More Berlin than Boston

US producer Stewart Walker is one of the leading lights in minimal dancefloor music. Like his peers, Ricardo Villalobos and Akufen, Walker avoids making functional club tracks, his releases on his own Persona label as well as Tresor, Force Inc and Mosquito, not to mention his collaborations with Theorem, Gregory Shiff and Geoff White, seeing him infuse his stripped-down creations with his varied musical background.

Indeed, Walker claims he was originally inspired by British indie-dance – Happy Mondays and Stone Roses – as well as classic pop music, as much as by techno innovators.
“In the beginning of my electronic music growth I was definitely inspired by people like Dan Bell, Plastikman, Basic Channel and Rob Hood – and there would be no way I could deny the influence they had on my first releases. However, I also have a pop and rock music history that preceded these artists,” he explains. “This included 60s rock like Neil Young and The Beatles and these are artists I have found myself drawing more on lately.”
After a three-year learning curve with his equipment, Walker began releasing music in 1997. His first album, Stabiles was championed by the likes of Richie Hawtin, but Stewart believes that his work has evolved since then.
“When I started producing, my sound was minimal since I only had one or two synths,” he recalls, “but it’s changed since then because my equipment now allows me to mix and match a wide variety of timbres.”
Walker set up his Persona imprint in 2001 and has released work by Geoff White, DJ Slip, Fred Gianelli and Gregory Shiff. Unfortunately, the current downturn in electronic music means that he may have to put the label on hold.
“I set up Persona with the goal of making it my only outlet for releases,” he explains. “I had to shield myself momentarily from the European influence and try to come up with my own approach. At this moment, I’m having difficulty running Persona because at its current financial level I can’t afford to pay an assistant and I can’t run it by myself since I prefer to make music and play shows.”
Like a number of his peers – Dan Bell and Richie Hawtin – Walker is also upping his US roots and making the move from Boston to Berlin. Given that the German capital is often seen as the spiritual home for minimal music – in much the same way the Detroit is the capital of deep techno and electro – it seems a logical move.
“Well, the German sound is a very wide field if you include everything from Basic Channel to Westbam,” he notes. “Unfortunately, at the moment a lot of minimal music is lazy. If you listen to this music from outside a DJs perspective a lot of it is dull. It’s great to mix, and layer, but I’ve adopted a more traditional perspective in which a piece of music must stand on its own. I think that moving away from tracks to songs will improve the vitality of electronic music, but I think DJs still prefer static tracks that are easy to mix and contain no surprises.”
Despite these comments, Walker isn’t about to forsake his minimal roots and his unusual approach will be apparent on his next album, due out early next year.
“Hopefully it will sound like a down tempo departure from my purist techno roots while maintaining a sound that listeners will recognise as my own,” he believes.