Mark Reeder

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Mark Reeder (1999)

Mark Reeder (born January 5, 1958 in Manchester , England , United Kingdom ) is a British musician , record producer , label owner , actor and author . The artist, who has lived in Germany since 1978, is best known as the founder of the Berlin record label MFS , which is one of the most important German trance labels with publications by Paul van Dyk , Cosmic Baby , Mijk van Dijk , Humate , Ellen Allien and Marco Zaffarano .

Life

Reeder was born in 1958 in Manchester, UK. He has a twin brother. He was interested in music from a young age. His interest in progressive rock was aroused through an older cousin . In 1968 he bought his first record, the Jimi Hendrix album Electric Ladyland . After graduating from school, he began training as a commercial artist . In college, however, he was more interested in music and held disco parties for the students. He worked for an advertising agency for a short time, but that quickly bored him. He quit and worked in Manchester's first Virgin record store on Lever Street. Punk music, boycotted in many British record stores in the late 1970s , was available there, making the place a popular meeting point for Manchester's punk scene. Reeder met many punk musicians there, including the Buzzcocks , John the Postman , Rob Gretton , Tony Wilson and Mark Farrow . His work in the record store gave him steady access to new music. He was particularly fascinated by the electronic music imported from Germany by artists such as Klaus Schulze , Giorgio Moroder , Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream . The interest in the country and music led to a first trip to Germany.

In 1977 Mick Hucknall and Neil "Moey" Moss founded the group The Frantic Elevators , with which Reeder appeared as bassist. The band soon broke up despite some promising appearances as the opening act for the punk band Sham 69 .

In 1978 he moved to Germany, where Reeder first lived in Pullach , Bavaria , before Rob Gretton appointed him the German representative of the Factory Records record label and settled in West Berlin . Reeder also used the first few years in Berlin to travel to Czechoslovakia , Hungary and Romania , not least to get to know the music scene of the Eastern Bloc better.

After the unexpected suicide of Ian Curtis in May 1980, Reeder initially stayed in Berlin, even if the future of the band Joy Division and the record label Factory Records was unclear. Activities as a sound engineer and in other areas of the music industry followed. After the founding of the band New Order by the remaining Joy Division members, Reeder stayed in close contact with their new front man Bernard Sumner . In addition, Reeder got to know musicians such as Gudrun Gut , Beate Bartel and Bettina Köster from the band Mania D , the Swiss drummer Thomas Wydler and Michael Schäumer and Alexander Hacke from the band P1 / E in the West Berlin new wave and punk scene .

On December 31, 1980, Reeder appeared together with Thomas Wydler and the Human League technician Adrian Wright at a New Year's Eve celebration on the occasion of the closure of the Berlin punk rock club Exxcess with a mixture of cover versions of James Bond themes and public abuse . A few months later, the three of them received a request to appear on SO36 . Reeder asked his friend Alistair Gray to sing. In addition, he taught him the basics of playing the bass in just a few days. There was still no band name on the day of the performance. Reeder and Gray were given no opportunity for a sound check and instead got drunk in a pub before the gig. The strings of the cooled guitar sagged on the hot stage and were out of tune. Having become nervous as a result, the drunk shipowner started with the wrong pattern of the rhythm machine, which confused Gray as a singer and rendered the lyrics inadequately. To make matters worse, the set notes that had been drawn up beforehand with a pencil were practically impossible to read in the glaring stage light. Shipowner later recalled:

"Even though the audience had apparently enjoyed themselves, the gig was a disaster."

- Mark Reeder

In the edition of the Berlin city magazine tip , however, the critic André Schwerdt wrote:

"What particularly struck me was the avant-garde set by two unknown Englishmen."

- André Schwerdt

With the positive review of the performance and not least the classification of the band as avant-garde , Schwerdt contributed significantly to the band's fame. In his article he also gave the project a name: The Unknowns . Reeder and Gray appeared under this name in various European countries, often in conjunction with the women's combo Malaria, which emerged from Mania D ! . Together with Jochen Hülder , Reeder also acted as manager and sound engineer for Malaria !. This was followed by some semi-legal appearances in Eastern Bloc countries such as Czechoslovakia and Hungary. In Budapest the band performed together with Die Toten Hosen .

On a tour through the Benelux countries with Malaria !, Die Haut and The Birthday Party , Reeder met the Australian musician Nick Cave and convinced him to come to Berlin. Cave then lived for a while in Reeder's Kreuzberg apartment.

After Reeder and Gray received a prototype of the Roland 606 drum machine from Adrian Wright in 1982, they both recorded the pieces Don't Tell Me Stories and Perfect Love within a few days , which were then released on the record label Monogam Records as a Dangerous Moonlight EP . Shortly thereafter, Reeder withdrew further from the work at Factory Records in order to devote more time to his work with The Unknowns and other projects.

On March 27, 1983, Reeder organized a secret East Berlin concert by the Toten Hosen in the Erlöserkirche in Berlin-Rummelsburg . Die Toten Hosen performed there with instruments and music systems from the band Planlos (including Bernd Michael Lade ) in front of almost two dozen punks. The planned appearance of the stranger was canceled because the organizers could not organize a synthesizer.

