Fabian Geyrhalter:
Welcome to the show, Niklas.

Niklas Worgt:
Oh, thanks for having me.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, it's so wonderful to have you here. Your work has been finding me somehow ever since 2005. Of course, with your collaboration with your wife, Eva Padberg has to do Dapayk and Padberg but also your solo work and your many other production and remix projects under all kinds of names. It is quite an assortment of names under which you release music. There's Dapayk. There's Niklas Worgt which is your name. There's Marek Bois. I'm sure there are more. And now you have your label, Sonderling, and you've got 10 other sublabels.

Niklas Worgt:
Oh yeah. It's like that. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
How did this all come about? Is it at some point you decided that every sub genre that you work in deserves its own alias?

Niklas Worgt:
Yeah, kind of. I think in the 90s it was like that it was way more normal when you come from the electronic music scene that you have projects or side projects or main projects or whatever. And mostly each project had a different name. And I really enjoyed that because we always tried to separate that, the styles a little more and just to see if the audience reacts to the new artist. When you start a new project and you have a new release art, and you already had, I don't know, 20 other things and five albums and so on. And we wanted to see if it really works on itself with the new style and the new music. And so we actually started in the late 90s to, I don't know, have several names. And it also helped back then to actually separate the styles a little bit better. And so when people were looking up or asking for names, they knew what they had to expect in the end as a release.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Interesting, interesting. And you seem to be as an artist pretty restless. Yeah. I read that in 2022, you released a new track every single month as Dapayk Solo, Marek Bois, and Niklas Worgt. So 36 releases in a single year. Was that a creative challenge that you imposed upon yourself to see how far you can push these three different directions?

Niklas Worgt:
Actually, I see myself as a strict worker. I'm like, I don't know, I really enjoy it to sit down and have this idea, okay, today I do a certain style maybe as Marek Bois, which is more minimal techno-ish kind of stuff. And I spent a whole day just concentrating on this one thing and see what comes out. And I'm also really good with deadlines because with all the labels and everything we organized through the years, most people have problems with deadlines, they're artists and how it is. And if you can push a deadline and postpone ... We were never in major labels, so we had the possibility to actually postpone things, but I never liked that because in the end it never got better than it was at the time when you decided to release. And so during that one year, I said, okay, I have this three running projects and completely different styles.
One thing is breakbeat. The other one is, I don't know, minimalist techno. The other is more deep house melodic stuff. And let's see if I'm able to release every week for a year. And for me, it was fun. It wasn't even hard work because I had this schedule and I sat down and I said, okay, I have to do a track in a certain way today and it has to come out next month or in two months. Sometimes I plan ahead a little. But it was never like I had 20 tracks and I just released them over a year. It was always like, okay, this worked in a certain way. It worked out in a certain way. And maybe when I changed that, the next release next month could be more interesting for people or I don't know. It's always like I was looking for feedback from the community as well.
So it was like a back and forth from the feedbacks when you posted it and the comments on SoundCloud, which are not that many anymore. So I'm really happy when there are some. But it was more like sometimes it felt like a group project with the people that knew, okay, something new will come out next month or next week or whatever.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, but that's also very much the relationship you have with your fans, right? I think it's pretty intimate. What I think is fascinating is that you basically have a minimalist work approach to minimalist techno. It's like you're setting yourself your own creative brief for a project. So you basically say, these are my constraints within which I'm going to work today. And because of those constraints, and every creative knows that, the more constraints you have, the easier it is to work because you have some sort of guidance. And since you don't get that guidance from outside, besides of your listeners and fans, you actually create that guidance yourself every morning and sit down during that time and you create something. It's really fascinating. It's very cool.

