By Alexander Cheves
“I have no idea what’s happening right now,” Pink Concrete says, smiling, moments after sitting down with me at the Hinterhaus office in Berlin-Mitte. “But I’m ready!”
Bending forward, he asks, “Are you going to be asking me really, really hard questions?”
He’s upbeat, playful, but—like many artists—a little wary of interviews. Yes, I say. I tell him we’ll ask questions like: What is the meaning of life? Does anything matter? What’s art?
“Oh, that doesn’t scare me,” he says, laughing. “Nothing matters.”
After introductions, he shares what does matter to him—history. He’s a history nerd. He loves reading about details of human life from centuries past. His real name is Yelen Yücel. Pronouns: he/him. Boundaries?
“I have zero boundaries.”
What is Pink Concrete?
Pink Concrete is a DJ and producer working primarily in techno. He says he adds “pink touches to concrete music,” hence the name. This can be seen in his production and style of mixing—he likes adding light-hearted, melodic elements to fast techno, which he says is “a little too serious sometimes.”
His work traverses a range of styles and emotions, and he admits that, along with joy, there’s always a hint of sadness in his sets, too.
“You can’t have one without the other. Joy and sadness. That’s my music. And that’s life.”
Born in Istanbul, Pink Concrete’s passion for music started in high school, where he began his education in music production. In 2015, he moved to Prague, where he has stayed ever since. The underground music scene in Prague is full of life, energy, and creativity, he says. It feeds his work and his passion.
Aside from his work as a DJ and producer—with sets in major clubs across Europe and regular appearances in Berlin—his contributions to the Prague scene include a club night called Anormal (follow his IG for updates), and hereandthere, which he describes as “overnight happenings”—a rush of sound, light, and art in temporary, one-night locations. (Below, listen to a Pink Concrete set from an Anormal club night in 2021.)
Any other aliases?
No, “Just the one,” he says, which launches us into a discussion on aliases—he believes the era of multiple DJ names is coming to an end.
“In 2026, I don’t think there are as many artists doing multiple aliases. That era is ending. Listeners are getting tired of that.”
He brings up Dutch DJ Sterac as an example of an older model and says that, in the past, aliases helped an artist release more music on more labels, which offered a real financial incentive to have multiple aliases. But “These days it’s about persona,” he says. “Artists don’t have so many aliases now because listeners care more about the person behind the music. I think Instagram has something to do with that.”
He describes the economics of that shift. “Your main income these days as a musician is performance rather than product. Streaming has dropped the value of the product, so you have to sell the persona.”
What are days off like?
Pink Concrete is a big reader. “Besides books, I love sports,” he says. “I love basketball. And I really love organising big dinners with friends. The bigger the group, the better.”
Let’s talk about your approach to music.
When I ask for specifics, he states his mission again: he adds “soft touches” to techno—lightness and playfulness to rough, fast music. “I love techno,” he says. “It’s my heart. I am a techno artist, and I’ve been playing techno for quite some time. It’s been ten years.”
He’s nostalgic for the techno he grew up with: “It was more emotional,” he says. “Around the 2010s, techno was more melodic or more feeling-based, but now, it’s more fast-paced and less emotional. It was dark and melancholic, but always emotional,” he says. “That kind of techno drove me to explore my feelings in music.”
How did you start DJing?
The passion began in school, and his first time DJing felt like a rite of passage.
“I studied in a boarding school from ten to nineteen,” he says. “At the end of each year, there was a school dance for all the kids. The younger you were, the less time you had—you had to leave earlier than older kids. The older you got, the longer you could stay. An upperclassman was always the DJ and played for everyone.”
“I waited through school, got through the years, just to be the DJ at the school dance. I looked forward to it so much, and when I finally did it, I knew it was my calling.”
Laughing, he says that first experience was the equivalent of being a “human jukebox.”
“Kids came up and asked for the most popular songs. I had to play them.” The tech was crude, basic: “It was just mixing with a computer. No real equipment. Even so, that started the fire.”
Did anyone inspire you?
At a young age, he tried producing with help from a teacher.
“I was lucky that one of my music teachers knew how to use FL Studio. I was in the eighth grade,” he says. “He gave me examples and showed me what to do. I learned how to make a beat. From him, I learned the basic structure of how to create electronic music. I owe him everything.”
Tell me about life in Istanbul.
