Following the pain of his father’s death, German DJ, producer and remixer Ben Böhmer found solace in production, creating the tribute track In Memoriam for his debut album Breathing (2019).
Acting as catalyst for success, within 18 months Böhmer’s life had taken a dramatic U-turn as his sumptuous mix of progressive house and melodic techno took North America and Europe by storm, giving birth to one of the biggest breakout global dance stars with 3.6 million Spotify listeners.
Böhmer has never looked back, clocking up almost 1 billion streams and performing over 200 shows in the aftermath of his similarly successful follow-up LP Begin Again (2021). Despite spending the majority of his time on tour, the lure of the studio continually tugs at Böhmer.
In the aftermath of his rapid rise and on the cusp of burnout, for his third album, Bloom, the Berlin-based singer-songwriter railed against the temptation to make club music for the masses and refocused on the core sound he’s best known for.
You grew up in the small town of Göttingen in Germany known for the Handel festival. Did that form some part of your musical education?
“I never actually went to the Handel festival. There was another more diverse festival in the city and I remember those nights when I was kid, but unfortunately Göttingen is a very conservative city in many ways and they put a stop to loud music festivals in public spaces. When I was 16 or 17, my older brother had started going to the electronic music clubs in Göttingen. There weren’t that many, but these were the moments that influenced the path I took in electronic music and how I experienced and fell in love with proper techno music.“
What were your first steps into music production?
“I started playing piano really early and had a teacher who taught me how to improvise and write sheet music. That was the moment I started to write music and by the age of 16 I’d got hold of a copy of FL Studio, which helped me to make my first beats. At some point I was able to buy my very first MacBook, but FL Studio wasn’t compatible on the OS back then, so I switched to Logic Pro around 2010. A little later I started to play my first shows but I wanted to perform my own music rather than DJ so I switched to Ableton Live and found that to be the most convenient DAW. I fell in love with how intuitive and easy it was to use and began using Live for my productions too.”
You finished performing a 200-show tour following your previous album Begin Again. Was coping with that level of demand difficult to navigate?
“No one thought that the doors would open in the way that they did because it was still post-Covid and even if you agreed to do a show it was very uncertain as to whether it would actually take place, but they all did. It was a difficult time because I was completely burnt out. I didn’t write music during that year and probably only had three ideas that I didn’t even finish, which is unusual for me because normally I write almost daily.
“I was constantly flying, touring and playing the two albums that I’d written, but I learned a lot and realised that touring is a wonderful thing but not everything. I’ve learned to take a step back, so I’m more likely to do around 70 shows next time, which will let me take more time off to write music and find the right balance as well as treat the tinnitus that I unfortunately got from touring.”
How much of an impact does the tinnitus have on you and your music?
“I have had several conversations with doctors and we have decided that it could be a stress-related thing. I don’t have proper hearing damage, but there are two areas where I struggle with the high frequencies. I can live with it, but it was very worrying during the first weeks of my diagnosis. When you realise you have a problem you focus your full attention on it, which is the worst thing you can do with tinnitus. There are moments where I try not to get too annoyed, but I still hear it when I go to bed or wake up if there’s no background noise. Luckily, it doesn’t affect me anymore when I write music.”
Were you able to write on the road while travelling or in hotel rooms?
“I usually prefer to do that in the studio but I do sometimes like to write music on my off days so I’ll take a few pieces of equipment and try to build a small home studio in a rented apartment. Unfortunately, if it’s a touring weekend with three festivals or shows in a row I hardly find the time to write. Normally, I really like having breaks from production as long as they’re not too long because the first music I make is often really interesting and I’m quick to finish it.
“Surprisingly, after doing 200 shows I came back and was really confused. I tried to write but for the first three months I didn’t like anything that I made. I thought about creating a proper, functional dance album because I was playing on bigger stages at electronic music festivals and the harder music that I wrote worked pretty well on big stages, as compared to the soft electronic ballads that I’d been making.”
Had you got caught up in trying to write something that you thought would primarily appeal to a certain type of audience or listener?
“That was the part that was confusing to me, but I got completely lost and realised that if you make something for the audience or a specific purpose rather than what you want to create in that moment it won’t turn out well. I felt this pressure after my second album Begin Again, but because of Covid I was completely isolated. For this album, I definitely felt the pressure of needing to deliver something that people would like but these thoughts are, basically, poisonous.
“The whole experience helped me to take a step back and decide to make the sort of music that I really wanted to make and just that hope people liked it. That’s why Bloom ended up being a very chilled and diverse album with ambient and indie influences rather than a full-on dance record.”
Big events in your life related to grief and the ending of a relationship gave you the context to write your first two albums. What was the emotional fuel for your third LP, Bloom?
“I feel like there’s a lot of growth in the album, both musically and personally. Musically, I’ve gone into very different areas and that personal growth felt like a big part of the process behind the album and that’s why I called it Bloom. With nature, there’s so much diversity and growth and I saw the parallels in that.”
You mentioned that Ableton is your primary production tool, so is your studio minimal?
“Bloom was almost completely written in one room, which was a very new thing for me because I’d previously worked in an external studio. I basically built a home studio again, which was literally just a piano, speakers and room acoustics. I really like the simplicity of the room and not having too many synthesisers, pedals and effects chains, so the album was basically written on piano and the computer.”