Niklas Worgt:
Yeah. For me, the biggest problem is that I have an ... Actually, I have a pretty nice studio with lots of stuff, but mostly I just take one machine and play with it for a week and then I put it back and take the next one and just to ... Because if I turn on every machine at the same time, I just get lost and mostly there's not a great result for me. And I really enjoy to concentrate on maybe just ... And also when I work with a computer, just maybe one plugin, but then all sounds in the track, maybe not the drums when it's a synth plugin I use, but everything comes from one plugin then. And I always keep it maybe under 10, 12 tracks. So it's really stripped down mostly.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Super cool. Really, really cool. You're seen as one of the protagonists of Germany's minimal techno scene, and you are a huge purveyor of everything vinyl records. That everyone knows in at least the German area. With your latest release though, you took this fascination up quite a bit and you crafted every single LP yourself. So from cutting and gluing of the cover to cutting the actual vinyl record yourself, each record I learned on one of your Instagram posts took about one hour, start to finish to create. Tell us about your fascination with the black gold with vinyl and when you decided to take the full end-to-end process into your own hands.

Niklas Worgt:
Yeah, my partner and I, we were running a label for 20 years with most favorite productions and plenty of other sub-labels. And we were always fascinated and we always loved vinyl. And since the whole digital selling started with Beatport and whatever, you could see every three months or every six months, our sales were cut in half. And it was really ... I mean, we started with, in a time, I think in 2000, 99, 2000, with the first records. And back then, a limitation of records in our case, and we never had pop hits or something even for underground hits or something. We never had that. But Invitation4 Record was like a thousand copies, which is now, I mean, it's far away from the numbers you have now.
But then I think in 2005 or so, it got cut in half every three or six months. And in the end, we were really, I know, frustrated by probably everyone else's as well. And we even did a festival, I love vinyl. It was called for 10 years where everyone had to play vinyl on all the stages because then we started that in 2009, and it was a time when everyone around us was just playing digitally in the clubs. But you could tell that people are enjoying the different way of selection of tracks when it comes to vinyl DJs, because you maybe have two bags with your and so on, so and so on. So we always tried to push the vinyl idea even into the digital era, but even we had to stop doing vinyl, I think in 2015 then. We kept it up for some time, but in the end, we just sold, I don't know, 80, 100 copies and you lost money with each release and it made no sense anymore.
And so we were looking for a way to actually, what can we do? Because we have this joy of doing vinyl, the whole, you can touch it and so on. The whole vinyl thing, everyone knows about it. I mean, we were into that as well, but there was no way to actually just make 50 or make them on demand. We even for my partner back then at Muslim and I, to open a pressing plant just to be able to maybe find a way to make it affordable for ourselves and other artists. And honestly, thank God we never started that because the company crashed and my partner and I separated and I started a new label and so on. So it's the whole thing. It lasted 20 years, so it's a long time in the music scene, but I had to start completely fresh. And everything in my life changed actually because I became a father in 2019, the label crashed.
My oldest friend was gone as well because it was my partner, a friend I went to school with and I did the company. And so I had to find a way to, I don't know, to start over again. And in the beginning, okay, let's do the digital thing. And it ended with the every week a new track like we already talked about, but I've seen that there's maybe a way to have lace cut records. And there's this crazy guy, or let's say it's a personality back then in 2023, I think it was, when I met him or got in touch with him for the first time, back then he was already, I think, 75. And he was back then the only guy who offered stereo cutting lathe record machines and cutters. And I was like, okay, how do I get in touch with him? And maybe he sells me one and I can do everything I want on my own.
Because at that time I was already doing everything by myself. Before, when we had the label, we were sometimes five, six people working in an office, big nice office in Berlin and like it was back in the days. And so there I ended up on myself again. And I said, "Okay, but I still want to do this and I have to find a way to keep it interesting for me as well." And so I rode with the guy and he lives somewhere in the south of Germany in the middle of nowhere. And it's a longer story that would actually kill the timeline of the podcast because just to get in touch with him is an adventure. And you have to take a course with him to buy the machine. And long story short, it took me a couple of months to get an appointment with him and to get the course and buy the machine. And I met people there who waited for their machine and were in touch with him for 12 years.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh my God, that's Amazing.

Niklas Worgt:
Yes.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That's so cool.

