Flock Together: Julius Steinhoff

Since its birth back in 2006, Hamburg’s Smallville imprint has quietly gone from strength to strength. Establishing itself with a number of highly respected releases from artists such as Move D, STL and Christopher Rau, the label-slash-store is renowned for an effortless, distinctive sound, combining a certain naïvety in its approach towards creating and curating with a masterful knowledge of what constitutes great house music. This aesthetic is visually represented by Stefan Marx’s gorgeous, childlike line drawings, which adorn the label's records and posters. It’s a perfect fit.

Being concerned with the by-no-means trifling task of running a label, a record store and a series of legendary parties, Smallville’s co-founder Julius Steinhoff has had relatively few official releases to his name. Yet, after a compelling crop of singles and a well-received album – 2012’s Salty Days – produced with label co-founder and the other half of Smallpeople, Just von Ahlefeld, it’s finally Steinhoff’s turn to step to the front with his first solo LP, Flocking Behaviour.

Steinhoff calls from the confines of his tiny 1.5m-wide studio, crammed full of cherished analogue instruments (Roland 808, 909, Juno-106 and the Korg MS2000 for the synthspotters!), which he used to produce the album. In keeping with his vision of his label as a way of producing music among a tight-knit circle of friends, there’s an unmistakable homely feel to Steinhoff’s work. Bathed in a warm array of pads, and underpinned by a number of rhythmically shifting but reassuringly familiar beats, tracks like Hey You! and Treehouse provide all the fuzzy satisfaction of a big hug.

“As I am using vintage analogue machines, it’s easy to sound nostalgic,” Steinhoff admits, reflecting on the recording process. “But that’s never been my intention. The patterns come from really deep inside me, and the machines are there for twisting knobs so I can physically experiment a little more. You get something that you might not expect if you just let it go. I wouldn’t say it’s about being nostalgic, or this whole nostalgic thing that’s going on; I’ve been collecting the machines for a while now, but they are merely tools that allow me to improvise and embrace my mistakes.”

Rather than spending most of his childhood parked in front of a PlayStation, Steinhoff eschewed video games in favour of software interfaces, channelling his childish energy into making music from an early age. This approach still defines his philosophy towards making tracks: "There’s definitely a playful mood on the album, and I think making music is effectively like playing with a computer. Even using basic programs like Fruity Loops as a kid, it was nice to play around and to have a result that I could listen to.”

Perhaps the charming, improvisatory quality of Steinhoff’s music is less a result of a particular attempt to recreate the sounds of classic deep house than his appreciation for the joyful experimentation that many of the artists of this era exhibited, before the scene became known for taking itself too seriously. The dour, moody tag associated with deep house of the German variety, in particular, is certainly one that he and his friends are wary of.

“Dial Records [Smallville’s older sister, run by Steinhoff’s close friend and mentor Lawrence] always had that title of melancholic house music back in the day, and I think at some points they were a little annoyed by this," Steinhoff says. "It’s like an [a tag] someone puts on your music to say that it’s melancholic, and that you are this specific kind of person. I’m definitely into minor chords and melodies but it’s not about trying to tell something with it, it’s more like a natural process.”

Continually referring to his work using organic metaphors, it’s clear that Steinhoff does not fit the mould of the solitary producer steadily knocking out tracks from his bedroom. Instead, he prefers to produce music in a more open-ended fashion, through a non goal-orientated philosophy. He shares this perspective with co-conspirator von Ahlefeld, which is probably why their collaborations are so frequently fruitful. Future plans include further forays into instrumental territory with another Smallville artist, Hammouda, which may never be released, along with definite plans for another Smallpeople 12-inch.

That some of these collaborations will come to nothing is beside the point, since Steinhoff finds the process itself so invaluable: “I really like doing something with other people because it’s always like a complete other way of sharing things. It’s easy to just go next door, turn on the machines and make a track. Smallpeople is just more fun, it’s way more spontaneous. When you do get the chance to play with other people and get their input it takes you out of your comfort zone,” he enthuses.

Steinhoff remains refreshingly humble about his own talents, and the considerable success that both himself and his label chums are now experiencing. Again, it’s an attitude that he puts down to his formative experiences on the Hamburg scene with Lawrence, aka Peter Kersten: “When I got introduced to Pete, we talked and talked and he eventually invited me to come to his place to get some Dial records. It made me realise we were the same, just musicians, and I was really happy about that.”

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"I wouldn’t say it’s about being nostalgic; I've been collecting the machines for a while now, but they are merely tools" – Julius Steinhoff

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Their friendship is also intertwined with the legacy of house music in Hamburg, which becomes obvious as he patiently fills me in on his city’s not so humble musical history: “Hamburg had the Front club, which was the first club to play acid house. There’s some very famous DJs from Hamburg who brought the acid house movement to Germany: they had a very important movement called Container Records. After Container came to an end, and the Front closed down, there was a period of very bad house music in the 90s. Pete always went to the Front when he was really young, and he’s always talking about it. Pete took a lot of that feeling with him into Hamburg’s much-loved nightspot – the Golden Pudel. So, there’s a continuity there. As I’m much younger, both Pete and the Pudel club were major influences when I was growing up.”

The extent to which the city has moved on from the ‘bad 90s’ is evident in the rude health that the triumvirate of Smallville, Dial and the Pudel are all currently enjoying. As the Smallville machine expands, with another store and wildly successful parties happening in Paris and (possibly) beyond, what does Steinhoff reckon is the most important thing behind their success?

“It’s definitely about friends,” he considers. “We planned to launch the store and the label at the same time, but we also realised that you need to have great music to put out before you start a label. A very important point for us was the first album, Move D’s Songs From the Beehive. When that came out, we got so much feedback from all over the world. Move D was really not doing a lot at that point in time, then afterwards he got very big again and started putting out loads of releases afterwards. There was never a master plan, or anything behind it, we just released the music that we liked."

Steinhoff goes on to reveal that Smallville currently do not listen to demos, preferring to release material exclusively from within their gradually expanding circle of friends. While this recruitment method may strike some as somewhat insular, fortunately their decisions to book and stock white labels from unknown artists from around the globe often demonstrates remarkable willingness to gamble – a tactic that certainly pays off when that unknown artist is Omar S. Booking such a heavyweight at such an early stage in his career is undoubtedly part of the reason why Smallville are so well respected as tastemakers, but it is particularly welcome to hear Steinhoff talk about comparatively unknown Detroit producer Keith Worthy, his current favourite DJ, in the same breath.

So, with a beautifully crafted album about to drop, and a label whose reputation is only growing year on year, it’s not improbable that Steinhoff will soon be talked about in similarly awed tones; it's a shame he probably won’t notice, though.