Allien Life

As an integral part of Berlin’s burgeoning music scene for nearly two decades, and with her label B-Pitch Control celebrating its 10th birthday this year, Ellen Allien is probably the most powerful woman in dance music.

But despite the continued success of her label, fashion line, solo and DJ career, she remains one of the most easy going and enthusiastic people in the industry, something she puts down to her life in the city she loves: Berlin.

Growing up with her mother and sister in the relative freedom of the West side of the wall, from an early age was surrounded by music. “Since I was a little kid music was my hobby, after school I would make music, put records on and dance in front of the mirror. A family friend used to put the jukeboxes in all the bars in Berlin and they would give me the old singles, so I had thousands of records in my room.”

This love of pop music, especially fellow Berlin-lover David Bowie, whose memorised lyrics helped her to learn English, developed into a passion for the dance floor as her older sister sneaked her into clubs. “I would be the youngest kid in the whole club, and I was always dancing with the older people. So when I was fifteen I was telling my mother that on weekends I’m sleeping at a friend’s house and then going clubbing until 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning, coming home when most people my age were playing or watching TV.”

Despite these early musical leanings she made failed attempts at studying both fashion and dance, before the momentous fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 took her to London for a year, where acid house caught her ear. Upon returning home she lived in a squat with her boyfriend, teaching herself the saxophone and drums. But it wasn’t until she rejected the ass-grabbing men in Berlin’s booming hip hop clubs like WMF, for the gay men and early techno at the legendary UFO club, that her electronic affair started.

“When the wall came down I felt like having a new life, I felt so free, everything was interesting. It showed me that from one day to the next everything can change, or you can change things in your personal life. You don’t have to wait for anything.”

She soon got a job behind the bar at UFO founder, Dimitri Hegemann’s, new Fischlabor club, quickly moving behind the decks as her skills progressed. This led to residencies at Hegemann’s Tresor and other pioneering clubs like E-Werk and Bunker during the early 90s. Her Kiss FM show in 1994 led to her first label, Brain Candy, which was home to her early production work, but closed three years later when distributors couldn’t pay up.

Undeterred, she started throwing parties under the B-Pitch name and by 1999 she decided to have another crack at the music industry, building a label around fellow Berlin artists like Sasha Funke, Apparat, Modeselektor and Paul Kalkbrenner. With a considerable helping hand from her own consistently cutting edge releases, as well as scene setting music from the rest of the B-Pitch stable and other local labels like Get Physical, Berlin has blossomed into a Mecca for electronic music, with the government soon realising the positive influence that the vibrant music and arts scene could have on a city so reliant on tourism.

The scene, the cheap rent, abundant event spaces and a great nightlife gave rise to a massive influx of creative types to Berlin this decade, with artists like Ricardo Villalobos, Ritchie Hawtin and Luciano all setting up shop and consequently making it ground zero for the mid noughties explosion of minimal house and techno. But despite making, playing and releasing some distinctly minimal sounds, Ellen doesn’t want B-Pitch pigeon-holed, citing artists like Telefon Tel Aviv, Kiki and AGF/Delay as evidence of the label’s diversity. “We try to present the sound of Berlin, and Berlin has minimal house, techno, hip hop, everything, so it’s not based on one sound; we’re not a minimal label.”

Her love of the city comes up time and time again, but she also expresses a passion for experiencing new countries and clubs, with a definite affection for London and Fabric, where she plays regularly and produced the 34th in their compilation series. “I like the clubbing in England, its very fun, the closing times make it very compact, but English people know how to rave. With London I think it’s very funny because my usual play time starts at 12 or 1 and when I arrive in the club it looks like it’s Sunday in Berlin, everybody is already so drunk and funny. They don’t take their time, whereas in Germany it takes a while until they are in the right mood to party.”

Currently searching for a suitably special venue for the UK leg of their 10th Birthday party series, the B-Pitch team have already celebrated with parties across Germany, the Miami WMC, Sonar, and plan to keep it up all year with a date at the Melt festival, a special album artist exhibition in September and plenty more debauchery up their sleeves.

As for the little lady herself, after last year's fourth solo album, Sool, she has no immediate plans for another. “At the moment I am working on a new single, called Lover, in the next few weeks it will be finished and will come out in the summer. As for an album, sometime soon, but I have no rush really, if I want to do something I want to do it very good. So I can’t say when it will be finished, but it will be very freaky: I’m going to sing a lot, some pop tunes, kind of like a soundtrack for a movie, something beautiful, something mixed, some break beats, techno tunes and guitars.”

Aside from the music she also designs the extensive B-Pitch clothing range, with a new autumn/winter collection under way: yet another part of the small empire she has created. But through childhood in Berlin and living as a squatter she has avoided the capitalist tendencies of the industry and built the business as more of a collective, helping lessen the seemingly enormous workload. “I work a lot but I’m not really that busy, it doesn’t feel like I’m burnt out. I can relax while I’m working, I get to be creative in everything I’m doing and I’m doing it with friends, so it doesn’t feel like work.” And when she does get home the routine is typically down to earth: “I do yoga, I watch movies; I saw a really good series a few days ago, Life on Mars. It’s great, although it’s not easy to understand for me, with the accents.”

With successful releases from Kiki and B-Pitch supergroup Moderat already out this year, as well as another Boogybytes mix and an album from new signing Jay Haze, AKA FuckPony, out in the coming months, it looks like another promising decade for the label. “At the moment I am so happy because we have so many talented artists and our company is growing rather than getting smaller in this financial crisis, and it’s really, really fun. I’m very proud of the last ten years, and of all the signings, we did a good job I think.”