An interview with disco queen par-excellence, Daniel Wang…

DS: Danny; thanks for taking the time out to chat with us. You were born in California but spent 8 years growing up in Taiwan, what are your earliest musical memories & how do you think your influences shaped your taste?

DW: Im quite sure i'm repeating myself too often in reply to these basic questions!  My parents did keep "Classics for Children" around the house, so when i was very young, i heard things like "Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg (a Norwegian connection) and Tschaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies", but my mom also sang a few Chinese folk songs, and my dad played records like the Carpenters "There's a Kind of Hush" and the whole soundtrack from "The Sound of Music".  But the first record i went and bought for myself, at age 8 or 9, was probably "Best of the Grammys 1976" - because i was crazy about the Arp tones in "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind" and the groovy beat in Leo Sayer's "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing".  To be honest, I think a lot of musical taste is more genetic than we realize.  My brother doesn't enjoy any of these things.  What really got me completely at age 11 or 12 were disco hits like Diana Ross "Upside Down", Pink Floyd "Another Brick", then Patrice Rushen "Forget Me Nots".  Nonetheless, i really wonder about kids who grow up now watching only MTV.  Pop music before 1983 was still very musical; the Carpenters really knew their Bach! Now, all this sampled hiphop probably makes children retarded. 

DS: Lets go back to your schooling days, you were a student of psychology and literature. How, where and when did the pursuit of a music ‘career’ take over from this?

DW: Well, even in high school in suburban California for 3 years, i ran out to underground punk-disco clubs to hear hits like Stephen Duffy "Kiss Me" or Ministry "Work For Love".  But then i went to university near New York City, met some really politically aware and precocious gay blacks and Latinos from New York and Los Angeles, and got into House music around 1988-1989.  This mania never really stopped.  I went and got my Masters Degree in Chicago, but barely finished my thesis on Chinese Cinema in the 1930s because i was out every weekend at Warehouse reunion parties with black voguers, hearing Frankie Knuckles playing Thousand Finger Man and George Benson.  That was 1992-1993.  After that, i could have stayed 7 or 8 more years in Chicago, a struggling graduate student.  Strangely, at a Literature Department party, one friend played the guitar and i started singing blues for fun - i realized i had never really lost my musicality.  I moved back to New York, and so began my New York adventure and musical re-education as an adult...

DS: These days you’re living in Berlin, what attracted you to the City, and is there anything you particularly miss back home?

DW: Does anyone need to hear more about how cheap and wonderful Berlin is compared to London, Paris, New York or Tokyo?  I fear that i'm sounding like a brochure!  My apartment costs 460 euros, i have 2 generous rooms, so many wonderful, interesting, intelligent gay friends they would last me 5 lifetimes, organic food shops everywhere, natural forests and fresh lakes a quick train ride away... In fact we are already swamped with non-Germans here and prices are rising too.  Still, i was just in NYC last week  and it mostly disgusted me.  The superficiality, the neurosis and body-obsessions of Americans now; the stupid, vulgar gay scene with so little alternatives.  The richness of New York, the spirit and ethnic diversity, are all squashed under commercialism.  Indeed Brooklyn was much more comfortable than Manhattan, but i missed Berlin every day.

DS: Tell us about ‘Idealism’, how did the release of this change things for you and what positive, or perhaps, negative, impact did this have on your musical career?

DW: IDEALISM is actually from 2000 - it was already mostly a compilation of the tracks i did from 1998 up to that point -- and Morgan Geist and i reissued it in 2005 with 3 or 4 more recent tracks.  So, really, i havent been really productive for a good 5 or 6 years.  There are maybe 3 little things ive done in my 13-year DJ-Music career which i find original or valuable at all; the rest is like, a long practice session.  You just keep learning each time and trying to improve.  I think much of what ive done is miles above what the average house/disco DJ has done (in terms of sound, originality, etc), but miles and miles below my dreams, which are such simple perfections as George Benson "Give Me the Night" or Voyage "Souvenirs" (for composition or musicianship, to say the least).  And if i could do one song as good as the Carpenters!! But ive taken such a long pause because i felt the need to learn much more, and i think the new phase now will come much closer to my ideals.  That said, it's amazing that i could STILL, after 13 years, still repress Balihu-001 and get booked twice a month for DJ gigs.  The low standard of success in the DJ world has made it too easy to survive, perhaps.

DS: What does disco mean to you? Can you sum it up in a paragraph?! Also, what tracks are doing it for you right now?

DW: IN BRIEF - For me, disco is a sound which essentially has lasted from 1973 until now, which encompasses all the musical possibilities of pop, jazz, etc over a danceable 4/4 beat.  Of course people call it everything from funk to techno, and all these genres tend to have compositional or sonic limitations, but the musical core is the same.  The masterpieces incorporated the highest principles of jazz and classical, of harmony and melody, of African and Latin percussion and electronics; theyre still exciting.  The rubbbish (which we mostly get now) is repetitive and musically void; but the starting point is the same.  What does it for me in this moment?  Carly Simon "Tranquillo", Partners "Last Disco in Paris", Fuse One "Silk"... and certain forgotten masterpieces by Cerrone and Chic...

