Introducing... Ion Ludwig

There's something you know when you see the name Toi Toi associated with an artist, it's that they are full heartedly and uncompromisingly endorsed by the people behind the collective, a collective who do not take quality of sound and artistry lightly. It's more than signing names to a roster for them, it's about someone joining their family and engaging in these core values of integrity. Ion Ludwig is the more recent artist to join the agency arm of the London party and soon to be label collective and on hearing him speak of his dedicated approach to expanding of the sonic reaches of his production and live set in our interview below you can see why he is such a good fit. Stylistically it makes sense too but we won't try and labour that at times tenuous area of describing music when Ludwig has recorded this live set; you can hear the ranges of his beat for yourselves. So read on and listen through to get to know the influences and life story of this fledgling member of the Toi Toi fam before they take over Room Three this Saturday. So where did you grow up? What was it like there as a young person? So I grew up in Kring van Dorth (translated to English is Circle of Dorth) where I lived with my parents, two sisters and a dog in a small ‘settlement’ – it wasn’t even a village in the woods and fields of Northern Gelderland, Holland. It was a magnificent environment with lakes to fish in for days, weeks and years literally. And I used to spend a lot of time building underground dens and tree house shacks with my best friend of the time. At what point did you first connect with music? It was around the same time [I moved to Kring van Dorth] when I was about 9 when I started to read notes on a student xylophone, I used to have classes once a week on a Fridya. After a year my mother offered for me to choose a ‘real’ instrument, I actually wanted to start drumming but I chose guitar, Spanish acoustic and then later went onto play the electric. Then how did this develop into your own path to producing? After about 6 years of classes, my eldest sister was way advanced in her taste of music and had CDs lying around with hardstyle which grabbed my attention initially. My friends started to share an appreciation of the music which quickly evolved into going to our first hardstyle parties as a 16 year old which had a huge impact on me. At that time big parties and festivals were held at night which opene dup a whole new world for me. Seeing Underwold and Yoji Biomehanik at Impulz Outdoor in 2003, which was biking distance from the circle, boosted my interest in electronic music. It wasn’t long until I decided to start making that music that I was so grabbed by. You mentioned Underworld but who else influenced you early on? Underworld, Carl Cox, Thomas vs Filterheadz. It was the time of big room and out door tribal techno, infused with UK progressive vibes. Then when I actually started making music on Reason I lived in Leeuwarden where listening to Ricardo [Villalobos’s] track Dexter overwhelmed me. The sound Ricardo brought changed my whole perception of sound where it was so reduced and slowed down, trippy yet music and so moving. You spent a few years in Berlin, can you tell us a bit about your time there? How did it help you with your music? I moved to Berlin in August 20016 (staying there until December 2009) I initially moved there to finish my studies in Media and Entertainment Management writing my final exam research paper on ‘How to run a successful label through the eyes of a Belrin techno label’ where I interviewed guys like DJ-T, 2000 and One, Agaric, An Reich, Stephan Lieb, Melon, Someone Else, Benjamin Fehr, Butane, Jeremy P Caulfied to find out how the techno industry actually works from the inside. This information formed into a 103 page long paper that that made me succeed my studies. Then in 2007 I was free of studying and went to live in one of Berlin’s infamous ‘techno buildings’ solely populated with producers and DJ’s which propelled me into Belrin’s techno culture. This obviously coloured my inspiration and work a lot and left a big mark on my taste in electronic music. So it did help me in finding direction into the path of sound I am still on. Where do you currently base yourself? Why did you move on there? I’m based closer to my roots now where I can see my family and long life friends more regularly. I feel it’s an important time of my life to be here now. Life becomes more settled and fewer people are producing and DJing. Family and friends are having kids, parents are retiring, grandmas turning old. I want to be with them more often than I could when I was in Berlin. You have your own labels as well can you tell us a bit about them? Ugold series brough back the idea of series into a music label where focus lies on concept and articulation of the sound it brought. As series suggest the goal is to fade into nothing after a particular number. There’s also Quagmire that turned into Quagmire LTD has been vanished, possibly for re-animation in the far future. You signed to Toi Toi just as recently as this summer, how did you connect with the agency? What influenced your decision to join? The connection to ToiToi was made last year in November when a stay for ToiToi turned out to be a bit longer than expected and the click-clock-connection was made. Of course already this long weekend influenced the way I saw and see ToiToi and made me think if I could or would want to be joining at a later stage. That took a bit of time and here we are now. I’ve listened to your live set you have on Soundcloud, it’s three hours long, we’re used to extended DJ sets but how do you manage to play live for all that time? Making music day in and day out (with an occasional day off) and challenge yourself to expand the idea of what your longest set could be. Then be patient and pick and good time and place to perform that time you idealised. And you’re only a live artist from what I understand why is it that you’ve not dabbled in the DJ side of things? It would make my sound and interest in sound be more influenced, where I fell that I still have along way to go in enabling myself to produce in a way that nobody has produced before. Without DJing my search of that level of production is more attainable. Can you talk a bit about how you go into creating tracks, is it influenced a lot from the live jamming process? I imagine a lot of what you play live is created on the fly… The computer as a multi channel recorder and arranger which I used to work from disappeared from my set up about 2 years ago. Since then everything I have been recording in terms of tracks are in one takes or multi-takes where the recording is just a stereo left and right channel. I developed the studio with more up to date machines which opened a lot of technical doors for me. Also the first birthday of my 5U/MU system took place last month. All this in the mix with my older machinery creates music on the fly indeed. Photo by Michael Rhebergen