta: And that’s where we met! I was down there picking up some coal and thought ‘hey this guy looks talented’. Mike Shannon: Yeah the first time we met is kind of a funny story. My wife and a friend of hers were coming home from some after-hour party and they told me how they had met the ‘hottest little German boys, they were so cute’. I not impressed with this story as you can imagine. A couple of days later, we were in Panoramabar and ran into those guys, so my wife pointed them out. So I went up to David and said ‘so you’re the one that was taking care of my wife last weekend hey?!’ DeWalta: Mike scared me big time! I had a car at that back then, it was a green kind of VW camper van and I had driven them home the weekend before. So after that we used to go to partying a lot together, along with Deadbeat as well actually, and Mathew Jonson. There were a lot of Canadians around at that time. It was like a Canadian invasion. Going back a little bit, could you tell me a little bit about your first experiments with DJing? DeWalta: I was always the guy that put the music on in my house. When there was dinner or whatever and we had friends over, I would find it kinda awkward that everyone was talking. Music has this great ability to just be there and things somehow aren’t awkward any more. So I would be hanging out in the stereo corner and put on anything that was available at the time. I had a time around 10 or 11 years old where I got really into horns, and jazz music and brass, so I bought a lot of jazz and was DJing jazz music in the family. Obviously that wasn’t public, but yeah I still had someone (my mum) telling me to ‘turn that shit down’, so I’ve always been that guy.

"Burning bridges, insulting promoters… you know the usual!" - Mike Shannon

The first vinyl I bought, I was still in Heidelberg I believe, and I was really into trip-hop and that UK sound, so it was probably something by Tricky. A friend told me there was a record store in Karlsruhe called Plattentasche. It was run by Kristian Beyerran from Âme, and it was great as he would have good connections with a lot of US stuff. I remember I was really into Carl Craig at that time, well I still am, but yeah that’s where I bought my first house and techno records. The guy would sit behind the desk and look so cool, so we just bought stuff that looked good – you know how it is when you’re 16. We would DJ with those records at small parties at home. I was studying jazz at the time, but at night you’d get drunk and listen to house. The first gigs in town, I started at a bar called Paloma Bar in Berlin when I was about 17. We were given a whole night to play, and we just brought along everything we had. So that’s how I started playing out properly I guess, but to be honest though, it was always more about producing for me really. In the past few years though I’ve learnt a huge amount about DJing and I intend to continue to do so. I think it’s a never-ending thing; researching, managing the crowd – whatever the size – and also being appropriate, and sometimes maybe inappropriate. Mike Shannon: Burning bridges, insulting promoters… you know the usual! For me it probably would have been 1992. I was working with some friends of mine at this place that was like an all-ages nightclub just outside of my home town. We became quite comfortable there and got to know the resident DJ there. I was really into techno at the time and was already buying records and I really wanted to hear those records on the sound system. So I would bring my records along with me; I was working cleaning tables and cleaning up after the place; but I would bring my music and sometimes the DJ would play it at the beginning or the end of the night and we would freak out and dance to it. I kinda knew what I was doing with a mixer, and a couple of times this guy just didn’t show up on time, so I would just start to play myself. The boss was pretty comfortable with me there, and those were the first times I got to play on a real sound system, still just a kid. That’s when I really got my feet wet doing that kind of thing. I didn’t take over his job or anything, but sometimes he’d be two hours late and I’d just play my techno records, like really early XL Recordings and Warp stuff. It was a lot of UK stuff that I was buying at the time, even though Toronto was really heavily influenced by Detroit and Chicago, it also had a very British following, and the whole rave scene had a British influence. Of course south of the border, Detroit had its own thing going on. So the sound I was into at the beginning was very much a British thing. I still have all those records and I’m just waiting for some kind of revival to get to play them again. After that, a couple of friends of mine started their own venue and I started playing there. It was called the Vinyl Messiah. Again, it was another all-ages thing, there was no bar or anything, it was just a little rave club. How old were you? Mike Shannon: I was 15 or 16 at the time. There was so much happening in the rave scene in North America at the time, I sort of got my foot in the door from that little club. I was playing a lot of the underground parties that were happening. There were loads of one-off events and big productions that were going on outside the club scene. I was entrenched in that for years, before it all sort of collapsed. Everything then started moving into clubs, but I was still underage. I’ll never forget one time, the bouncer wouldn’t let me in, even though they had hired me to play there. The