At the tender age of 6, Danilo Plessow`s path in music started with playing drums. With his engagement in a school bigband in Schwäbisch Gmünd (near Stuttgart/Germany)he found his love for jazz – and from 11 years of age on he started working on his own music using a computer and samples. Being influenced by Jazz, Soul, Funk, Hiphop and House music, the first results were already released 5 years later on Stuttgarts Pulver Records. Together with Joachim Tobias, Danilo had formed the House/Broken Beat project “Inverse Cinematics”: Seven 12” Records, one LP and many remixes and compilation appearances followed. The project was and still is a favourite of some of the worlds most influental leftfield DJs such as Gilles Peterson, Rainer Trüby (with whom Danilo just started a collaboration), Michael Rütten or Benji B. After several other cooperations and solo projects in the Nujazz vein (Hipster Wonkaz with P.Valentino for Ubiquity Records or solo as Aphro Pzyko for Raw Fusion), Danilo went back to his House music roots with the “Motor City Drum Ensemble”. We caught up with MCDE ahead of his performance for Asylum @ Mint Club

Hi mate how are you and where are you?

Doing quite ok, currently i am at Rainer Trübys place working with him on a remix for Gilles Petersons label and enjoying his cooking and wine selector skills.

How did you name Motor City Drum Ensemble come to be?

I come from Germanys very own motorcity, Stuttgart, home of Mercedes Benz, Porsche and a lot of automobile related industry. And as i collect vintage drum machines, me and those machines form the ensemble.

Your tracks contain some soul elements and always have a very “real” feel to them, what non-electronic music have you found yourself returning to as a reference over the years?

All sorts of, really. Mainly deep Jazz, Soul and Funk/Disco, but also Progressive- and Krautrock,
Avantgarde stuff or 70s Meditation music. There were some really clever hippies around back in the 60s/70s, i can tell you haha..

You have released music on your own MCDE imprint but also 2020 Vision, this must be a great achievement, did you always make house music or is it a more recent venture?

I always did House and Techno stuff, but never really thought about releasing it. The first Raw Cuts for example was already 4 years old when i finally felt like it might be good idea to release it.
I have been doing another project at that time, Inverse Cinematics, which was a bit more broken beatish.

Your DJ schedule is looking more full each day, how do you find being a globetrotting artist?

On one hand its definatly amazing to share my music with so many people, on the other hand its really not only fun and glamourous, but also very stressful and time consuming.
I will definatly need to cut down a little of the touring as i m not really able to work on music while i m touring – i need my studio with all the machines to sound like i want to, and i dont want to be someone who once had a good period – i want to be around for the long term and keep surprising people.

Is their any advice you would like to give any budding producers/artists out there trying to break into the scene?

A lot of people ask me this recently. Having success in this business is not something you can get by following a masterplan, theres no „how to become a famous dj“ rule. And thats good!
Nowerdays i really have the feeling that way too many peeps try to get into the scene, without having any knowledge of music and a serious lack of talent. Dont get me wrong, there are many, many really talented young guys around – but also a lot of really uninspired ones.
For me, it comes down to this:
If you dont seriously love music, listen to a certain record on your home stero alone at night and be overwhelmed by emotions, then you might not be able to „get“ music yet. Start broadening your horizon, not only listen to what is „hip“ now, but what was around back in the day.
Try to get to the bare essence of music, emotions, buildup, the way sounds are used.
Then start to experimentate, try to create your own sound rather then ask around on the internet how artist xy did the chords on his track.
There might be a lot of successful music around that is build with the same fruityloops sample pack you have, but believe me, this will not pass the test of time.

For the technical ‘heads’ would you like to share any studio techniques with us?

I have started with plug-ins, and back in the days they sounded really shit compared to now.
But still, i feel way more comfortable to work with my hardware. I can do a beat on my 909 in seconds, if i want to catch the feeling of the swing only with samples on the computer, i need at least 30 minutes for that. So the spontaneous moment gets lost..
Lots of my tracks are based on rough concepts that i come up within minutes. Triggering your Arpeggios with the drum machines and its swing, how can i possibly emulate that with software?
Maybe i m just a little to lazy to check for the new posibilities, but i am way more satisfied with my
analogue setup now compared to a few years back.

What can we expect from your performance at Asylum?

Deep, sensual and sexy House and Techno, and hopefully a very nice packed dancefloor all night long!

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