Niklas Worgt:
In my case, it took me three months, but I was really into it and I really took it as a ... How can I say that? I didn't- It was a challenge. Exactly. Exactly. It was a challenge. And I didn't want to react to the weird stuff he put up when he was writing emails. I just didn't react on it. And I said, no, just no, I want to have the machine and I don't play your games now. And so it was quick for me. And there were other people one that waited six years or eight years. I don't remember. And one I waited 12th. And I was there after three months waiting with my machine in the back of my car. I drove there for nine hours and came back home and I had a machine that was able to cut records. And I was like, okay, so what do we do with that?
And it's not that you feel completely prepared for the task because there's so many difficulties, you have to take care of the humidity in the room of a certain angle of the stylist who cuts in the record, the temperature of the record. I mean, it's weird. It's a whole thing. And it's not that he actually explained everything in detail. We were there only for, I don't know, 12 hours or so. And so I said to myself, "I want to give myself one year to make this work and find out how this machine works." And after three or four months, I cut two records, I think, from a release I had and put it on Bandcamp of our label site. And it was gone in, I don't know, 10 minutes or so. It was gone really quick and said, "Okay." But I wasn't sure if people are still interested because if you worked only digitally for the last three or four years back then, and we only did vinyl copies for albums still at that time, and I really didn't know if people are still interested in that.
Which year was that?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
When

Niklas Worgt:
Was that? I think 2023. So it took me ... Yeah, so I was running the new label Sonderling Records for four years, but only digitally at that point. And I wasn't sure if there are still people who want to buy vinyl, especially when it comes to club music, because in the club and record plays, it wasn't a good situation back then. But I think because of the pandemic and so on, people sat home and said, "Ah, look at this empty wall, maybe I should start a record collection."

Fabian Geyrhalter:
It's literally, it's the story of Toneoptic here. Yeah, that's how I got into all of this again. And it happened everywhere. It happened everywhere. Yeah, exactly. People had time to spend precious moments with what they actually cared about before they were busy and outside all day long. So yeah, no, totally.

Niklas Worgt:
Yeah, see, see? And in my case, I was happy enough to get a machine like that, but it's frustrating. I think for a year or so, I don't know, you make 10 records, but you throw five blanks away when you cut them. And it's so many problems that occur. Anyway, but I could see that people are interested in that. And so I decided, okay, I have this huge catalog from the old label I still have and I calculated. So if I do two tracks for every week, I could release records for 18 years now. And maybe this is could do, but of course you don't want to release all the old music just because you can. And I thought it was boring. So it was always like, okay, we have this back catalog and some of the stuff never came out on vinyl, it was only digitally.
And so I tried to do a mixture of all the tracks that come out on vinyl for the first time and new tracks with new artists that I have on the label. And actually the whole thing is like, it ends up here with me. I do a track and I already have in my head that how it might sound on vinyl. Then I do the masters, then I do the cutting and for singles, I just make cutouts from normal record sleeves you can buy everywhere, but I do some cutouts with a label design and you have a bit of a handmade look as well. But then when it comes to bigger releases or more, yeah, I don't know, important releases, we want to put that like albums. So I do the covers myself, I fold everything, I cut everything, I print everything, and it's all handmade.
So the record, the mastering is all in my small studio here. And sometimes now, like you mentioned that last album I did last year, I think in November, it never came out on Spotify. So we had just sold it on Bandcamp and our label page. I think because the album itself is like 40 minutes long, but when the machine has to cool down after you cut the record and so on, it takes an hour. And while the record is cut, I stand next to it and fold the covers and do the printouts and all that other stuff. And then I send it out, bring it to the post office and it gets sent there.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
I mean, how great is that though for a fan to be able to get something in the mail that you did from beginning to end in your hands? It's like as real as art can be when it comes to music these days. Really amazing. And on top of that, and I find this completely baffling, there are some tracks that are vinyl exclusive and you only print them 20 times. So that means there's only 20 people who will ever listen to a track that you created.