manager told them it was safe, but I had to stay in the DJ booth and there was a security guard watching me the whole time and I had to leave as soon as my set was over! I started really travelling extensively when I was about 19. At about 20 I was coming over to Europe and playing shows over here with Jeff Milligan, Adam Marshall quite a bit and Jeremy Caulfield. There were a lot of Toronto guys that were close to the camp I was associated with back home. That whole sound was really on the whole Detroit and Chicago tip, and yet the whole scene in Toronto was dominated by British house and Drum and Bass coming in. We were very much the underdogs in town, but when you would go south of the border, it was a whole different story. You would never find a DnB party in Detroit, it just wasn’t really happening. DeWalta: When did you go to Detroit first time? Mike Shannon: First time was for a Jack party put on by Richie Hawtin. It was called Jack o’Lantern and it was a Halloween party that he did. That was really my first taste of what was going on down there. Those were the parties that really changed my life. I think if you asked a lot of people that were involved in that whole thing would say the same, about what an influence Hawtin had on specifically the demographic where I fit in – 17 year old white kids from the suburbs, that’s what those parties were full of. They really changed the game for a lot of people, and even just the size and scope of the productions they were doing. It was totally the antithesis to what was going on in Toronto at the time. They were in huge warehouses, with just one light in the corner, a massive amount of sound and power, whereas nearer where I grew up, it was more about massive lasers and giant screens with circus kind of production. In Detroit it was purely about the music and sound. You’ve mentioned that you consider yourself as more of a producer than a DJ, but is that true for you too Mike? DeWalta: If I’m honest, it’s a bit of a prejudice I have to fight these days. These days it seems to be that you have to fit in one category, and people only define you within those two categories. I guess that people know me from the records that I’ve done, and I’ve studied music and I love the studio, and I couldn’t exist without making music. However, DJing has become such an important factor, especially the social work we do as DJs, that we are constantly in social environments, and our job is to relieve people. It’s a very musical thing, just as important musically as the producer.

"I think it’s wrong to assume that if you’re more of a purist DJ, that somehow you’re a better DJ." - Mike Shannon

I couldn’t just be a studio rat, and I definitely don’t consider myself more of one than the other. I see myself as both. For a long time I was only booked for live shows, because people wanted to see these DeWalta records performed by DeWalta. After a while I got bored of that, and wanted to mix it up and create something bigger than just my music. In a way, I find the question tricky. There are certainly some artists who definitely consider themselves more one than the other… DeWalta: It’s interesting when you follow discussion on social media, people are really arguing amongst each other about whether people are producers or DJs. Mike Shannon: I think it’s wrong to assume that if you’re more of a purist DJ, that somehow you’re a better DJ. What is that saying about Jeff Mills, is he an amateur DJ, because he produces so much of the music that he plays? It’s a joke really. But at the same time, I can totally see that the guys I know that are purist DJs, that spend their entire day programming sets and finding those records, and searching out those gems – well that’s not the kind of guy I am, and I don’t have the time to do that really. I think the difference between me and someone like David is that I would rather spend that time making something that one day, someone will be searching for. When you’re touring, what are the differences in crowds you see if there are any at all. Let’s say in London for instance? Mike Shannon: I think you can just see new blood coming in and they are just as amped. I’ve never noticed a dramatic difference with people mellowing out at all really. There are just new generations getting involved all the time. DeWalta: Even in just the five years or so I’ve been playing in London, you can see a small change in the city, with the struggle against restrictions, rather than the people dancing. People want to go out, decompress and go crazy everywhere in the world. The question is to what extent they are able to do that. I grew up with Toi Toi. I played the very first Toi Toi party there ever was in a basement somewhere – it was so great. Over the years they’ve had to fight so much just to exist and continue what they were doing. It was a really humble and beautiful little gathering. All of a sudden officials and laws get in the way. The crowd though, they still want it just as much. Mike Shannon: When you have a city like that, where people work as hard as they do to survive, you need places where you can let go, and that’s why I feel that London, or even Britain in general has that intense crowd, because people just have a little bit more stress in their day. DeWalta: I just came back from Sydney and people were partying like crazy, but the restrictions they have are mental sometimes. You could drink alcohol in the club until 2am, but from 2am to 4am, you had to mix the alcohol with cola, and then from 4am you could