In the same year Reeder organized a special for the British television station Tyne Tees Television for the music program The Tube live from Berlin, for which he also acted as a presenter together with Muriel Gray. The program compared the music scene in East and West Berlin using the bands Jessica and Die Ärzte .

Influenced by Hi-NRG and disco and with two new musicians, the drummer Leo Walter and the bassist and keyboardist Helmut Wittler, The Unknowns changed their name to Shark Vegas in 1984 . The band went on a European tour with New Order that same year. The single You Hurt Me , produced by Bernard Sumner and Donald Johnson, was released on Totenkopf Records and Factory Records. The track Pretenders Of Love also appeared on the factory compilation Young Popular And Sexy , which was released in the United States . During a small club tour in New York City, the group also visited the Paradise Garage nightclub , where Reeder witnessed a DJ set by Larry Levan and subsequently increasingly turned to electronic dance music. Despite winning a Berlin music competition, Alistair Gray decided to return to the UK. Reeder and Leo Walter founded the follow-up project Alien Nation , which released three trance singles.

In 1989 Reeder received a request from the East Berlin band Die Vision to produce their album in the studios of the Amiga record label . After two months of recording, the album Torture was released on November 2nd, 1989. Shipowner and friends traveled to Romania on vacation on November 8th and "missed" the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9th. The music journalist Dave Rimmer , traveling with Reeder, addressed the events of these weeks in his later published book Once Upon a Time in the East .

After unsuccessful attempts to convince the Amiga to produce techno singles, Reeder founded his own label MFS in 1990 . Reeder was able to use the Amiga studios for the first productions. According to Reeder, the inspiration for the name MFS was found in the abbreviation for the East German Ministry for State Security . The sub- labels Flesh and Telemetric later emerged from MFS . Since it was founded in 1990, MFS and its sublabels have released over 200 albums, EPs and singles by artists such as Dr. Motte , Paul van Dyk , Cosmic Baby , Mijk van Dijk , Humate , Joe T. Vannelli , Ellen Allien , Denki Groove , DJ Clé and Marco Zaffarano . In 1998 the most important artist to date, Paul van Dyk, left MFS to found his own label, Vandit . A legal dispute arose between MFS and Van Dyk over the issue of the release of the third album Out There and Back . After 1999, Reeder increasingly distanced himself from the trance scene and devoted himself increasingly to techno with his Flesh partner Corvin Dalek .

Together with Blank & Jones , Reeder released the album Reordered in 2009 . In 2011 his compilation album Five Point One was released with Reeder's remixes for musicians such as John Foxx , Bad Lieutenant , Marsheaux , Noblesse Oblige , Depeche Mode , Blank & Jones feat. Vanessa Daou, Sam Taylor-Wood with Pet Shop Boys , Die Toten Hosen and Anne Clark .

Reeder was also active as an actor, for example in Jörg Buttgereit's low-budget horror films Der Todesking (1989) and Nekromantik 2 (1991) or in Cynthia Beatts The Party: Nature Morte (1991). Reeder contributed part of the script for the film B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West Berlin 1979–1989 , which premiered at the 2015 Berlinale . He is the narrator and main character of the film.

Reeder also occasionally writes articles or reviews for magazines such as Stadtkomplize (Berlin), Laif Magazyn (Poland), B: EAST Magazin, XMAG and Bassline (Czech Republic).

Discography (selection)

The unknown
  • 1981: The Unknowns - The Unknowns ( Monogam Records )
  • 1983: The Unknowns - Dangerous Moonlight EP (Monogam Records)
  • 1982: The Unknowns - Dangerous Moonlight (Monogam Records)
  • 2005: The Unknowns - Don't Tell Me Stories (Vinyl-on-demand)
Shark Vegas
  • 1984: Shark Vegas - You Hurt Me (Skull)
Alien nation
  • 1989: Alien Nation - House In The Desert (Big Sex Records)
  • 1989: Alien Nation - Travis (Preset Records)
  • 1991: Alien Nation - Lovers Of The World (MFS)
Ten Forward
  • 1996: Ten Forward - Patterns Of Force (MFS)
Hustler & Shock Absorber
  • 2000: Hustler & shock absorber - shock absorber (Flesh)
solo
  • 2009: Blank & Jones / Mark Reeder - Reordered (Sound colors )
  • 2011: Mark Reeder - Five Point One (Kennen Ltd)

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b The SO 36 turns 30 at tip-berlin.de, accessed on January 12, 2012
  2. ↑ a b Das Sehnsuchtserlebnis Ost-Konzert at berliner-zeitung.de, accessed on January 18, 2012
  3. ↑ B-Movie - Off to the apocalyptic West Berlin of the 80s! arte.tv, February 21, 2015, accessed on March 1, 2015 .
  4. ^ Five Point One website , five-point-one.co.uk
personal data
SURNAME Shipowner, Mark
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British musician , record producer , record label owner , actor and author
DATE OF BIRTH 5th January 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Manchester , England , UK