Amplified

  “I was an only child,” said Rik de Lisle, an American radio presenter who has been in broadcast since 1976. “My brothers and sisters were the radio.” De Lisle enlisted in the Army when he was 17 and became famous during the Cold War for his on air personality on the airwaves for the U.S. Armed Forces Radio station, AFN. “Berlin was edgy, because of the wall around it, […]

  We're used to hearing music and digital sound from simple speakers. Monom, a new, state-of-the-art spatial sound studio and performance space, aims to recreate the natural perception of sound in a spatial environment.  Monom resides in Funkhaus Berlin, a former broadcasting complex built by the GDR in the 1950s, and is powered by a 4D sound system developed by Dutch audio engineers over the past decade. The result is […]

  “The inspiration was definitely how one has to deal with what’s happening right now,” says London-born and Berlin-based Sasha Perera, also known as Perera Elsewhere, about her new album. Perera talks with Marlene Melchior about the Berlin music scene, her experience performing in the same lineup as Pussy Riot, and what’s next for her. Photo courtesy Sasha Perera.

  For years, people told American DJ and producer Sky Deep that she should go to Berlin. It made her curious, so she planned a tour stop in the city with her band at the time. Now she’s lived in Berlin for three years. When asked about the current atmosphere in the U.S., Sky Deep said “as a black, queer woman,” she is terrified to return to her home country. […]

  The Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin offers a conservatory education to musicians from the Middle East and North Africa as a way to promote a more peaceful future for a troubled region. Monika Müller-Kroll talks to the rector of the Akademie, Prof. Dr. Michael Naumann. A natural continuation of Daniel Barenboim's and Edward Said's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the Akademie aims to produce a generation of musicians who will "know better" […]

  For Nat Fowler, aka Novo Line, creating his latest album "Dyad" was a sort of experiment or game: could he produce tracks that work at both 33 rpm and 45 rpm? Besides encouraging people to buy vinyl, Fowler's approach as an artist plays with the intersection between digital and analog sound, from his choice to use "archaic" computer algorithms when sketching out ideas, to working exclusively with older production […]

  Pioneer electronic DJ, musician and producer Paul van Dyk has released a new album. It’s titled “From Then On.” We caught up with him before his tour. Monika Müller-Kroll: Paul, good to meet you. “From Then On” deals with a crucial time in your life. You had an accident in early 2016. You fell through a stage while performing. How do you put this into music? Paul van Dyk: […]