drink your whisky straight again. There’s still a fantastic vibe in the room, but all the restrictions placed on them that I really don’t get. I really hope that doesn’t happen to the UK, because you have one of the biggest histories in rave culture in the world. There’s a kind of prejudice that we’re fighting everywhere in the world. To come back to Berlin, we’re super lucky in a way. You can drink and smoke everywhere, and it’s pretty open like that. Especially with the sun coming out, people go bananas, and they need to be able to. It’s like a human right to be able to do what you want to do – freedom, and people should not let governments take that away from them anywhere in the world. The first time you played your live set at fabric was the first time you’d ever performed together wasn’t it? DeWalta: Yeah we’ve come once a year now, and this will be the third time coming down. To give the story about how this whole thing came together, Mike and I were talking about doing a live set. At that point I had stopped playing live myself and you had too. Well we got a phone call from Judy, telling us that there was a cancellation two weeks later. We said ‘well we don’t have a live set’, but she just said ‘make one!’ We looked at each other and realised that she was right. We just needed that kick up the arse. She’ll always be one of the major reasons we do this. I remember going into room 2; it’s a very loud room, an intense room, and setting up – we even forgot a piece of kit at home in fact. It was really stressful and nerve-wracking. Then we had this first show and realised that it could work. Our agent was there, and Judy was there and it was really special. How has the live set changed since you started it two years ago? Mike Shannon: It’s sort of evolved slightly, it’s always mutating and getting a little bigger, when we should actually be doing the opposite and making it easier. With the whole modular setup, sometimes it could just be putting one module in, or not that could change a few things up. DeWalta: For me the setup has changed quite a bit. I’ve been playing my saxophone alongside and it’s been a crucial part in the set, even though I don’t play it all the time thankfully, because you can only use it on special occasions. I’ve changed the processing quite a bit, and I’ve added a whole other 90 hp of modules dedicated specifically to the horn. I’ve added a foot pedal so I can control the effects with that. Over the time we’ve of course added new productions and new tracks. Mike Shannon: The way the set works is that there are a few spines of our tracks in there that people are familiar with, stuff that we have released. Then there’s also a lot of stuff that we just go with to see what happens. For me there’s nothing more disappointing as a fan than to see someone play live and listen to something that’s identical to the way that it is on the record. You might as well just be playing the record, right?! We were clear that if we were going to do something like this, we wanted it to have the elements of tracks we’ve made, but definitely a live version of them. That’s where that word ‘live’ makes sense of what we’re actually doing. Can you tell us a little about the concept behind the new LP on Indigo Raw? Mike Shannon: Well we felt it was time to do an LP really. We were approached by a label that was relaunching and we just put our heads together and did what we wanted with the support we needed. It’s an album that’s been released in two parts, and all the new material that’s in there is all the vinyl-only stuff. There’s also some other tracks that we’ve previously released that it made sense to give a little more life to and they are together with the album on the digital package. It’s stuff that’s maybe sold out and been off the map for a while, but it’s our best work of all time together in one package that way. What else is in the pipeline for you guys in terms of releases? DeWalta: We have this fun little project called DDMS, which is us two with Colin (The Mole) and Scott (Deadbeat). Well the idea or concept, if I can really use the word ‘concept’ for these sessions, is kicking off with one bottle of whisky in the studio and just jamming around. All the content we make is then shared between all four of us, and we each come up with our own mix of the content that was generated. Mike Shannon: So the first one was called Makers, because of the bottle of Makers Mark that we drank while we were making it. I think that Scott actually then used that as some percussion in the track. It creates this climax in the song and it’s these kind of jokes that just get better when you tell them, but when you listen it just brings it back for us. Now following the album, we have the first part of a new DDMS thing. We’re splitting it up in parts like we did last time. This first one has a mix from David on it, and a mix of mine too. At the pace that The Mole and Deadbeat work, the second part will probably come out next year. We’ll see though, maybe a miracle might happen. Each of us has a distinct signature that you can hear and it’s nice to combine those together. It doesn’t sound like the same mix over and over again. Everyone has their own flavour on it and that’s what makes the project interesting. DeWalta: Just in terms of Dewalta & Shannon though, we’ve got a remix out on Visionquest, for Wareika that’s kinda fresh still, and we’re working on some new material that we don’t necessarily know where we’re going to put it out, but most likely it will be on our labels.