What’s behind your choice of piano?
“About 18 months ago I bought a Yamaha B2 silent upright, which is a real piano with strings inside and sounds lovely but it has a MIDI function so whatever I play goes straight into the computer. I can even use it to play u-he’s Diva software or Omnisphere and have that wonderful feeling of playing a proper piano through digital synths.”
Would you normally write songs on an upright?
“It’s always been this way. I was classically trained from the age of six but started to really hate playing classical music and stopped practising. One day, my piano teacher came to me and said, ‘Ben, I cannot teach you anymore but do me a favour and continue playing’. I took a year or two off and got in touch with Christoph Busse, who is probably one of the most talented piano players I’ve ever met and I’m really grateful he took me as a student as he doesn’t normally teach kids. He’s a master of improvisation and jazz music and taught me a lot.”
Did Christoph teach you anything that you still rely on in terms of your compositional practise?
“What was really helpful, and typical to jazz teachers, was learning music theory. I needed to learn the scales and although that’s not mandatory for writing and composing, there’s definitely some form of maths and emotion behind understanding the kind of chords that will work together.”
Will you typically have a clear idea of the direction you wanted to take a composition or do you rely on intuition and improvisation?
“I’m open to anything. Sometimes I’ll just go on the piano and jam and if I like something I’ll continue with that and embed it into a song. Or sometimes I already have a silhouette of a song or a melody in my head that creates a path for a certain emotion. I typically set up the piano so that the microphone goes into a UA interface and the MIDI function goes directly into the computer via USB. Everything is recorded in Session View on Ableton before I start to search for the right sounds.”
You mentioned using u-he’s Diva. What appeals to you about that software suite?
“It’s by far my most used and loved synth plugin because it emulates most of the classic analogue synths but in a really rough, warm and imperfect way. I have a Moog Sub 37 in the studio too and there are some sine waves that I emulated in Diva but there was only a tiny, tiny difference, so I don’t even use the Moog now.”
Do you have a similar attachment to Omnisphere?
“I’ve been using Omnisphere for six or seven years but whenever I open it I feel like there are millions of sounds that I still haven’t listened to. What I like is that it doesn’t take a long time to find what you’re looking for because the software has such a good search function and there’s always something inspiring from what is an endless monster of a sound library.”
Did you bump up against any problems throughout the recording process for Bloom?
“It took me about 18 months to complete the album and most of the songs were finished at a pretty early stage but it took ages to finalise them. I felt that was easier to do in the past and figured it would get easier as my knowledge about production grew, but I was completely wrong about that. The last 5 or 10 per cent drove me crazy from time to time and at one point I had about 130 mixdowns that I gave to other mix engineers but I didn’t like the results that much. In the end I finished it by myself and I’m still not happy, but please don’t write that [laughs].”
Isn’t it true that most artists finish an album because they have to rather than being totally happy with it?
“There are moments where I’m 100 per cent happy, but what sounds interesting and good to you might change six months later because your tastes are always changing. It’s probably normal for the process to drive you mad but that’s why I enjoy playing live because even if I perform a song from 2016 it’s never too late to make changes to it or add an idea.
“What really drives me crazy is the mixdown and trying to find the perfect balance between a sound being clean or not clean or the right sound that works between the big stage and home speakers. Now that I’m on album three, I’ve come to realise that the perfect mix doesn’t exist, although Daft Punk might be able to achieve that because they sound amazing everywhere despite their tracks being made with very little equipment.”
You worked with the FAMES orchestra on some tracks. Did you know that you wanted to use live strings in advance or was that sparked by what certain tracks became?
“I had a track written called Evermore and used Kontakt strings for that, which sounded good but then I heard about the option to book a full 40-string orchestra from a friend who had done it a few times and was amazed by the idea. Time was short and the orchestra were in a different country, so I gave them all of the MIDI notes before they wrote the score and then joined a Zoom call with them alongside a recording engineer.
“I got back around 700 recording files and thought it would be really lovely to use the orchestra again on a synth/piano track called Rain and they just sound beautiful. Digital strings sound pretty good nowadays, but I don’t believe you can reproduce the dynamic of an orchestra digitally.”
What informed your choice of vocal collaborators?
“I used some of the artists that I’ve worked with before like Malou and Jonah who are good friends of mine, but there are also quite a few new names on the album that I’m really excited about. I was a big fan of Oh Wonder, Lykke Li and Max Milner who offer their super-amazing voices to the album. It’s amazing to work in person with vocalists on my songs and be on the same wavelength because you can make tiny changes immediately and it’s just really fun to have moments where a song is created together.
“For example, on the track Best Life, Jonah and I had countless nights recording thousands of vocal takes and lines and I’ll never forget standing on the balcony and listening to mix down number 80 with new lyrics and just dancing and dancing. It was really fun for us to be in the studio together.”
Having a vocal wish list to pick from must be one of the benefits of becoming successful?
“It probably helps. London Grammar is on my big, big wish list because I love Hannah Reid’s voice, but if want to dream really big, I wouldn’t say no to writing a song with Chris Martin [laughs].”
Ben Böhmer’s new album Bloom is out September 27 via Ninja Tune. For more information, visit his official website.
