In conversation with Alexander Cheves
Welcome to Stall Talk, a new series from Hinterhaus.
A Berlin club bathroom stall is where the best, wildest, and most real chats happen. People trade cigarettes, stories, and…other things. Strangers cram together and, ten minutes later, with other club-goers banging on the door to get in, leave as friends.
That’s the spirit of this new Hinterhaus series, Stall Talk: a place for unfocused, casual chats between people living and working in the scene.
We start with Ground16, Swiss producer and DJ behind a decade of work that’s moved between house, techno, electro, broken beats, and dub.
His new EP, Breaking Through, comes out June 5 on A.2AUM, the new sublabel of Berlin’s SEVEN. It has early support from BBC Radio 1 Dance and closes with a techno remix from Pink Concrete, the Istanbul-born, Prague-based producer, who shared his story with us last February.
In this chat, Ground16 talks to Hinterhaus Editor-in-Chief Alexander Cheves about childhood, David Bowie, music, and keeping art alive.
Alexander Cheves. Tell me about the name Ground16. Where did it come from?
Ground16. It’s from 2016, when this project started. Ground for underground, 16 for the year. Not the deepest story. I just like how it sounds and how it looks written down.
AC. You grew up in Vevey, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. What kind of little kid were you?
Ground16. Calm and curious. School came easily to me, but I was lazy, so I did the bare minimum and spent too many hours on the PlayStation. The thing that stuck early on was music. As a kid, it was already one of the biggest things in my life, and that has never changed.
AC. Did any early experiences shape your eventual passion for music? Like a single event? Or was it more of a gradual process?
Ground16. It was gradual. My dad loved music, and at some point, he got me a MiniDisc player. It was a red Sony one, I think. He was on LimeWire and would fill it with stuff he knew I’d like. Then my older brother started mixing hard dance when I was twelve, and the turntables grabbed my attention quickly then. By fourteen, I was mixing and producing stuff, which was really cheesy, I’ll admit. It’s a bit of a cliché, but from eighteen I started going to Berlin a lot, and that’s where my electronic taste really sharpened. I listen to all sorts of music now, like hip hop, jazz, rock, but those early years are where it all comes from.
AC. What was a piece of music you listened to on repeat back then?
Ground16. The Verve, “Bitter Sweet Symphony.” I had that on repeat for ages. Fun fact: the famous string riff is actually sampled from an orchestral version of a Rolling Stones track.
AC. Oh, cool. Which one?
Ground16. It’s “The Last Time,” from 1965. Funny thing is, The Verve didn’t sample the actual Rolling Stones recording. They used an orchestral cover by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra. It kicked off a legal mess over the rights.
AC. The A.2AUM EP is called “Breaking Through.” What’s the story behind the name?
Ground16. Pretty literal. It’s a nod to the broken, breakbeat feel of the EP. Two of the four tracks lean on breaks, so the name fits. And I liked how it sounded. Punchy and direct.
AC. The work of being a DJ and producer is demanding. Late nights, travel, and moving through different time zones. Do you have any rituals to help you keep a good headspace?
Ground16. Honestly, I’m not really at the big touring stage. I play out now and then rather than living on planes, so right now it’s pretty manageable. Making music is genuinely therapeutic for me, but it’s not the only thing keeping me okay. I’ve got a day job, and that keeps me in balance. It also means I’m not financially dependent on music, which keeps it from being a product. The music stays something I genuinely want to do, not a machine I have to feed. I feel very lucky to say that.
AC. What does this new EP feel like to you?
Ground16. Like a milestone. Working with [SEVEN co-founders] Lucas and Glenn has been great. They’re so professional and easy to work with. Getting early support from BBC Radio 1 Dance gave it a nice push, too, and having someone like Pink Concrete remix one of the tracks is brilliant. Pink Concrete brings in a techno edge I keep leaning towards more and more. Beyond that, the EP shows how I am with electronic music in general, which is very eclectic. I like jumping between genres. I get bored with the same thing over and over. So it’s not really a new direction, just where my head’s at right now.
AC. Beyond music, are there any hidden talents or interests your listeners don’t know about?
Ground16. My day job is that I’m an economist in the public sector, mostly working on how social and mental-health institutions get funded. I’ve got a master’s degree in socioeconomics, and I’m really into politics and social questions in general. There’s a funny gap between making house at night and spending days buried in social-sector budgets. I guess the real hidden talent, if you can call it that, is the amount of energy I put into Rocket League on the PS5.
AC. I don’t know anything about gaming. What is Rocket League?
Ground16. It’s basically a video game version of football, but instead of players, you’ve got rocket-powered cars. You fly around an arena trying to smash a giant ball into the other team’s goal. I mostly play online with my mates. It’s fast, totally ridiculous, and addictive. I’ve put an embarrassing number of hours into it.
AC. If you could put one record in the hands of your fifteen-year-old self, what would it be and why?
Ground16. Bowie, Heroes. I’m a massive David Bowie fan. I find him endlessly fascinating, the way he moved across so many musical worlds, his artistic genius, even the philosophical side of him. Heroes means something personal to me. He recorded it in Berlin, the city that ended up shaping my own sound, and he lived for a while close to Vevey, where I grew up. So giving that record to fifteen-year-old me would basically point him towards a lot of what was coming. And I’d throw in the Moonage Daydream documentary too, because it really nails who he was.
AC. I am also a big Bowie fan and found Moonage Daydream so moving, though I read some mixed responses to it from Bowie fans. The great lesson I think all artists can take from Bowie is that you have to keep nurturing and training your artistic impulse, like a muscle. He kept trying new things, from painting to theatre to new kinds of music, all his life. Firing your creativity the way he did requires a lifelong sense of play and searching. From Bowie, I try to remind myself that I have to stay curious and keep trying new things. Is there any artist out there that gives you a “life lesson” like that?
Ground16. Honestly, it goes back to Bowie for me. By the mid-70s, he was in a dark place in LA, deep in cocaine, and getting out of it took him years. The big thing for me is that he just never stopped creating his whole life. He kept reinventing himself, kept making new stuff right up to the end. He even put out Blackstar a few days before he died. I really think that’s what carried him, the constant making. It gave him a way to step back from the dark times, to put some distance between himself and them, and in the end, I think it let him build a good, settled life. That’s what I want.
AC. If you could go back to any club, with any DJ playing, at any point in history, which would it be and why?
Ground16. Instead of going somewhere I was never at, I’d go back to a night I actually lived: the Ilian Tape showcase at Ankali in Prague, February 2018. Skee Mask played, and the set was incredible, relentless. Ankali’s a small, intimate room. The crowd was there for the right reasons, and everything clicked. Great people, great music, no pretension. That’s a night I would do again.
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Follow Ground16 on SoundCloud and Instagram and get his new vinyl release Breaking Through from A.2AUM at SEVEN’s online shop or at the SEVEN Community Record Store in Berlin-Mitte.
Alexander Cheves is an author and essayist exploring sex, culture, art, and music. Winner of the Geoff Mains Prize and an NLGJA journalism award, he can usually be found dancing shirtless in Berlin or working on his next book.
Images by Mara Menzel and GRAIN (@grain_prod).