Growing up, there was real pressure to get what he calls “practical degrees” and “real jobs.”
“In Turkey, I studied at a good, respectable high school,” he says. “In Turkey, if you don’t study medicine or engineering, your education is deemed a bit of a waste in people’s minds. It’s just a general idea in the public. An education in a creative career is not valued as much because there’s not much funding. There is not much cultural importance attributed to those jobs. There are not many great professors.”
Thankfully, he had strong math and physics scores, so he tried engineering—and felt trapped by it.
“I got into engineering school and realised it’s not what I want,” he says. “I went to school, and the first class was 400 people with one teacher lecturing far away at the front of the room.”
It just felt wrong. “I wanted something personal and intimate; I wanted to learn a craft.”
He pivoted to sports management—a field he says the culture in Turkey also did not invest much in. There was no course of study in sports management at his university, so he knew he’d have to switch schools.
“I wanted to manage sports teams,” he says. “I told my mom I would graduate from college, but it would be at a different school.”
He found three options abroad: schools in Amsterdam, Helsinki, and Prague.
“I missed the application for Amsterdam,” he says. “And I decided Helsinki was too cold. So I moved to Prague.”
Why did you want to manage sports teams?
He shrugs. “It’s been a dream all my life. And honestly, I haven’t let that dream fully die yet.”
“I’ve wondered if I could manage a professional athlete and be a DJ, or even manage a team and still work in music. Sports managament is still a big passion. I still have contacts in that world. Always have a Plan B.”
How did you start DJing professionally?
In Prague, the DIY music scene stole his heart.
In Prague, the availability of good, cheap spaces—weird, temporary, and old spaces—makes the city a treasure trove of good DIY music events, with minimal regulation and so much freedom.
“When I moved to Prague, the scene opened my eyes. In Istanbul, I went out a lot, but it was never raw like Prague.”
In Istanbul, nightlife seemed “oversaturated with investments and everyone getting a cut of something,” he says. “Nightlife was very commercial—small, experimental events just couldn’t happen. To make anything happen, you had to give cuts to so many people. DIY just wasn’t possible.”
In Prague, “DIY boomed.”
“In Prague, I could rent a spot or throw wild off-location raves, forest raves, raves in warehouses and bunkers. No rules. It was just wild.”
“I’ve been to parties in old World War II bunkers. An amazing party was in the basement of the law school of the biggest university in the Czech Republic.”
Is Prague nightlife still great?
Perhaps inevitably, he says, the scene has changed over his years there—as all cities have. “It has become more professional,” he says.
He offers an example of this. “I threw a party in 2019, close to the city centre. I rented the space, with everything included, just for 700 euros. Last year, I had a chance to talk with the new landlords, and they asked for 4000 euros for the same space.”
Musing on the state of nightlife, he says, “It’s happened in Berlin, too, of course,” he says. “Now Prague. It’s hard to find good, unique spaces now.”
What do your parents think?
They are, now, very supportive. “They love it,” he says.
“My mom came to hear me in Berghain. My stepdad too. Friends came from Istanbul, and they hung out with my parents, all doing shots in the bar. It was amazing to see my mom dancing in front of the Berghain DJ booth.”
That Berghain set happened last January—one of the best moments of his career so far. It made him feel a real sense of his parents’ trust.
“Mom trusts me. She knows I’m not going to get lost. When I tell her this is my path, she tells me to be brave and go for it.”
Tell me more about your events.
He runs many projects: hereandthere, Anormal, and occasionally a club night, Pinkies.
He says there’s a crucial distinction between club nights and off-location events—both have their charms and struggles.
“When you do club nights, it’s easier,” he says. “You don’t need to build a sound system, build bars, or clean the place.”
Club nights are harder in other ways. “It’s harder to promote because you have to compete with people doing it every week,” he says. “So what are you going to offer extra to convince them to come to the same club?”
Hereandthere aims to be that “extra”—an environment, a world.
“For hereandthere, we start Saturday during the day and end on Sunday morning,” he says. First, they have to find a venue. “Hardest part of the job.” Then they build the space with trusted collaborators.
“We go there with friends who are light artists and scenographers,” he says. “We brainstorm what’s possible and try to find rooms where people can go, get lost, or just chill.”
“It’s a lot of work. We make no money, but we love it. And that’s the point. You have to love it.”
What counts as success?
“Success is early morning, surrounded by music, having so much fun. The feeling of community. That’s success.”