Niklas Worgt:
Yes, exactly. Yeah, that is also the idea because I think all the digital music is there, the whole streaming music is there anytime in your life and everyone can listen to it. And I thought, okay, I come from a time where you had to go to a record shop, buy music, and you were probably the only person in, I don't know, an area of a hundred kilometers around that had that one record and only had that one track. And I like that feeling because it's something special and you can, I don't know, show off as well. And my idea was, okay, everything is way too easy to approach and way too easy to copy and so on. But I have 20 copies of a record. It's not even copies because each record is cut separately. It's not exactly the same as the other one. And I even did records where each record has a different color.
So you get a completely unique copy if you want to use the word copy, but it's not really copy because-

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Exactly. Yeah. Unbelievable. That is so cool. And you priced them very fairly too. It's not like each record is a hundred euros. It's like anywhere between whatever, 20 and 35 or something like that. It's amazing. It's amazing. Talking about the time back when both you and I went out to our record shops and we got something that we know not many others will have in our vicinity and that feeling of you feel special, right? Everything feels special about it and you want to

Niklas Worgt:
Share

Fabian Geyrhalter:
It. Do you remember when you bought your first record and what it was?

Niklas Worgt:
I've actually thought about it two days ago because I met a friend, an old friend, and we talked about it, what was your first record? And the problem is, I grew up in East Germany, so communist East Germany was a different time because ... Yeah, and every record that was coming from the West was super special. My parents were really progressive and not really into the whole communist thing. My mom was a teacher and it was always like this thing, what we talk or tell each other at home, you never tell at school because that could cause problems. And we had a small record. I was growing up in the countryside and the next bigger town was like two hours away. And we had a small record shop, or let's say you could buy TVs and shit what you could get in East Germany, but they had also like maybe 50 records or so.
And when there was a line in front of the shop, even my grandfather had no idea what was going on, was just getting a line, waited and bought what everyone else bought because maybe you got a record that was coming from the West and you could actually exchange against something useful even if you didn't like it. And so that's how it was back then. And I remember I bought, from the money I had when I was a kid, I bought the seven inches that came from the West. And probably, I don't really remember what my first record was that I bought myself, but I'm sure it's something like Nena or something, or even Modern Talking, because I was maybe eight, eight, nine or so back then. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
You might regret this, but at the end of each of my podcast shows, I put together a playlist with all the artists that..

Niklas Worgt:
Oh, shit.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
…so your playlist will start with Modern Talking now.

Niklas Worgt:
No, please at least take Nena.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Okay. Yes. Okay. I take your bribe. I take your pride. Yeah. Yeah. Nina was pretty cool. I saw Nena in Los Angeles a couple of years ago and she's still going for it. It's pretty amazing. So she's quite the talent still. But that's interesting. Yeah. And how fascinating how anything that you bought there became something that you would trade for something else because it came

Niklas Worgt:
From the West.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Wow. So in your household back then, did you listen to music and what kind of music did you listen to when you were being brought up?

Niklas Worgt:
Oh yeah, my father was really into music and we never had really ... No one else in my family played instruments or maybe they said they did before, but I've never seen anyone playing instruments. But my father was always taking care of the music situation. So we had a small radio in every room. We had a small workshop in the backyard and in every room my father was there was always music and mostly radio stations. And we were lucky enough that we were close to the border to Western Germany so we could get a radio station, which is still around. It's called hr3. And they played all the '80s pop music from the West. And I remember that in my family, because at that time in Germany, a big thing for the older people was like Schlager, which is like really commercial, cheesy, horrible, I don't know, whatever you want to call it.
But stuff like that never was turned on in our home and also no music from East Germany. And so we completely listened to Phil Collins '80s, I don't know, Peter Gabriel, whatever was on the Western station. And besides that, I remember that my grandma had a record collection and she was really taken care of in, how do you want to call it, in a cabinet, in a closet. And she opened that and it was really like a ritual. And she had, I don't know, maybe 50 records or so. And it was mostly Bach, Beethoven and classic stuff, classical music stuff. And Ennio Morricone, like the movie film scores and stuff like that. But it was always a ritual. You sat down in front of the record player and she turned it on and you had to listen. And my grandma would explain what you were listening to.
And that was kind of cool. I really enjoyed that as a kid. It was like watching TV without a TV.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah. Yeah. That is so amazing that you had that experience. I had the same experience. My father was a violinist and he played some of the big orchestras in Vienna, and that was his career, Concertmeister. And I mean, he was the same. He just put me there and he's like, "Son, listen to this. " And then you can't move, you can't speak, you can't breathe for 10 minutes. And it was so intense. And I mean, literally it's like Friday night here and me and my wife, it's like coming down from the week and we're like, "Okay, what is our Friday evening record?" And we go through the records and it's like a big thing. And then we sit down with a cocktail or a glass of wine or whatever and we just let the week pass and really listen to the record. And it comes from back then.
It comes from your grandma or from your dad or ... Well, how much did this fascination with records, how much did that take over your house now? I mean, how many records do you own? Did you get rid of records at some point when digital came

