Name: Hans Nieswandt
Occupation: DJ, music producer, writer, lecturer
Nationality: German
Current release: Hans Nieswandt's Flower Hans is out via GMO.

If you enjoyed this Hans Nieswandt interview and would like to keep up to date with his music, visit his official website. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, and Soundcloud.  



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’m a music fan first of all, and a digger, so I like to make "music from music" - find a little something in an old recording or wherever, and then create something new out of it.

It’s probably what most artists are actually doing, but don’t like to acknowledge so much, because the myth of the singular creation that just comes out of you precious, maybe even genius inner self is still very powerful and seductive. But there’s usually not much coming out of a vacuum. You have to fill in something in order to get something out.

The other thing is: As a DJ I am constantly looking for special and exciting and somewhat exclusive stuff to play. And a good way to gain access to this kind of stuff is to just make it yourself. At some point into the trackmaking process though, I might consider what the track could actually be about, apart from working musically.

But very rarely it’s about "expressing myself", rather about making observations, social ones, cultural ones. Or having fun with words.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

Always open for communication with the track. Never thinking from the end. If you have a clear idea of how the finished song should sound, you end up being disappointed, in my experience.

Instead, as I progress with a track, I try not to get too fixated on a route, because suddenly there might be opening up a new and promising side trail worth following. That happens all the time and is all about following intuition, hard to rationalise, and no need to do so.

Even though producing alone in a home studio is so much about control over long periods of time, certain things can happen in an instant and you have to be alert to them.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

Research is happening all the time through digging. Other than that, the tools are always at hand, at home in the studio, or outside on your phone.

There are obviously early versions, but they tend to disappear after a while and turn into the real versions.
 
Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

Always good to do some stretching in the morning before sitting down, although sometimes I lack discipline and go straight from the kitchen table to the work space, because I’m too curious about how last days work sounds today.

I go out for lunch and coffee to have some contact with fellow human beings during the day, because making music alone can become a bit autistic.

What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

Easy. Starting is no problem for me at all. I start new things all the time, probably too many, because it’s so easy and I have much more ideas than I could ever translate into full songs. But a new idea always demands instant attention, or it’s gone.

Getting those last 5 or 10% done is the hard part, making final decisions, not procrastinating on them is what’s tough. Especially if there is no outside pressure.   

When do the lyrics enter the picture? Where do they come from? Do lyrics need to grow together with the music or can they emerge from a place of their own?

Lyrics come in late, usually. Sometimes I’m walking around and then some sentence comes to my mind and I sing it in my smartphone when nobody is around. But most of my music doesn’t even start with lyrics, not even with a note, but rather a sound, a groove, a loop, a lick or something like that.

I don’t really make music because I want to explicitly say something - I’m a writer too for a long time, of essays, some books, lots of music journalism. This is the area where I work with words. Music to me is a very different medium. Of course, when I need words for a song, I try to come up with something original or a little bit different - because people know me as a quality writer, it appears to me that there are some expectations to deliver something meaningful and well written.

As a German native, I grew up listening to a lot of music where I did not understand a word and just imagined what it could probably mean, making up my own meaning. For example, as a boy, maybe 11 years old, I loved the song "We’re All Alone" by Boz Scaggs and was really touched by it, because with my little English I figured it was about the essential, existential loneliness of every human being on planet earth. Only much, much later in my life it dawned on me that the song is really about sex and seduction.

But in a way that’s brillant. Up to this day I rarely listen to the lyrical content of a song first. Even with something like, let’s say, Sleaford Mods, where words are so important, I "get" it, before I understand it.   

What makes lyrics good in your opinion? What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard?

There are of course countless ways for lyrics to be good. It has a lot to do with the way the words open up for the singer to work with them, as well as the listeners to integrate them into their lives.

Lyrics are not the same as poetry. On paper, the words might look terribly banal; set to music, they might elevate you to higher grounds. That’s especially true for dance music lyrics. Also, it’s crucial how the words interact especially with the rhythm, but also all the rest of the song. There also needs to be at least a little spin away from the obvious.

For my latest song "Sweet Algorithm" I tried to use a lot of  currently popular expressions that have not been used much in pop songs so far. Like "mental load", "othering", but also vintage soul references like "keep on keepin on".     
 
Once you've started, how does the work gradually emerge?

Usually the musical track is more or less finished before I sing something on it, as a guide vocal or even with myself as the singer. Then there might be changes to the arrangement caused by the vocals.

But most of the time I rather adapt the vocals to the track than vice versa.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

Music making to me is a very joyous process and the best way to spend my limited time on earth. It’s not so joyous to control such a process too much, so usually I follow whatever hints I get from the song.

Getting closer to a finish, I stay on track more, of course.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

I put them into the "Project Alternatives" folder and let them marinate!

After a while, I might forget about them and find them again much later, excellently matured or badly rotten.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

I definitely enter a state when I turn on my DAW. But I would not call that a spiritual state. It’s rather what is probably called "the zone" or "flow", which science considers to be the best state to be in - immersed in something that you love and are pretty good at, with some difficult, challenging tasks, but not too hard or strenuous.

You sort of forget about yourself, you are right in the moment, chopping, seasoning, listening deeply and not thinking much about your past problems and future fears, and that’s a very pleasant state of mind that you always want to get back into.  

Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process? How do you finish a work?

I don’t really self-release my music, so the end of the process is usually when somebody wants to release it. This is also crucial for me to get those final 5-10% over the line, because you are forced to finally make final decisions, which is good.

I think it’s quite important for me, and probably a little old-fashioned, that other people believe in the material strongly enough to release it, to invest time and money to get it out. Artists need accomplices.

I’m also pretty open to criticism - "the intro is too long, the voice not loud enough, this is a hit, not the one you think" etc. After working on something for a long time, it can get difficult to have a clear view.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

A piece is only truly finished when it’s released. In a way not even then of course, but at least there is a version out that’s not going to be changed anymore. There might be new versions and mixes, remixes by other people, but the first released version becomes something like the original.

I can make my tracks pretty quickly and be quite quickly happy with how they sound - that’s my punk side. But especially with dance music the sound is so important, all the parameters, the EQing, the compression and so on, that I like to pass my finished version or stems on to an engineer to make sure it all sounds alright also in a technical way.  

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

I don’t do mastering, I think that’s a wholly different ballgame and it’s important to get some other, professional ears involved at a certain point.

But apart from that, producing and mixing is what I actually do all day, it’s the way I make my songs.

I would not say I write songs, I rather generate them in the studio.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

I terribly enjoy the company of any track while doing it and spending time with it alone, and then let go, just move on to the next project and don’t listen and look back a lot. Trying to avoid the emptiness. Or I might take a break for a while and focus more on writing a book or something. But that’s much harder than making music!

Every now and then I listen back to what I did at some points in my life, and sometimes I think it was alright.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing 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’s really not so much about "expressing" something. Because that is connected to a certain, at least imagined, interest from outside and has to do with communication. The same way DJing has to do with communication.

But making music, being in the music zone in my studio is more like my favourite state of mind, maybe a little bit like with gamers who jump and run and shoot and solve tasks for hours and hours, not as a means of expression or communication or for the fame and money, but just because they enjoy that state. Cooking is a bit like that, and hiking. It’s not a public exercise.

Everything that comes afterwards with the release of music, all the explaining, is not why I do all this music all the time.