THE TRACK: Anja Schneider feat. Stereo
Sanctuary feat. Stereo MCs
MCs, Sanctuary – Anja and collaborators Jan and Klaas reveal their studio secrets
Anja Schneider is a creative force to be reckoned with. She landed her first Berlin DJ residency in the mid-’90s and has kept up a hectic schedule of international touring ever since. She’s a prolific radio host across Europe, as well as taste-making label boss. She helmed the influential Mobilee label and its offshoot Leena throughout the late ’00s, giving a platform to the likes of Nicole Moudaber, Maya Jane Coles and Pan-Pot. Since 2017, her focus has shifted to new label Sous Music, on which she released her second artist album, SoMe, last year.
As a producer, Schneider prefers to work in collaboration. For recent projects she’s teamed up with longtime friends/production partners Jan-Eric Scholz and Klas Lindblad (aka Sasse). The trio have refined a slick process, with Anja as the creative driving force, Jan the technical production expert and Klas handling mixing and mastering. FM caught up with all three in their gorgeous Berlin studio space to find out how that collaborative dynamic worked on
SoMe highlight, Sanctuary – a driving slice of pop-tinged techno featuring the vocal talents of Stereo MCs frontman Rob Birch.
How long have the three of you worked together?
Anja Schneider: “We’ve all been friends for a long time. I met Sasse before I started my first label. Without him I probably wouldn’t have started it because he put me in contact with the distributors and generally helped me quite a lot.”
Did you always envision this studio as a collaborative space?
“I was already thinking about Klas and Jan when I found this studio. It was more or less built as it is now, but we did add quite a few things. We had this idea to build a collective. I’m still DJing a lot, Jan is an amazing producer and Klas does mixing and mastering, so we work well as a team. We can offer all these services to people – whether they want to produce something or learn something. We all work as separate units too; Klas has his Blackhead Studios, Jan works as Jan-Eric Scholz productions and
produces for other people too, not just me. Together though, we’ve got quite an interesting synergy and it works well. Because we’ve known each other for so long we really trust each other. With creative processes especially, it’s good to work with people where you can have constructive criticism. It’s really important for me to have that relationship with people who know certain skills a little better than I do. It’s a good team.”
How did the track Sanctuary come about?
“We released the album in November 2017, but we started working on it a year before, around Christmas time. I wanted to have as much time as possible so we didn’t have too much pressure for a release date and had a lot of time to work on ideas. Our main goal was to create something away from the dancefloor.
“I’ve always produced with someone else, but for more than three years it’s been Jan and me working together. He’s really experienced and really good at helping realise my ideas. That was part of why it felt like the right moment for an album – I had the right production partner who really understood what I wanted to do.
“With Sanctuary, I wanted to have a track on the album with a bit of a pop feeling. It was quite difficult; with a pop song you have to arrange things differently, you have to move away from the loops. It’s probably the track on the album we spent the most time on. It
was hard to find the right vocalist too. I wanted to work with a male vocalist, but I also wanted it to sound a bit cool and dirty. We spent a lot of time thinking about who we could work with. We had the basic concept but could feel there was a vocalist missing. I went back to all of the old records in my collection to get inspired.”
How did you end up working with Rob Birch?
“Funnily enough, there was a Boiler Room session going on just opposite my apartment, for the release of the Terranova album. I took my son and went to check it out because I liked the music. They didn’t make it public, so we were the only guests in there! Rob from the Stereo MCs was performing. They were a really big influence – everyone has a story about them in the ’90s; we were all connected somehow. We didn’t really have a chance to talk there, but when I got home I called Jan and said, ‘I want Rob, he’s the vocalist I want!’. I sent him an email and it only took one day before he got back and said he was up for it.
“He was a really impressive, professional vocalist. We had almost nothing to do; we sent him over the ideas and then two days later he sent back his vocal ideas. We were both sitting here listening with goosebumps; they fit perfectly. After that, a bit of a friendship built up. We played together, we did a video together. It ended up being the most interesting part of the album.”