German duo Rebar split their lives between Dresden and Berlin, but when they do manage to come together, something special seems to happen. The pair run techno imprint made of CONCRETE and are about to release the fifth edition of their VA album series, Batch Plant.
This time Batch Plant features tracks from El Choop, Olan! and Anachronism as well as a remix from Rebar themselves. We caught up with the guys to discuss the new release, what’s coming up on made of CONCRETE, and their own plans for the rest of 2019.
Hello Rebar, how are things going in Germany right now?
Hello, thanks for having us. Here currently everything is super hot. Currently, our temperatures are higher than in the south of Europe. Not so easy to handle for us as German’s but we try our best to stay alive.
Let’s start things off with your Batch Plant series, tell us about the concept?
The concept of our Batch Plant series is quite simple. We put an artist in the curator seat to assemble a bunch of tracks produced by new faces, guest artists and add a rework into the mix. The curating artist is allowed to cross style borders and the selection of tracks can be different from their own productions and sound.
Now on the 5th edition, you have tracks from El Choop, Anachronism and Olan!, how do you go about selecting which tracks go on the release?
There is no specific agenda behind it. It’s a mix of demos we receive and friends we ask for music. Our selection covers actually three different styles but at the same time, all the tracks fit together. The selection also represents the kind of sets we like to listen and mix ourselves.
We’re not the biggest fans of sets which don’t really change over hours. We like it a bit more eclectic and surprising but it should not become random. The music style needs to speak somehow in one language but with different dialects. This is how our selections happen. Somehow.
There is also a remix from yourself on there, what way did you approach this one?
The remix called The Other Side Of The Coin remix, which explains our approach in a perfect way. The energy for our remix was already included in the original we just put our focus on this iconic sound which sounds like it’s from a Horror movie and this change in the perspective twisted the track to something else.
And why did you decide to remix the Anachronism track over the others?
It was the track which we felt that we could bring another perspective to. The other tracks are great but we didn’t see the possibility to bring a twist inside which makes sense. The two different versions of Minor make total sense as for us there is a big difference but the tracks are still connected to each other.
Tell us what we can expect to see on your label Made Of Concrete in the near-future?
We’re really excited about the next month we have some great upcoming releases by Oliver Deutschmann and Markus Suckut. Both are great artists we respect a lot. With Markus, we’ve been in contact for a long time. We will also play some shows together and he also played already on label nights for us so we’re happy to finally have him on board.
And how about your own productions? Any labels that you might be releasing with soon?
As you can see in our release history, we’re not the output kings. We are quite slow in producing new music. The reason for this is that we live in different cities and the label takes a lot of time and energy. BUT we’re soon back with a new EP on made of CONCRETE and for 2019 we will for sure work on a new special EP for our Rebar imprint. On other labels, we currently have nothing planned.
It’s been great to have a quick chat, is there anything else you want to mention?
We only have one planet and this planet is for all of us (plants, animals, humans). Let’s work on a future which is good for everyone. Fuck war. Peace rules.