The musical output of the Berlin-based artist Broshuda is defined as a region whose only boundaries are those he hasn’t crossed yet. It’s no wonder, since his influences include ambient, house, Clicks & Cuts, krautrock, drone, and techno—and more, of course. This Kassel native’s musical production—whether albums, singles, new works, DJ mixes or guest appearances—on labels like Seagrave, Paralaxe Editions, Videogamemusic!, and Sonic Router or on online radio stations like NTS and Berlin Community Radio, is as rapid-fire as his interests are broad, and has become accessible to a steadily growing audience. To date his releases have been in both mp3 and cassette form, lately often accompanied by his own artwork—he’d also designed some of the already-legendary Neukölln Shameless/Limitless party posters. More will soon follow—in other formats and in new constellations.

All Samples Cleared?

Both the character Broshuda and the personality Florian Koch (his given name—“Flo” for short) are hard to grasp. Which is whose alias is vague and unimportant. The conversation starts off on the subject of rap music. Of course, the artist Broshuda was influenced by rap, but one doesn’t need to attach too much significance to that: “I often found myself bored with the scene purism that rather predominates in Germany. In my opinion, we don’t need imitations of Large Professor, or any more hip hop heads recreating DJ Premier or Dilla beats note for note on MPCs. With all respect to Golden Era hip hop, much of it strikes me as a creative dead-end. Naturally I love sample-based music too, but from the beginning I didn’t want to retrieve outside material for the sound I had in mind. Hip hop was definitely important to me, but somehow eventually separate. Like many others who’ve had a similar musical socialization, I’m a disciple of Daedalus, Prefuse 73, Patten (whose first release through No Pain in Pop was a real game changer for me) and Actress, among others.” Daedalus and his access to jungle, for example, was one of the earliest and biggest influences on Broshuda. At the same time, the American producer is known for a massive use of samples. A contradiction? No matter. Broshuda seems at once clear, articulate, and straightforward.

Outside the Fridericianum

Somewhere between Gütersloh and Memmingen, between Paderborn and Erkelenz lies Kassel, Broshuda’s hometown, a city— like Fraktus sings in “A.D.A.M.”—whose existence to most people is just a concept. “The city was important to me in this sense, that apart from the Documenta it doesn’t seem very progressive—also musically. In a musical sense it is not specially positioned; there aren’t many clubs and there isn’t much room for separate scenes—which can be a good thing. The circle of like-minded people was smaller, and therefore more friendly and more rewarding. In my eyes, the masses dictated techno and tech-house, which is not at all unusual for a mid-size German city. Fair enough. You could probably see my music as a kind of counterpart to the other stuff that was happening. On the other hand, I didn’t often get the feeling that my music was received with open ears, which is probably due to collective socialization to the familiar 4/4 beat.” It’s quite different in Berlin, where Flo has been very warmly received—partly due to the networks he would’ve spun already in Kassel. “In the end, Kassel was not meaningless, and I hold no grudges against the city. Of course I know all about Kassel’s image, and even if it sounds like I was trying to escape, it wasn’t exactly like that. Kassel is more than just the city where I lived, grew up, and was socialized in—up to a point, anyway. The overall vibe motivated me, and I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to miss that.” Anyway, there were lots of things outside of the “hotspot” scene that were interesting and that compensated for the other stuff. You had to invest something and you couldn’t just fall back on existing structures. It wasn’t so bad, in Flo’s eyes, to be the underdog, and the “scene” was itself so scattered that today it doesn’t even rely on any specific venues or locations to have an active exchange.”

Broshuda embodies the artist’s rebellion against narrow-minded genre boundaries, and he’s not timid about his departures. Fatima’s Dream, released in March 2016 by Videogamemusic!, played a special role for him. “For me Fatima’s Dream is up to now the closest thing to what I want to depict musically, also what’s closest to my heart. It’s a very truthful insight into my Sunday synthesizer excursions.” Flo reflects that there are other things that serve as a kind of blueprint for taking a new direction. “The track ‘Low’ would be one example. I’d first released this in 2013 in limited-edition cassette. I find the term ‘outsider house’—once referenced jokingly by Ben UFO—personally quite funny. And listeners would probably place ‘Low’ in the house genre. I’d like to make a piece like that again. I love the synthie, the percussion that’s mainly made up of field recordings, the diffuse mood. ‘I Never Had a Sega’ is a track like that. I’ve decided that in a certain way I have musical chords with returning musical elements, fluctuating between light and inviting or dark textures. But I don’t very often come back to these. Every track consists mostly of completely new sounds that take shape there for the first time. Most of the time I come back to the takes later and I find new potential and unused passages in them.” The process of completing a track—the “work”, the jamming—is just as important to him as the finished product. Moreover, Broshuda likes to work on several projects at the same time, and he doesn’t rush. His first vinyl release is still in the works. It’s the result of a collaboration with the rapper Sensational, who made his vocals available to producers like Spectre, Madteo [see zweikommasieben #8], Koyxeи or Kruton [aka Bintus, see zweikommansieben #12].

Loaded with Power

“For a while I’ve been working now and then on a four-track track EP for Seagrave”, Flo explains. “On a couple of tracks there are vocals from Sensational—a pretty unusual guy and definitely a phenomenon. At the end of the eighties he was a founder of the Jungle Brothers, but he wasn’t on any of their released works. There’s just one unreleased album that the label decided was too crass, because it was experimental, and was never officially released.” Sensational comes from the illbient genre of the WordSound label, who also released his solo debut Loaded with Power. “He had in my opinion some great features—among them on tracks by Madteo, who is definitely a hero of mine.” The contact with Sensational, Broshuda says, came from a friend in the Berlin Shlomp crew. “He had once contributed a beat to a track by Sensational and he put me in touch. The idea of wanting to work with Sensational occurred to me since he was playing around with instrumentals in a similar way. Originally I hadn’t really intended to work with rappers. Then I ended up having to do it.” Broshuda didn’t hear anything at first, but then he got back a terse query: “remix or collabo?” Up to this point Broshuda had just used the MC’s Facebook fan page to contact him. Then Sensational indicated that he was taken with the instrumentals that Flo had sent. “Actually it was a good basis for a collaboration, but I didn’t really believed it in the beginning. Maybe because while we were corresponding, Sensational sent me ad messages at the same time—“Wanna buy a new Sensational Hoodie? And my new CD as well?”. Unfortunately I had to pass—at that time I had no interest or money to buy a hoodie from America. But I respected his hustle.” At some point they got serious: “he suggested a fee—for something to smoke and studio time. Tim from Seagrave, who was a long-time Sensational fan, was along at that time. He thought at first that I was going to screw him…he didn’t believe that I could have self-directed the feature. We assumed that as a fallback, Sensational would just rap into the webcam. And in spite of that, or maybe because of it, I found it wonderful—I’m a big fan of simple recording techniques.” Then at the end of the year, the vocal track was suddenly in the mail. “He had built in a hook that was so concise that I had to reconsider the song title. I’m not sure if I want to change it though. What artist does that? And because of that I have to see what direction the pieces take.”

Despite the lack of a vinyl release, Broshuda isn’t in a hurry: “Stuff always gets in the way, and new projects that I can knock off in a day appeal to me more than working on a premaster version—that requires a certain state of mind that I don’t want to force right now. There are also offers to do vinyl releases and tracks in radio rip that are in the works. I’m eager to see what happens.” One thing we know for sure—something good is bound to happen.