Patric Catani is an Electronic / Hip-Hop / Experimental and Chiptune musician, producer, remixer based in Berlin. At the age of 16 he released his first record produced on an Amiga 500 under the name E-De Cologne. Apart from his solo projects as Patric Catani and his alter ego Cand ie Hank, he collaborated with Chilly Gonzales, Max Turner and Angie Reed, was part of EC8OR and The Puppetmastaz and is one half of the duo Driver & Driver. Not to forget the many remixes for various artists… His range of styles could possibly be described as an intense mixture of Electro, Swing, Rap, Soundtrack, Chiptune, Cumbia, Acid, Surf, Bass… But actually no one really knows..

Facts

started releasing records on the Commodore Amiga personal computer in the age of 16
released music on the Beastie Boys label Grand Royal
learned to transport the influence of game music into electronic music, rap, the theater world and back to video game soundtracks.

Questions

What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Life and people that I watch on the streets and public transport. Also riding bicycle is very inspiring for me.

How and when did you get into making music?
I pushed my mother in the age of 8 to bring me to piano lessons, I´m not from a rich family but I could have free piano lessons in the Cologne cathedral church choir “Domchor”. I loved learning it and I also still love certain church music, Bach in particular. The catholic surrounding wasn´t my cup of tea and I always did stupid stuff, i.e. throwing stink bombs in the cassocks wardrobe. They kicked me out afterwards, which probably was a good thing. Since the moment when I heard the first scratching and sampling influenced records like S-Express, Bomb the Bass, oldschool breakdance etc. I knew I wanted to make those sounds too and I got my first computer (Commodore16) very early in primary school and tried to adopt things I learned on piano in Basic (the old programming language).. Of course it didn´t work out and it took me some years to finally have real music programs and sampling possibilities on the Amiga..
Certain video game composers such as Rob Hubbard have been a huge influence too..

What are your 5 favourite albums of all time?
Always very hard to answer since I´m a moody vinyl collector..
These six albums will always be in my tops for sure..
Public Enemy – Fear of a Black Planet
Oskar Sala – Subharmonische Mixturen
Beastie Boys – License to Ill
The Ventures – Lost in Space
Mort Garson – Black Mass Lucifer
Gilles Gobeil – La mécanique des ruptures

What do you associate with Berlin?
Normally I would say: Freedom, Fog, strobe light, a big family of artists and musicians.
Which turned into: shark business, raising rents, struggling artists and subculture, dumb tourist pub crawling techno “parties”.
Luckily there are still festivals like CTM and clubs that try different things.

What’s your favourite place in your town?
My studio.

If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
I know it sounds weird but seriously, I really was the typical case of a shitbird until I could really use my creativity to channel my energies. I´m thankful for everything that happened related to my music and no matter what happens in the future, I always got to remember that I was given a one time opportunity by my old cologne crew DJ Bleed, Triple R, Wolfgang Voigt and Dr. Walker. So, in a world without music maybe being a Surfer would be an option..

What was the last record you bought?
I just recently bought again the digital version of Mad Professor´s Elektro Robotik Dub Orkestra – Strictly Automatik.
I got it on vinyl but I wanted to take it with me easily and didn´t have time to record it into the computer.

Who would you most like to collaborate with?
James Brown, Otis Redding, Nina Simone, Little Richard – but that´s not possible anymore.. I love certain (gypsy and Taraf) musicians I saw in Romania where I spend a fair amount of time and I also would love to collaborate with soul singers, MCs and Rappers. The most difficult thing about collaborations is to have time together and really go deep to shape a story and a round project. It´s not interesting for me to send beats to someone who raps lyrics about himself on it with no context or deeper conceptual idea that comes from us together.

What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
I know a lot of people saw other shows and didn´t like them so much, but for me actually it was a great pleasure to see Public Enemy at Postbahnhof a few years back. I don´t know if they always manage to play like that, but that concert was truly amazing. A super loud Soul Concert, at least on that night they really managed to transport a great energy that reminded me of old footage from 60s recordings in a mix with real Rap and a message. They proved to have humour as well, which was great to see. I also enjoyed the performance of Rodion a lot, a romanian electronic pioneer from the 70s who played at Rokolectiv Festival in Bucharest and the concert of Babazula at Lido was amazing as well.

How important is technology to your creative process?
In everything I do I try to disrespect technology, of course it comes with my profession of being a producer to keep up with new steps in electronic but there´s nothing like a real song, a melody and a main idea. The progression and development of music applications is fast and astonishing, of course it´s very interesting to see how things changed during the years but I like to challenge myself with finding new combinations and “play arounds” that cannot be simply done by a software-given algorithm . Also at some point I started to work more on lyrics. i.e. for my Dhirty6cru / ILL TILL stuff, it keeps my brain fresh.

Do you have siblings and are they proud or jealous of you?
They are very proud of me and I would love to share more of the things I get to see with them. Unfortunately that´s not always easy.

Our Favourites:

Patric Catani – Family Circus

Patric Catani – Coco

Links: Soundcloud | Band camp | patric-catani.com | Facebook | Interview with Patric Catani by Digital in Berlin