Niklas Worgt:
In? No. No, maybe that's a lie because I mean, I was never a DJ. I always collected records, but I don't have that many records, actually, maybe 500 or so, but it was always the thing because it was also my job because every day for the first 10, 15 years of the label, we did records every month. And the records I bought was mostly because we were a techno label, the records I bought were mostly the complete opposite because there was the music I was listening to at home because my whole day was already club music. And there's probably sometimes there was even a year, not a year, but two or three months where I didn't buy a record, but then the next months you buy free. But in the end, if you take away the records, we did ourselves as label and the basement is still packed with boxes and there's probably like two or 3,000 records from the label times and probably just have maybe 500 records.
And it's electronic music, but mostly no club stuff or whatever.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
It's the records you actually listen to

Niklas Worgt:
The same

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Way that I do. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Niklas Worgt:
Yeah, we also have this thing. My daughter now is seven and when we sit down for dinner in the evening, we have a record player next to the dinner table and she can choose now what record we are listening to while we eat. And sometimes we forget about it for three days, but then it's a ritual she's asking for now. And I really enjoyed it because you can tell it's different than just turning on, I don't know, the iPhone and have that music there we want to hear. And even for her, she's really careful with it. And I hope maybe, maybe it does something with her life as well.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. Just wait until she's in puberty and she picks Motorhead for dinner.

Niklas Worgt:
It will happen. I mean, come on. Yeah. Why not?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Which artist do you own the most records of, you think?

Niklas Worgt:
Besides myself?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, besides yourself, of course. And besides anyone on your label, right? The ones that you actually purchased to listen to.

Niklas Worgt:
Oh, that's a good question. Most records by artists, maybe Matthew Herbert.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh, interesting.

Niklas Worgt:
Yeah. Yeah. Early Matthew Herbert stuff from around the 2000s, I guess. I think I have several singles. Yeah, I would say something like ... Or maybe Lamb. Oh, yeah. Maybe from them. Yeah. One of those both. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
If you would have to pick one record before you run out of the home because the home's collapsing, you already have your daughter and your wife and everything taken care of, but one record, which is the record you cherish the most? The one record you would pick? It could easily be one of yours.

Niklas Worgt:
Yeah, it's one of mine. Actually, because there's this whole story behind my first record I did myself, because it was also in the late '90s, my partner and I, we were selling tapes on techno raves here in Germany on a parking slot to make some money, to be able to maybe one day to do a record. And it took us, I don't know, a year or so to get the money. And the first record that came out was called. And we only did a hundred copies, which was super expensive back in the time because it was like numbers were completely different, of course, thousand, 2,000 and so on. And I remember we didn't have a distribution, so I had to go with a backpack from one record shop to the next. And I drove around in my home area for five days and trying to sell the records.
And I still till today, and we only did a hundred copies, I still have half of them at home, which is a bit embarrassing because everyone thought, oh, this went really well and he has a record. And it really gave me a push that I started to play more as a life act because everyone thought, "Oh, he made a record. This must be big now." But honestly, we sold maybe 30 records of this thing because it was so expensive to make that every time we entered the record shop, then we are asking, I don't know, it was Deutschmark time back then. It was before Euro. And we asked for, I don't know, nine Deutschmark back then. And they were saying, "Yeah, but we only can give you four." And I said, "Yeah, then I have to go home because I take my record and leave because that's not how it works." And that's why I still have most of the release.
But I really, really cherish, I really like this record still because there was so much energy put into it and there was so much preparation beforehand because we were really, really working to have this record. And even if I still got some of them, maybe I should put them in the shop. I didn't even think about it. It's maybe not a bad idea. Yeah, see.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
There we go. That would be really cool. If you put some of those up, that would be really neat. Yeah. Yeah. That could be a whole campaign here. Look, we're creating campaigns here. I like this. Which is the rarest record you have? I mean, that might be it, right? I mean, no one else has to.

