Fcukers’ “Bon Bon” was my intro to Ivan’s distinctive work as a producer. I’ve also caught him DJing at Paragon, Good Room, and Public Records, and it’s always a fun time.
This week, he stops by the studio to talk about making records from the relaxed home studio he’s built, the art of digging, and how a lifetime of listening informs his work behind the DJ booth.
Ivan Berko was born in Queens raised in New Jersey and has been working as a DJ and producer in Manhattan since 2000.This year he has worked on releases by Fcukers, Boy Harhser, Pleasure Systems, I.U.D., Maraschino and his own projects including balearic house outfit Esmango which will be released on Sonic Dream Recordings a label that Berko runs out of his Chinatown apartment. He is addicted to music.
Thought Enthusiast is an editorial project from AdHoc, a New York experiential agency exploring the people, ideas, and cultural currents shaping what’s next.
Discovering Dance Music
The first record that really got me excited about dance music was Green Velvet’s “La La Land.” I remember thinking it was so crazy. Spencer Sweeney played it at Spa on a Wednesday, which was the club night my friends and I would go to. It was really cool, with an entirely white interior with a waterfall by the bar. It turned into a club called Plaid soon after. Interpol would play there, and there were LCD Soundsystem parties. It was that era.
There’s such a range of emotion and color in dance music. I really like chiller dance music, more Balearic things, but I’ve also been digging into early-2000s minimal Berlin and German stuff, like Perlon Records, founded by Zip and Markus Nikolai. It’s the coolest music ever made. It’s so simple and funky, not what people would necessarily think of as minimal techno. It’s very forward-thinking and experimental, and I think they initially came from a punk background. Markus Nikolai was in an industrial group with the singer of Front 242.
Making Tea at the Home Studio
This is literally my home, and I think I’ve created an environment where people feel comfortable. Big studios can be really intimidating, especially for newer, younger artists. It’s like, “Oh, this is the place where they made this,” or, “This microphone costs more than my house.” Here, it’s like, let’s make some tea and play some records. It’s very casual and a pretty fun place. For the most part, I have everything we could need to make a record, except for a live drum setup. The neighbors would probably not like that.
I’ve lived here for 12 years. I moved in mid-September 2014. Up until the pandemic, it was just my studio, where I was sandboxing ideas and teaching myself to be better at X, Y, or Z. During the pandemic, I was like, maybe it’s time to invite people over. So I re-situated the room and knocked out this closet. I was like, surely I’m going to meet some cool young people working at this bar. And I did. They came over, and we made the Fcukers’ EP. I think the EP is five or six songs, and it came out pretty cool. People liked it. Two of the songs on the LP started here, and they took them to California to finish. They’re both really good friends.
Digging Outside the Algorithm
I buy records every day. Lately, I buy a lot of CDs, too, because there are a lot of things that only came out on CD in the 2000s. They’re super cheap, too. You can get a stack of CDs for a dollar apiece, rip them to the computer, put them on a USB, and walk around listening to them.
I don’t really know how to dig on Spotify, per se. I guess people make playlists, and that’s right there for you. For me, Discogs is obviously a really great tool, but you can’t beat record stores or the experience of going through bins. I love the format of a 12-inch record, a single or an LP. It’s lovely to have this giant piece of art in your hand. Then you go through the credits: “Oh, I really like the producer of that,” or, “This band is great,” and you go down the rabbit hole of why this exists. “Oh, it’s on this record label. What else did they do? Why did they do that?”
The Obscure Finds
My favorite record shop is Paradise of Replica on Grand Street. I stop by a few times a month, and Kyle always tips me off to cool stuff. One record I found there was an LP by the Spanish experimental musician Juan Belda. It was from ’83 and was so experimental and cool that I started going through his catalog. I found this CD from ’96 where he’s messing around with Indian instruments. I think he’s actually in India in this. It’s pretty out there, something you wouldn’t really hear in an algorithm. There’s a cobra and a snake charmer on the cover. It’s wild.
Musically, my friend Valentina, aka Budino, is probably my favorite DJ. Every time she plays, I’m like, “What is this?” Her digging is insane. She grew up in Italy and comes from a region centered around this one particular type of club music they call Cosmic, a very particular type of blending different genres. She’s in that lineage, I feel, but she’s mixing a lot of contemporary things or things from the aughts and on. She’s great.
Take Risks and Play That Weird Song
I think a lot of young people only get their files from Beatport or Bandcamp. No diss to Beatport, and Bandcamp is great, too, but that’s really limiting what you can play. If you go to the record store, you can find something no one else has. Then it becomes your signature song, and people are like, “What is this?” It’s pretty cool. For me, I want to hear somebody play something I don’t know rather than something I do know. It’s a trope: rock fans want to hear the songs they know, and dance music fans want to hear the songs they don’t know. It’s the thrill of the unexpected. What’s going to happen next?
That’s the other thing with genres in dance music. They become really formulaic really quickly. Everything just becomes tech house and gets really boring. You could take any song, put a boots-and-pants beat on it, and it’s like, “Okay, cool.” I want people to take chances, take risks, and play that weird song. Making music and making it your life at this point is punk and rebellious because it’s so decommodified and almost worthless. Currently, it’s like, we don’t even need you to make it. We’ll have computers make it. I think just doing it is an act of rebellion.
Five songs I’m obsessed with:
💿 Leonard Cohen - Tower Of Song
I’ve been listening to this song and the entire album “I’m Your Man” for like ten years now and it still calling me. It’s so dense yet feels so effortless. It’s a universe onto itself.
💿 Pet Shop Boys - Love Comes Quickly
Again been in the rotation for ages but I just can’t get enough. The feeling it inspires is truly magic especially on the dance floor at that right moment,
My friend Courtney aka CC Disco played at my 40th birthday party. This was right before covid and since then this song has been a staple amongst my close music friends. We lost a lot of friends during that time and this is tattooed into my heart as a dedication to those we lost. “Heaven sends you no promises.” Nothing is guaranteed. Important lesson.
I missed this when It was released back in 2003. Ive been digging deep into the Gothenburg Sweden scene from the 2000s. Bands like The Embassy, Boat Club, Tough Alliance, and Studio. I’m really excited to see the documentary that just got released about them, “It Pays to Belong”
My other big obsession this year is the output of Perlon records from Germany in the late 90s/2000s. It’s so playful and funky and drenched in turn of the millennia optimism which all but died soon after. It’s like a time capsule for when we thought the internet was going to free us instead of well you know what happened. Perlon is still around and has never released their catalog digital outside a few CDs. Legends.
More thoughts soon.
Listen to Boy Harsher’s new album GET MEAN out now. Ivan plays bass on three tracks.
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