Even in New York, Stumm is being heard
Zurich star DJ Oliver Stumm is successfully pursuing his career as a musician
BY MARTIN SUTER, Sonntags Zeitung 1998
When he was at the very top in Switzerland, he moved to New York to start again at the bottom. With his new album, Zurich’s DJ king Oliver Stumm proves that the move was worthwhile: The record spinner and party pioneer has become a musician.
Fortunately, the «Bowery Bar» is no longer quite as sought-after as it was a few years ago. You can hear yourself speak in the former garage on 4th Street in Manhattan when Oliver Stumm sits down for an interview on Tuesday on the faux-leather-covered bench.
It is two in the afternoon, and Ollie is not really in full swing yet. «Normally I’m lively», apologizes the slight, obligatorily Downtown-black-clad Swiss-American, his face rather pale beneath the stubble. That same day, Oliver Stumm will board the night flight to Zurich, where 72 hours later he will launch his first proper album at the «Kaufleuten». «You Can Run…» is the name of the CD, which he recorded, arranged and mixed in painstaking, months-long sound tinkering in his New York studio. He is releasing the album on his own label Liquid Groove under the name «H2O», but alongside it, «Produced by Oliver Stumm» appears on the cover.
«Unfortunately they always have to put my name on the package», is his slightly coquettish comment.
«As the local hero, I could play anywhere I wanted»
In Switzerland, at any rate. If Ollie Stumm were not only 33 years old, one could call him the grandfather of Swiss DJs; no one is better known in the scene. Stumm, who was born in Boston and grew up in the USA and Zurich, has been playing records publicly since 1984 to earn extra money while studying mathematics. He was the first DJ to play house music, and later organized legendary dance parties, both legal and illegal. With his temporary megadiscos at the barracks, the Mühle Tiefenbrunnen, the Reithalle and various other venues, Stumm established himself as a pioneer of Zurich’s now immensely powerful party scene.
«I was a local hero and could play anywhere I wanted», Oliver recalls, while the barely nibbled pizza on the plate in front of him grows cold.
But what had begun out of love for music had increasingly drifted into the restaurant business, he says.
«I could extrapolate: In five years I would have this restaurant, then that bar, soon I would be driving around in a Mercedes and have a boat on the lake.» Then he said to himself: «No – I’m not going to make it that easy for myself.»
After moving to New York in 1991, Oliver Stumm had to start all over again, «as a nobody, as a small fish in the pond». And that had been a very healthy process for him. He was like all those thousands who stream into the metropolis on the US East Coast every week to realize their very individual dream. «Ninety percent fail, but the experience was worth it: When they go back home, they’re the King there.»
But Stumm is not thinking about that yet. He is well on his way to realizing his dream and making a name for himself in New York as a musician-producer.
First he learned the craft, thoroughly, in the good Swiss tradition. He wanted to master every operation on the synthesizer, mixing console and Macintosh sequencer himself; for his productions he did not want to depend on sound engineers, programmers or other specialists.
«In the last six months I had no social life anymore». In the meantime, he has produced 17 house singles on his own label and sold some of them on the DJ market in editions of five figures.
Since January, «Liquid Grooves Vol. 1» has also been available, a compilation of shortened versions of the dance tracks. «Now the doors of the record companies are slowly opening», he reports. They recognize that he is not faking anything, that he is not a «phoney».
After lunch, Ollie Stumm shows his workplace, which is a few blocks away on Bleecker Street. On the way past a soup kitchen and the home of Swiss photographer Robert Frank, the New York resident by choice praises his new home: This city has an enormous amount of music culture, and it is important to me that many people do the same thing as I do.»
In the office of his Liquid Music Inc. on the sixth floor, Lantz Arrington, the label manager, is currently packing T-shirts, hats, keys and other promotional items into cardboard boxes for transport to Switzerland. Stumm likes this kind of marketing, if only because it is fun. He especially loves crazy ideas; for example, he would have liked to include bags of bath additive with his sweat-inducing new CD, along the lines of: «Have a bath on us.» Unfortunately, the idea came to him too late.
But the holiest of rooms is a medium-sized, windowless room that Stumm has crammed full of electronics. Here, amid sliders, knobs and scales, he spent up to fourteen hours a day during the last six months. «I had no social life anymore», he says, without complaining. In general, he is more of a loner. He meets most people by chance, in connection with his profession.
Then Oliver Stumm opens the controls, and you immediately hear that the deprivation has paid off. «You Can Run…» is clean and super-precisely produced and astonishingly diverse. The CD brings together the house classic «Take Me Higher» and the hit «Nobody’s Business», which made the Top twenty in England, but also hip-hop tracks and completely new rhythms. Stumm’s singer Billie impresses with her phrasing skills just as much as the late vocalist Tony Lopes does with his expressiveness.
«There are too many drugs and boring music in the clubs»
While listening to his album, Ollie reveals an enthusiasm that prompts the question of whether DJ work still gives him any pleasure by comparison. For New York, where he repeatedly stood behind turntables during the first two or three years, the answer is clearly no. «The club scene is in a crisis», he says. «There are too many drugs, and the music is boring. Sometimes you feel like you’re in a McDonald’s, where the hamburgers always taste exactly the same.»
In Switzerland, the same development is foreseeable, although it has not progressed as far yet. That is why the DJ pioneer regularly serves his home fan base and crosses the Atlantic at least every two months for events. Last year he was in Switzerland ten times
«It’s a hellish stress job, lugging the two heavy record cases around», he says.
But when a party runs smoothly, the hardships are forgotten. Because even today, Ollie can respond to the mood on the dance floor like hardly anyone else, and unlike many, he cultivates variation between loud and quiet, slow and fast. «The dramaturgy is the most important thing: If you want to be happy, you also have to be sad in between.»
For the occasion of the album launch, Oliver Stumm will stay in Switzerland for a full two weeks this time. He is especially looking forward to letting the now-famous disco party take place on May 29 at Zurich’s «Kaufleuten». He knows that this nostalgia party will be extremely popular, just as it was last year. And after seven years in New York, the DJ pioneer also knows why: «That’s music.»