Niklas Worgt:
Yeah, probably. Yeah, but I also did, I'm sure I don't have that many rare records, but maybe that I know of because sometimes I just buy some stuff on Discogs and then otherwise, and you just notice two years later, "Ooh, it's actually not a bad idea that you bought it. "

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, that's the fun thing about Discogs, right? You say, "Oh my God, you're a millionaire." And then it's like, no, you're never going to be able to sell them at this price ever.

Niklas Worgt:
But I did an album three years back, just one copy and we auctioned it for, what was it, for Die Tafel. What is Die Tafel in English? It's like a charity thing in Germany to put food on the table of people that can afford food and auctioned one record, one copy I paid for. And I think it got 300 years or so. I was happy to do that back then. And yeah, that is probably the rarest thing I had for some time until it got

Fabian Geyrhalter:
…sold. What's a guilty pleasure? What is a record that you could find in the one Euro 99 cent bins in most record shops, but you really cherish it? Don't say modern talking. Don't

Niklas Worgt:
Say. Yeah, but I wouldn't miss it. I mean, I still have it. That's the weirdest thing because I never throw away records, but maybe Prodigy Experience was the first Project album. And I bought it back then, and I'm sure they made, I don't know, millions, but lots of them. And I'm not sure if it's worth that much, but it's a thing I really enjoy listening to because it was one of my earliest things I really got into and I was sitting down and trying to check out every second. And honestly, because back then in the early '90s, you had the feeling that no one else ever heard of The Project at all in your surrounding. And I honestly found out 10 years later that they were so big in selling moons and I had no idea. I thought it was special. Man, dammit.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
I mean, that big breakthrough record of theirs, Music for the Jilted Generation, right? I think it was called ... Oh my God. I mean, I listened to that on CD back in the day on repeat for nights and nights and nights, and I just kept working. It was like working music, just like you just could not stop. And I mean, it is so many genres in one, right? I think that was so fascinating back with massive attack and tricky and product, all these things that happened in the '90s where, I mean, it was just this hot pot of genres that suddenly turned into new genres. And was it trip hop? No. Was it techno? No. And it was really interesting, but maybe it's only interesting because that's when we grew up.

Niklas Worgt:
Yeah, but it was also something new. It was never before like that. And it made sense to get into it because it was something no one owned before you. It was something you could experience for the first time. And if you see it now, I mean, everything's a bit of ... It's leaning into the '90s or certain styles and whatever, and it was a really great time for music back then.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, it really was. Talking about great times for music, top five albums in no particular order, let's go. Oh,

Niklas Worgt:
Shit. I know this is a big one.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah,

Niklas Worgt:
Yeah, yeah. Róisín Murphy Ruby Blue is also one of my favorites. It was produced by Matthew Herbert as well. And I'm still a big Matthew Herbert fan. And Róisín Murphy did, it's probably the thing where she was trying to do ... Nice. She's still doing experimental pop stuff, but that was really cool back then. I think it came out in 2005 or so, and I was so impressed by it because the quality and so on. But Róisín Murphy went more pop afterwards, but that thing was really amazing. I

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Have to listen back to it. Yeah.

Niklas Worgt:
Have you heard it? Do you know it?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah. Well, I know her. I don't know which ... I'm not that big into her that I know all the different albums and when they came out. So I need to look back into that first album where it's so often with an artist that the first album is the most experimental, the one where it's really, and then they kind of go more pop. But I mean, even her latest releases of the last two years, still super cool. Still interesting.

