Name: Paul Traeumer
Occupation: Producer, songwriter/composer, DJ
Nationality: German  
Current release: Paul Traeumer's La Vaca Cega is out via kontrapost.
Recommendations: Book: Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy; Painting: Hieronymus Bosch, "Der Garten der Lüste"; Music: Manu Dibango – Soul Makossa

If you enjoyed this Paul Traeumer interview and would like to keep up to date with his work and music, visit him on Instagram, and Soundcloud.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

Listening to good music feels like a transcendental thing itself, as it can transport me to worlds that start to flourish and nurture themselves from my mind.

This can have the form of objects and colours, as it can smellt, be seen or felt.

So, both ways.

Entering new worlds and escapism through music have always exerted a very strong pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to listening to and creating music?

Creating music has always been my reality since I was a little boy.

Escapism and entering new worlds are of course strong motives for creating sound. But for me, listening and producing music feels much more like diving deeper into the vast realms this reality holds for us in so many opaque ways. In that sense, music is a tool of expression as much as it can be a uniting thing.

In that context I feel that surprise is one of the most central parts of touching music. I don't care if someone plays out a technically perfect concert / DJ set / Live set, it has to have this moment where things are happening naturally, almost independently from the artist mission.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience?

Going back, we will find a six year old boy who starts to play keys, cause he wants to be able to play easy versions of piano pieces by Nina Simone, and how I sat at the instrument and genuinely started to go over the notes again and again.

These pieces, they really started to live in my head, talking to me and being a safe place of retreat.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

Being a teenager, listening to music alone in my room, gave me a space to dream, move or just sing in front of my mirror. For sure there was always something in me that wanted to go on stage and do nonsense.

Regarding what changed since then, there's a story always fun to tell: back in the 90s my mum was some kind of a technohead. She would go every year at least once to Ibiza for a week of rave, and when she came back, she would be telling us which clubs she liked, which sets she listened to (she was a big Carl Cox fan back in the days), etc.

[Read our Carl Cox interview]

Electronic music was always around my home when I grew up. Going to techno parties and listening to electronic music was something I considered a normal thing that my parents did for a pretty long time. A little later, I discovered that world for myself.

How would you describe your own relationship with your instrument, tools or equipment?

I started to write music as a bedroom producer. A small amount of tools to express myself, rather punky set ups and recording situations. That somehow stuck to my work flow. Big studios are opening up lots of possibilities, but sometimes, especially while sketching ideas, they can also can be overwhelming regarding my creativity.

There are some tools that I actually have used constantly for more than 15 years in my tracks, but not many. An old Roland synthesizer workstation and some drum machines for example. But there are also tracks that come alive at first virtually with only a laptop. Later on, I'll record them in a proper studio surrounding.

Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often- quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I think creating music can really be triggered by everything. Of course that can be 'big' concepts like politics, love, death or dreams.

But also much smaller things too. A thread that seems lost in my carpet while I walk over it. A fight or a kiss you observe walking on the streets. A house standing alone on a hill, a cloud passing by and so forth ....

Are you acting out parts of your personality in your music which you couldn't or wouldn't in your daily life? If so, which are these? What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music?

For sure the stage can be a place of catharsis. It doesn't matter if you play for five people or on a big stage – a stage-situation can pull out things of your personality, you didn't even know were there.

For me, this is heavily dependent on the context, where music is played. The audience always has a strong influence on how I perform, while DJing of course, but also regarding more concert-like situations and set ups.

If there is a key idea behind my music, it's maybe the abovementioned surprise I love to nourish and listen too as well – no matter whether it's in a DJ set, playing a live show or while writing and producing a record in the studio.

For me as a listener and fan, as well as a musician, surprise and fusion are some of the key features, that make a track a keeper.

If music is a language, what can we communicate with it? How do you deal with misunderstandings?

Music definitely can be a language – especially for all those things that aren't accessible via words and concepts of logic. I think that most of our lived reality is far from being adequately depicted in spoken words, and in certain moments a song can be much more accurate about how something feels, than a thousand page novel.

Misunderstandings in that context are not only a problem, but also the driving force for innovation. Via-listening, mistranslation, deconcstruction can be a source of new meaning, rather than an obstacle.

Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and about discovery. How do you retain a sense of playfulness and how do you still draw surprises from tools, approaches and musical forms you may be very familiar with?

For me it's inevitable to shut down my mind in some ways, to be creative and playful.

Also switching surroundings can be helpful. A simple balcony can be enough, to make for a very good ambient studio for example ...

I can make music come alive and vibrate, when I try to speake to my body before speaking to my mind. In a way, that has always been my central theme for creating sonics.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

Some years ago, I stayed several weeks in a rather abandoned place in Portugal, a small village close to Peniche, where I would spend autumn times.

It was cold and windy throughout my whole stay, and staying in a super small witch-house day after day, doing nothing else but creating music with a very small set up, eating and sleeping, I got hooked heavily on these sonics of the wind. Listening to these precusors of winter storms blowing around my house every second day, gave me such a deep feeling of coziness and foreshadering danger in the same time. It's a good place to die, I'll tell you.

Regardless whether it's the sounds of these winds back then, or listening to Brian Eno's classic Thursday Afternoon, for example - both soundscapes are somehow linking to a deeper, always- there-vibration of the aether for me somehow. That's the sphere for me, where human music and non-human-made sounds, instruments and nature, blur together.



This can be everything. From hardcore percussive sounds to György Ligeti compositions.

There seems to be an increasing trend to capture music in algorithms, and data. But already at the time of Plato, arithmetic, geometry, and music were considered closely connected. How do you see that connection yourself? What aspects of music do you feel can be captured through numbers, and which can not?

What has been an expensive studio back in the days, is packed into virtual working programs, that fit on computers. I see this process mostly as very positive, as it enables more people to make music and it democratises music production - at least to a certain point.

But how relatable a certain piece of music can be for an individual linking into it can't be represented by a generalized system of numbers I guess.

How does the way you make music re flect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

As we can't say for sure how a certain piece is music is received by two different brains, for me it's difficult to say what a “deeper level of understanding” of music would look like, and how that could be evaluated.

Making and listening to music does in so far mirror the way of life, as it's about being both - a very lonely but ultimately also a very social thing. It can have the power to connect and unite human minds - not against something, but just in a moment of perceiving emotional signals. That always carried a strong fascination for me.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

Silence is very important for me.

When I was younger, I'd be always running around with headphones, listening to music I loved. Nowadays, when I go into nature or travel on public transport, I tend to choose to listen to the noises of the forest or the tumult of society rather than shutting myself off with headphones.

Finding a balance between, silence, noise and music, is a central aspect of keeping my ears hungry really.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

It doesn't have to be different. Making music can feel like building a chair, a wall, making love or yes, making a great cup of coffee. If you are really expressing something personal about yourself, it is challenging and rewarding process, no matter what you do.

Making a cup of coffee at least has a beginning and an end. At some point there is nothing more to do, than to drink it. That can be different with creating music. You can access categories, that have an underlying mystical – that's also a big source of inspiration.

But who knows for sure, of what making a cup of coffee could feel like really ... I'm convinced, that art can happen in the most mundane everyday tasks and interceptions.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

Through streaming, young and independent artists seem to have to obey the behemoths of the capital directly, regarding social media work, playlisting, visibility and so forth.

I would love to see social media being less important for the music industry.