The Sweet N Candy Show
Life is cheap in Berlin. Sweet N Candy, aka Rico Henschel, and cohort Dorian Paic from Raum Musik are in Barcelona for the weekly Raum night (no relation), which has been bringing the best of the little Germans over for Catalonian sojourns for six months now. But when the bill arrives for their pre-gig meal, they freak out. “That’s a lot. That’s a lot.” The pair pat their pockets, panicking, and in the end they have to rush off to the car to retrieve more cash. So are you able to live off your music now, Rico? “Actually, yeah, I’m making my money only with music. It’s my job. It’s my…profession. I’ve been able to live off of this for a year.”
With rents in the low hundreds and beers in the clubs just a couple of euro, Berlin is a magnet for musicians and other creative folk from around Germany (and increasingly elsewhere). But Rico Henschel was born in the town, getting his start DJing bars and small parties for friends, before holing himself up in his bedroom to concentrate on production. The Sweet N Candy sound typifies the city: minimal tech house with a trick in the bass. It’s accessible stuff, perhaps a touch workmanlike to appeal to the more rarefied techno spotters, but solid and moodlifting enough to find its way out of Berlin onto comps by the likes of Chloe, Matthew Dear and Craig Richards.
Which is perhaps why Sweet N Candy got my plip-plop-hating friend that I’d dragged along to Raum up onto the podium (okay, the blocks at Raum are not exactly podiums but you get the idea). After a fine set from Dorian Paic, Sweet N Candy plugged in his Mac, and my friend’s mouth curled into an “I told you so” frown as the first few tracks seemed headed down a dark breaks path. But when the music began churning the room into a party, she broke into a smile. Then she got on the podium. Sweet N Candy turned out to be more, er, funky house (in the true sense of the word) than dour Abletonisms. Rico had pulled off a rare trick: turning a laptop set into a party, all with his own tracks. (You can listen to the night’s evidence over at Play.fm.
"When I’m playing live too often, it gets boring, you know? You listen to the same music all the time."
Sweet N Candy played live in Barcelona, but he also DJs. I asked him how often he spins records compared to doing the live thing. “I think it’s fifty fifty. For me DJing is better because when I’m playing live too often, it gets boring, you know? You listen to the same music all the time.” Ah, the getting-sick-of-your-track-before-its-even-finished disease, a pretty common malady these days as the producers move out of their bedrooms into the clubs. “With DJing you have more space to play new sounds and you can play longer. It makes it more fun. But if it’s all the time, it gets boring too, you know?” Rico laughs. But when you DJ, you can see how your tracks work on the dancefloor, right? “I don’t play my own music. Never. Never!” I can’t mix my own tracks.” Dorian is laughing at Rico. “I know it sounds funny, but with my own tracks the intro is too short to mix into another track. Every time it sounds bad for me.” But isn’t your music made to be mixed? “Yeah, but…not for me.”
You might expect Sweet N Candy to be two people, it’s actually just one. There are also the Rufus Dunkel meets Sweet N Candy releases though, like last year’s ‘Hit the Points’ on Opossum, but it turns out that Rufus is in fact Rico. “I don’t know him,” Rico protests. “But I have met him before. He comes out whenever I’ve had too much to drink and he speaks for me.” Maybe this is the “thug” side of Rico (he’s described as a “thinking man’s thug” on Dumb Unit’s website), but sitting there sipping his coke, he’s anything but. Are there any other weird aliases we ought to know about? “Yeah, the end of the year another record is coming out under the name ‘Shyrm’. It’s the maiden name of my mother! I needed another psuedonym for another kind of music, for more minimal…” Rico almost chokes on the word. “No, for more monotone and more rolling music. My other stuff is more click-clack.”
"I can’t mix my own tracks. I know it sounds funny. Every time it sounds bad for me."
We get to talking about Berlin clubs. Rico’s favourite club turns out to be (no surprise here) Panoramabar, where he is just about to play for the first time. “Yeah, I’m playing there next month with Exercise One and Donato Dozzy.” Does that mean you’ve “made it?” Rico shrugs, but you sense that it’s a step he’s anxious to take. What else is in the pipeline? “I’ve got an album coming out on Raum Musik in the beginning of spring next year. It was supposed to come out in fall this year, but yeah, I had some problems finishing some tracks and the tracks we chose were not the right sound for an album. It’s bad to make an album only with club songs. It must be done for home listening and for club listening.”
Also out now is a new EP ‘Dirty Gotches’ on Dumb Unit. We ask Rico to describe the sound. “It’s fresh music, and it’s more techno. It’s a bit straighter but I think typical Sweet N Candy stuff. You can listen to it at my MySpace.” It seems all the Germans have a MySpace page now, right? “Yes, it’s crazy,” says Rico.
“I don’t,” shouts Dorian Paic. “I do not. I will not participate.”
It’s time for soundcheck, so I ask Rico to big up any up-and-comers he likes. “Well, the guys from Pan Pot are one of the big names of the future…” Rico racks his brains, but he’s interrupted by a Catalonian serenading the table with an accordion. “And…him.”
‘Dirty Gotches’ by Sweet N Candy is out now on Dumb Unit.
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