Niklas Worgt:
Yeah. It's okay. Yeah, I don't follow her that much anymore, but that album back then, it was mind blowing for me because- And I didn't know about-

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Herbert. I didn't know that he was actually producing it, so that's really

Niklas Worgt:
Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It was a really cool thing. The second album is a band from Iceland, and they're around forever. And I think it's a group of music students. Hjaltin, I hope I got that right. And they have two singers, a female and a male one, and they have this great crossover of, I wouldn't call it '80s inspired pop, but with lots of electronics. And it's cheesy from time to time, I have to be honest, but I really like it because I like the voices and the singer, Hackney, it's amazing. It has a beautiful voice. There's nothing auto tune, nothing too clean. It's just really well made. And I think they have two albums. The latest one is just called. And it's my favorite. And there's another one and older one, they're all good and they do soundtracks for movies and shit like that. It's all nice.
You can completely sink into this whole, what the hell is going in Iceland?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, because Iceland is bigger than Bjork and Sigor Ros, right?

Niklas Worgt:
Exactly.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
This is precisely why I love doing this show because not only me, myself, but everyone else listening will now look for this artist and will maybe fall in love with something that for you, you've been listening to for decades, right? So talking about Iceland, I've got a friend called Atli Orvarsson. He's a composer too, doing a lot of soundtracks, Icelandic composer. I was invited to dinner once, and for the first time in my life, I listened to a full Roxy Music record. It was Avalon, right? And I just couldn't even believe that I've never listened to the full ... Of course, I knew the hits, right? But that record is to the day is one of my favorite records, and that's how you learn music though. And that to me, that sharing part is so important. All right, you're on number two.

Niklas Worgt:
Okay. And another one, it's just a classic. Every 10 years, I take it out of the shelf and think it's, "Shit, why didn't I listen to it for the last two years?" So it's Air, Moon Safari. It's a classic.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah,

Niklas Worgt:
Absolutely. And I always forget how many great hits there actually are on the record because you turn it around and just like, "Oh yeah, there was also a nice video on MTV back then when it came out. " And I really enjoyed it because even if I wasn't back, when it came out back then, I wasn't into music. It took me a couple of years to find out how great it is. And when it comes to the sound and all that kind of stuff and how it's made. And back then, when it came out, I was just fascinated by the videos. I liked it because, and maybe it was too French for me and I'm German and I'm a bit snobbish about that kind of stuff from time to time because- Oh, don't worry. They

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Are too. They are too.

Niklas Worgt:
Yeah, they are as well. I'm fine with that.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That was one of those records, right? I mean, that was one of those records where there was nothing like it before, even though- Yes, exactly. Everything sounded familiar, right? And it was from the first track to the last track, just absolute perfection, and it carried you away. It carried you into a different world, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Niklas Worgt:
All right. Then I have another thing, it's called Photay, Onism. And it's also, again, I would call it experimental pop. And I'm not even sure if he's American. I follow him, I think it came out in 2014 or so, around that time. And for me, it's the perfect mixture of pop and listening music and really experimental kind of beats and arrangement. And it's hard to explain. You have to listen to it. I really enjoy it. And every six months I take it out and listen to it. And it's always getting better because you always find something that you haven't heard before. I really recommend it. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That's amazing. One more, right?

Niklas Worgt:
Yeah. And that's the thing a friend of mine actually did in 2006 or so. It was actually on our label back then. His name, the artist name was From Karaoke to Stardom, and the album was Undu Redu Weirdo Mix. And he's French as well. So he did some really, really ... We called it Frickle Music, which means it's like an experimental minimalist kind of clip sound. And people actually wear dancing to that kind of stuff, but there's so much happening. It's not like this works with hypnotize you with the same beat that lasts forever. It's just like everything changes, I would say, every four bars or so, and there's small changes all the time. And for me, till this day, it's honestly, and I tell him because he is not doing music anymore for a long time, but I see him from time to time. And till this day, it's one of my absolute most favorite minimal techno-ish albums.
And he's always flattered. And I always wonder if he starts doing music again, but now it doesn't look like it.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh, those are so fun to hunt down and listen to. That's great. That's great. Is there anything recent, any recent release that you really like from the last month or last year?

