What tickles the mind of Riley Reinhold right now?

RRR: Well, I guess I lead two lifes a very music oriented life that tries to go a bit with the speed out there in terms of digital mania, I do the A&R work and DJ a bit... get the network going... help new artist who are too young to know all the things, talk with well-known artist about unimportant things. Then on the other side I seek asylum in literature very much.

What do you read?

RRR: I read a lot of working class literature, and theatre plays of the 60s and early 70ies. I am interested in the authentic cover art of that time so I try to get the book with the cover of the first edition.

Why is that, why don't you read some hot shit like Neal Stephenson?

RRR: Well you are right it would do me good to read his books, but in fact I read his early works and when his really monumental phase started I just fell asleep at night when I read his books... it seems you need a certain amount auf speed per page to have the story not fall apart. So I was looking for a bit of "minimal" literature and I had read Murakami, both of them (a long time ago) and a lot of other Japanese literature also early novels like " Kokoro“ from Natsume Sôseki. This was written around the turn of the century or a bit later... and the energy is phenomenal. I keep looking for literature left field of what is sold in shops and sometimes I have an idea to re-release a book say from Russian writers like Tschingis Aitmatow and then I see someone has done it already just a month ago. I also discovered there was literature in the 30ies and 50ies which belonged to a genre which had a bad image created by the journalism at that time... which... now without the heavy pressure of the media all gone... lives up to its quality... there are some Richard Stark novels which are just awesome.

So you are interested in music as well as in literature it seems in the same topics, reduction to the essential, kind of movement, restricted to parameters.

RRR: well... I think... I was quite tired with the classic literature, the heavy sentences which try to explore every bit every nuance..., maybe Peter Handke is the king... "Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter" is too realistic... so depressive... maybe also very good. I thought giving way to phantasy and imagination as Bret Easton Ellis does, also uplifting and positive in a sense... was much more interesting for me and reflects what I was and what I am still interested in electronic music.

Ok, what about music on your label and what about yourself?

RRR: well we are just about to release the „Diorama“ remixes of Dominik Eulberg's album. We were very happy with what Dominik did. We though it just justifies what we are doing in general with the label Traum. Keeping a door open for emotional music which does not subdue to any DJformula. Don't understand me wrong we are not ANTI although it would be fashionable and we probably could be more successful if we would be anti and would promote it... but our weakness is that we love music more than we love to work as promoters... we just hate the word promoter... we think it does not belong to music and I think Dominik thinks the same.

Well music can still be music that is what Diorama showed... there is an essential need for that music... it is a shame there are some really good people out there and they have such a hard time to get the attention Domink gets. But Dominik supports young people and I really think he is one of the last Mohicans doing it, he does not just play the old game of connecting only to big boys... already big who can take care of themselves very well... although also for them comes a time when they get to old that they are surrounded by clubbers 25 years younger and they yearn for someone who they can speak and relate to, who they can share things with. The cold side of the music bizz cannot penetrate age, age is like antimatter, there is no way to destroy it... then it also has its bad sides. We come to the point where pro and cons are just one bigger piece.

Ok, what about your music.

RRR: You know I started to record with Steve Barnes aka Cosmic Sandwich.. Steve used to release on Traum and has produced several albums and I consider him a true funk man, he can play and it is magic... and he lives in Cologne so we got together to record the first tracks together on MBF and we got a lot of credit from the West Coast... that is what Steve said and I believe he is right because my part of it, singing and doing the bassline with him and the arrangement or feel of the flow... well I intended to have that sadness in them.

Then the Cosmic Sandwich track we made in the Traum office and we caught a magic moment. With all Cosmic Sandwich material we tried to play it live and record it and when we went to San Francisco I met a DJ who bough 3 copies of it, so there very a lot of true believers... and it really sold well! When Steve started to work less on music I started to do songs on my own, so I started to release on MBF LTD. I choose the label because it is the deepest of all our labels and I myself I cannot be so efficient and I get tired of choosing synth sound, well I always use some but they are usually in the back ground... I was somehow successful with "Lights in your eyes", „Sunset Sound“, and my actual release „Mountaintop People EP“. I try to take in the feeling I get when I read so it should all be a bit yellowish if I was to give it a color.

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