Catching Up: Milton Bradley Discusses The Making of Tragedy & Truth

Milton Bradley (real name Patrick Radomski) is a character who has always been busy behind the scenes. With three self-run labels (Do Not Resist The Beat, Acid Alien, The End Of All Existence) he's long been building up and releasing an arsenal of his own productions whilst also holding down his residency at Henning Baer, conceptually founding the Grounded Theory events and living life as an active touring DJ. As you might imagine, with that kind of a CV, Radomski holds a vintage understanding of techno music which, when matched with a love for the raw energy of acid, has gone a long way to make his sets a rather frenetic experience; something we're very much looking forward to on Saturday night when he'll join Marcel Dettmann in Room Two as part of the MDR tour. We cuaght up with Radomski ahead of both his set here this weekend and the release of his first long player, Tragedy & Truth. For an artist who has been so active for so long we find out why now is the time the label owner has decided to explore the possibilities of the album format. You’ve enjoyed a career of two decades now - there’s no question that being from Berlin you were in a rich environment to become involved in techno what has your experience been of growing up in this locale Milton Bradley: I’m very happy that I was born here. I grew up in the east part of Germany with all the restrictions people here had and I was there when the wall came down. All of that had a huge impact on me. When it happened I could now enjoy the new freedom and a new music which felt like a revelation to me. You run a number of labels... are they are mainly set up with the purpose to give your own different productions a home? Can you tell us a bit about the identity of each label? All of the three labels are made for different projects. It all began when I started Do Not Resist The Beat just as a platform for my understanding of electronic music. With The End Of All Existence, firstly it had been this slogan in my head followed by the idea, which was also inspired by several dystopian and apocalyptic movies, it grew to become a kind of soundtrack to a fictional world's end so the sound here is more experimental. Alien Rain on the other hand as another side project is a platform for the pure acid sound, just how I like it. Are you still resident at Grounded Theory? Yes, I met Henning Baer, one of the promoters, back in 2009 when he wanted to buy one of my releases. He then asked me about being resident at Grounded Theory. Since this day I've been a resident here, I try to play there as often as possible so long as I'm not travelling. How important do you think it is to have a residency as a DJ? It’s something we value here with Craig Richards and Terry Francis roles at the club... Having a residency can be very important, it's kind of a musical home you can come back to whenever you want. It gives you the opportunity to experiment, try out stuff you can't play if you don't have an audience that you don't know and, most importantly, to build up this special “home” audience, which you don't have if you play somewhere else. You have a new album coming and it’s actually your first of your long career - why do you feel that now is a good time for you to release your music in the album format? Although I’ve mostly concentrated on my Alien Rain over the last years but I’ve also been piling up a big stack of new material so it was time to bring back the Milton Bradley sound as well as the label Do Not Resist The Beat. Releasing an album was the most logical artistic way to do this, in both cases - running the label and being the producer. Can you tell us a bit about the album itself - did you approach it with a particular concept in mind? As music has always been my biggest passion, I'm simply not able to not transport feelings through my music. And by producing an album I can show a lot of different facets of my own sound and of the passion I experience. If you just look at track titles like 'Consuming Passion' or 'Poisoned With Sweet Things' you can easily get an idea of what the track will be like. What’s your link with Marcel Dettmann and MDR? You’re performing here as part of the label’s tour… After a break in being a DJ around the start of the millennium, Marcel was releasing some music that caught my attention and brought my interest in techno to life again. Tracks like 'Lattice' to me are the blueprint for the so called 'Berghain sound'. As I started producing myself, Marcel was one of the first guys who played my music and one day he asked me to produce a track for the compilation that came out last year. What plans do you have beyond the album, have you got other releases lined up? The next release on The End Of All Existence will come out this summer, and another Alien Rain is scheduled for the end of 2016.