Niklas Worgt:
Oh, last year. No, not really. It's going to be probably...

Fabian Geyrhalter:
The Demon Hunter soundtrack because of your daughter.

Niklas Worgt:
Oh, don't start with that because my daughter's into that right now. Of course. Every edit this morning.That is also a problem with me because I'm always late to the party. I have these phases where I listen to music that is, I don't know, 20 years old, but I listened to it for six months and I really get into it. But for me, grunge when it came out in the early '90s was the most boring stuff because there were guitars in it and we had guitar music for ages, so it was boring. I like techno because they didn't have guitars in it. And sometimes, and years later, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago, I got into, ah, okay, Nirvana isn't that bad as I thought when I was a teenager. It took me some time. And that's why probably most of my favorite albums came out earlier.
Probably there's one coming out I might enjoy in five years because I'm late to the party as always.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
But listen, it's about enjoying the party, right? It's not about when you arrive.

Niklas Worgt:
Exactly. Exactly.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah. And that's the beauty of music, right? You can get into something that's 20 years old and you hear it for the first time and your mind is blown. And that's sometimes even more exciting than if you listen to something completely new right now, right? Yeah. Very good. Well, what are you working on currently? Most probably 20 tracks a day, but is there anything that people should know? I think you just did a tour, right? The two of you just did a couple of cool shows.

Niklas Worgt:
Yeah. My wife and I, we have this project called Dapayk and Padberg, and we did a show with an orchestra, who are normally doing lots of film soundtracks and movie soundtracks. And we had a show two months ago with them, and we are going to have not a tour, but we're going to play another show with another orchestra in September and so on. So it's like this electronic music orchestra crossover thing we're still working on, which is really exciting for me because honestly, I don't know what's going on with all these people on stage, but I really enjoy it and it's super exciting. It

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Looks amazing. On your Instagram, I believe it's on your Instagram, maybe it's on your wife's Instagram. You posted some footage of it. I mean, it was magical. It looked amazing.

Niklas Worgt:
Yeah. Yeah. It's so much fun because the weirdest thing for me, honestly, is because there were some tracks that I did in 2002 or three that were part of the show. And during the rehearsals before the show starts, and when the orchestra warms up, everyone plays a different tune and I don't know. And you sometimes just sit there and everything is really ... Everyone is playing something different. But somewhere in the room, you sometimes hear a melody you did with your mouse in your computer 22 years ago, and he's playing the same line and the same melody and just like, "Shit, what happened? How did I end up here?"

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah.

Niklas Worgt:
And then it all comes together. It's crazy. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Magic, magic. Well, listen, as we're coming to an end here, I want to thank you for spending a good 45 minutes or so with us here and sharing all of these cool recommendations and talking about how you cut records, which is fascinating. I tell everyone to check out your Bandcamp and to check out your Sonderling record store. And where else can they go to find ... Where can they buy all of the limited editions?

Niklas Worgt:
We have a label shop. I mean, you find everything on my Instagram page or just the label is called Sonderling Records. And if you Google that, we are going to find a shop. But the easiest way probably is like Bandcamp and we are there and yeah, we are there. It's just me. Just me and the cutting machine.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And it's under Dapayk, right?

Niklas Worgt:
And it's also under Dapayk as well. Yeah. That's probably the easiest way to find me. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah. Yeah. Once you start looking for Niklas Worgt online, it's a rabbit hole of all the different artist names and it's actually very exciting. Doing research for this interview to me was really mind-opening. I'm like, oh, that is also a label under his main label, and this is also his name and it's amazing. Hey, keep up what you're doing. I love following everything you do and yeah, thanks again for the time.

Niklas Worgt:
Oh, thanks for having me. That was fun.