DS: Bit of a nerdy Q, but you are known to favour the theremin (one of the earliest electronic musical instruments and designed to be played without touching it!) Why is this & what sort of edge do you think this gives your productions?

DW: I cant say i "favour" it, i could say that i play it decently, that it takes an extremely musical ear to do it properly, and that it forced me to improve my musical knowledge.  A girl named Pamelia taught me - she is the best ever and still does demos for Moog Music.  I watched her, realized how much was involved, and realized i must compensate for my own lack of proper classical schooling.  You have to have extremely good intonation (pitch), which extends then to tuning guitars, synths, kalimbas, whatever.  You have to understand basics like finding the Root Note, the Dominant and Subdominant, and all the chords and moods which evolve out of this.  You have to seriously think about the interplay between bass notes (one note) and upper registers - the fundamentals of composition.  On a laptop, you click a few buttons, and it spits out a repetitive motif automatically - thus people today can easily convince themselves they are making music, which is nonsense.  The deepest thing in music is the beauty of relations between tones, and their timing.

DS: You’ve mentioned to us that your gigs in London are primarily at either Fabric of Horse Meat Disco. What do you make of the crowds that come to hear you play in London, and are there any other parties that you’ve wanted to play?

DW: I dont think anyone comes to Fabric just to hear me -- it's a big corporate club, maybe one of the better ones, but people go really just to be there, i think.  For my personal taste, it is a bit too cavernous and boomy, not very intimate.  Horse Meat has warmer sound, but it's also just a gay institution, they have many good DJs all the time besides myself.  No, i dont really YEARN to play parties in London except Horse Meat -- it's mostly too hectic, too frantic.  I love our Panorama Bar in Berlin.  I love our gay tribe here (not totally crazy on steroids and crystal meth like in NYC or London), i love the lack of Gucci / Fendi bags, i love the fetish parties - this is gay disco in its original state, NOT made fashionable and academic.  No biographies, very few trainspotters or Ebay freaks, just people dancing.  I know that people like me, or Harvey maybe, are part of this "disco cult", but we are actually people who hate cultishness and just want people to feel free, happy, sexual.  All this re-editing, all these compilations and discussions... they actually annoy me somewhat.

DS: You have a philosophy that House can be summed up in 200 pieces of vinyl, can you elaborate on that?

DW: When i said it, i didnt even realize the force of what i meant, but the more i study musical forms, the more it rings true.  There really are not so many fundamental pop structures - you know, verse, chorus, etc... and these correspond to certain  standard key changes.  Originality and musicianship always shine through, but when trainspotters collect EVERY Dutch disco maxi or every American soul LP, they tend to be (in my opinion) musically impoverished ears who dont seem to notice that theyre buying 200 versions of the same thing.  Especially crap italo - it's mostly based on 3 chords.  Tracks like Voyage "I Love You Dancer" or "Souvenirs" have distinct chordal progressions which went a bit beyond the average, and great riffs, which make them stand out.  Many DJs seem only to want to own everything ever made.  Their sets are just one thing after another, because they dont deeply understand what they hear.  I think it's more important to be able to discriminate - hence, keep it to 200.

DS: After moving to New York, you met Morgan Geist in the 90’s how did this influence you & how do you think it helped both of your creative outputs?

DW: Thats a good question - I cant say Morgan influenced me very much musically (I was just always the disco freak), but he says that Balihu was one of a few things which converted him from Detroit techno to more old school disco.  By releasing Mechanical Birds, Morgan certainly helped me get beyond Balihu, helped me into the 2nd phase my more musical Environ EPs), and i think his own work (Metro Area 3 and 4) exceeded my EPs anyway!  I havent done any strings yet quite as good as Kelley Polar! 

DS: Any DJ’s or producers out there at the mo that are pushing your buttons?

DW: Oh sure! Max Skiba of Poland.  Our next little gay Cerrone+Chopin. ilya Santana from the Canary Islands, i think he is onto  big things.  My favorite New York gay underground hero, Andy Butler, has just produced a disco LP for DFA / EMI with Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons).  And Carlos Hernandez in New York. There is hope, from a new generation of queer boys (ilya and Carlos are straight, but VERY sensitive and sweet - honorary gays)  who are musically aware -- the minimal laptop and "jazzy house" people can go take a long vacation...!

DS: What have you got planned for the future both musically & personally, do you think you will reside in Berlin for good?

DW: I cant imagine leaving Berlin, at least not for 5 or 10 years.  Of course age can change things.  I had thought i'd be in New York forever, though unhappily.  I still dream of teaching English in a small town in Japan one day, but ive had a bit too much German flesh and European joie-de-vivre to retire so young.

DS: Sum yourself in 3 words? yourself in 3 words?

DW: Oh god.  First word that jumped into my mind was INTROSPECTIVE:  nothing to do with the Pet Shop Boys.  CROSS-CULTURAL: Asia, Europe, America.  That's a bit clinical but it is extremely accurate.  And... HOMOSEXUAL?  Ha ha! 

<< back