Fabian Berg is the latest addition to the Jaeger’s lineup, both in the booth and behind the bar. The newest member of our team, has already left an indelible mark on the dance floor, with a stint at M.A.D Tuesdays, filling in for Axel FU and regular appearances across our weekly residences.
Fabian Berg ticks all the boxes across his 2h stint at the Jaeger mix, from the downtempo balearics to squirming acid, playing between the old and the new. A hardware aesthetic reigns supreme with drum machines and synthesisers working in swinging tandem in a resonant pulse to the dance floor. As an extension of his production efforts there is a definite sonic identity to his works, with his future prospects looking very promising indeed.
The young artist and DJ is making an early mark already, and we look forward to much more from him in the upcoming future, but first some questions.
Hey Fabian. Welcome to the Jaeger Mix. Can you give us an introduction?
Hello! Thanks for having me on! It was great playing this one out in the famed sauna. Really enjoyed putting together this mix, combining my recent finds and older tracks that I have on repeat. I’m currently Oslo based, working double jobs and combining that with as much music work as I possibly can. I’m spending most of my free time making music or digging tracks. It has sort of become a daily habit by this point, being fresh with inspiration in the studio or digging endlessly trying to find good tracks and preparing for the Tuesday residency that has kept me busy the past couple months.
What’s your first memory of a piece of music?
I remember it took me some time to really get into electronic music, you know, other than listening to Skrillex and Avicii during middle school of course. I grew up with Jazz and Bossa Nova in our home, to this day it is sort of my guilty pleasure. My earliest memories with the house music that more or less resembles the stuff I’m into today has to be when I was getting into Lofi house, with artists such as DJ Boring, early Sweely days and Computer Data. I still remember discovering the track Decompression by Harrison BDP as one of my first discoveries with that type of House, that bassline was so killer.
How did electronic music first make an impression and what led to you eventually taking up DJing?
The passion really took off after moving to London, as I got in close friend groups where most people were already playing. I had never touched a pair of decks before moving there. Clubbing during the weekends was a key role to new discoveries, and The Lion and Lamb is one of the reasons that I wanted to play more. I was working cover there a couple times and got to listen to so many great DJ’s playing a type of music I had never heard before. As iIve always loved looking for new music, whether it’s electronic music or not, DJ’ing was sort of the outcome of wanting to build a library of music and showing it to people.
I believe you’re studying (or just finished) towards a degree in sound engineering. What was the ambition behind that and how do you hope to put it into practice in the future?
I did a degree in music production actually! Been a couple years since I moved back home to work. I’m happy to have gone through it as I met a lot of really nice people to connect with. It was quite spontaneous as I had just finished high school, trying to figure out what to do next. I applied and got accepted, and I thought that moving to a new place was the right thing to do!
As it’s a degree in production and not engineering I haven’t been thinking if it could lead to any new jobs. For now it’s mainly producing for myself and doing releases under my own name.
What’s your history with making/playing music before this and how did it lead to your studies?
I started making music during my final year of High School. I had Ableton 9 on my laptop from buying a launchpad when I was 16, which I later sold a couple of weeks later haha. Since I had a copy of Ableton sitting on my computer I decided to mess around with it after some friends were showing me their music. I had only really done music for a year or so before applying to my studies, though I already knew it was something I wanted to pursue.
I assume that you’re producing music now. How would you describe the music you make today and what was the evolution of your sound?
Yeah production has always been my main priority on the side of playing. I was making a lot of garage when I was first living in the UK, before that it was mostly hiphop or pop I would say. It quickly went to more deep tech stuff before landing on making whatever I feel inspired to make. Recently my productions have involved more Psy-Trance influences and sampling 90s tracks.
Where could we hear your music right now?
I have a couple of tracks out on Spotify, and a Bandcamp exclusive release with Limousine Dream on Nug-Net which came out earlier this year. There are not a lot of releases out but hopefully there will be more this year!
What’s the relationship to the music you make and what you play as a DJ?
The tracks I play out are tracks that inspire me a lot, and that goes back into what my music ends up sounding like. I wouldn’t say they are identical though, I like producing more brighter cosmic trancy stuff as of now, while playing records of whatever sounds good to my ear, this can be anything from uplifting 90s vocal tracks to deep Techno-like house grooves.
For the past month, you’ve been standing in for Axel FU at M.A.D Tuesdays. What have you taken away from that experience as a DJ?
It’s been great having those Tuesdays being able to play music I love to crowds that regularly. I get to test the waters with different approaches to building the sets, and the different time slots each week makes for a nice way of preparing both slow tempo atmospheric break tracks and peak time closers.
As somebody that also works at Jaeger in the bar, to what other nights are you usually drawn and to which DJs do you like listening?
I don’t go out anymore as much as I would like. Most times I’m out clubbing is when I’m around traveling in other cities. Even though I work in the bar at Jaeger I make sure to be free when DJ’s I really like are booked here, and the techno nights in the Jaeger basement always bring a nice atmosphere. As there are so many great DJ’s, I mostly listen to mixes from festivals or podcast series that I know play the sound I like, and it’s a great way to discover new artists. The mixes that have come out from Oddysee or the Butik Festival have been great sources of inspiration.
Tell us a bit about the ideas that informed your selections in the Jaeger mix.
I’m still very much trying to find my sound, I would say this mix is showing a bit of the deeper side of my library than I would usually play. I think the reason I’ve been so into this style lately is the longing for going out clubbing at the places I was mostly drawn to while living outside of Oslo. The sound of the Norwegian born label Quirk, or artists like Fantastic man and the duo, Foehn & Jerome have had their influences on this mix.
There’s a kind of balearic 90’s acid- house vibe to the mix. What is your relationship with this style of music?
It’s a sound I’ve been listening to for a while. Whenever I dig for music from the 90s I always find this sound is so captivating. I was going to quite a few techno gigs a couple years ago, and I think that vibe stuck with me while still wanting to make house music. Any type of deep grooves with weird sounds really drives me, especially acid haha.
It’s a mixture of old recognisable tracks and newer examples of that music. Where do you find this kind of music and how do you manage that balance between the old and new?
I try to buy as much old music as I do with new, I would say bandcamp and Discogs are my main tools as of now. I try to buy bulks of records when traveling to a different country and looking through record shops. Often I find similarities between tracks from the 90s and recently released tracks, and my library I would say are split between old and new, so when selecting tracks for a set I usually take my favourite bits from each era and try to blend them nicely.
You build up the tempo and energy throughout the mix. Was this premeditated and how did the night shape the direction the mix eventually took?
I sort of had an idea in mind of the way the mix should sound, although there are always changes to make when playing in front of a crowd. I approached this mix as more of a podcast mix, to be enjoyed afterwards, showing some of my favourite selections from last month. I decided to start slower with more low tempo tracks, as early warm up sets are some of my favourite to play.
Besides playing at Jaeger, now, where else can people hear you play and what else do you have lined up in the future?
I’ll be recording some mixes of my last record discoveries at home, that probably will be posted to my soundcloud! And hopefully more released music to come.