“That’s the reward. It’s beautiful when it happens.”
Any life tips?
The journey of growing up, for him, has been building habits to keep him steady.
“I haven’t perfected the organisation part of life, but I try to be physically active every day, and that helps everything else fall into place.”
“I wake up every day at more or less the same time and go to the gym immediately.” His big tip for anyone building a career in nightlife: Schedule time in focused blocks with breaks in between.
“I have specific days that I answer emails. On those days, I answer emails. Other days, I do not. Emails are not something you need to do every day.”
“I have specific days for making music,” he says. “Even if I just end up putting an hour into it, that hour is fully dedicated to making music.”
He even schedules reading blocks, which he says are just as important as other items on his calendar. “At one point, I realised I’m reading less than I used to. I didn’t like that. That isn’t the person I want to be.”
“Instead of scrolling on my phone, I decided to schedule reading time every morning. If you want to start a good habit, I recommend this for everyone. Even if it’s just fifteen minutes.”
Inspired by him, his mom is making that shift.
“My mom used to read so many books,” he says. “She taught me a love of reading. Lately, I just see her on her phone. She used to read a book a week, but she told me she now reads fewer than ten books a year, all because of the phone. We both decided she should change this.”
What do you miss from Istanbul?
Food and community. “I miss the social aspect of my culture. You know everybody in the neighbourhood. The people you buy stuff from, you develop a relationship with them.” Prague is different.
“In Prague, I’ll go to the same bakery every day, and they act like it’s the first time they’ve seen me. But that’s Prague.”
Then the big questions come back—not as jokes, but as real issues for anyone making art now.
Let’s talk about growth.
He talks about how, in his early 20s, he carried a kind of moral electricity—and that changed.
“In your twenties, you want to change things. You want a revolution. That moral clarity requires naivety, but it’s also very powerful. It’s how great movements happen. To do anything important, you have to be a little naive.”
Something is lost in growing up, he says.
“As you become self-aware, you learn that it’s likely that you won’t change much. It’s funny how you need some delusion to impact the world.”
Musing on, he says that “In ten years, I know I won’t think how I think now. Once, I thought I would always think how I did in my twenties. You have to change your mind. That’s growing up.”
For him, this shift creates a classic artist crisis.
“Once I learned how shitty everything is and nothing matters, I struggled to create. If nothing matters and nothing is going to change and this is just the same loop of history over and over, why make anything new?”
But he arrived at a solution, and admits it might sound like naïve optimism—as perhaps it must. It’s a sense of responsibility to the future. He calls this the “mysterious human drive to build things that last beyond one’s own lifespan.”
“You have to believe that you will leave something behind. It can be music, it can be a building, whatever. But you have to leave something for the next generations.”
Interestingly, he did not arrive at this idea from making music, but from his reading passion—studying history. He believes this is the prime human drive.
“You know you will die in fifty years, so you want to make the best of whatever it is you do so it can live on. This is being human. And this drives me.”
He admits how philosophical this conversation has turned—and laughs. “Well, think about it! That’s why we have these insane churches, insane buildings. On a fundamental level, this is what makes us happy. This is why we try to be good at what we do.”
What do you want to leave behind?
“I teach,” he says. He gives DJ classes and production classes, and he’s so impressed by the talent of his students.
“They don’t have to explore music and DJing the way I went through it,” he says. “They can use my knowledge and do it better than I did.”
He teaches DJing once a year as a four-week course. “I give the fundamentals,” he says. “Technical DJing skills, how to approach this work professionally, the history of electronic music, the history of DJing.”
With some, he helps beyond the course. “I help them when they are growing,” he says. “I tell them how to start collectives, how to raise money.” Outside formal classes, he has many artists whom he mentors with shared studio time, feedback, and one-on-one attention.
Let’s talk about MONO Bar.
There’s a lot coming up: parties, releases, and a new EP in the summer. But the biggest news: he’s opening a listening bar in Prague called MONO Bar.
“I found a unique venue with a friend. It’s almost done. The bar is being built. The sound is almost done.” He shares detail shots of the interior and says we’re among the first to see them—below.
At MONO Bar, selectors will be able to play music that doesn’t necessarily belong on a dance floor, but still deserves serious listening.
What music will MONO Bar showcase?
It’ll be open, a wide range—he’ll fully trust selectors. “If you want to play jazz, play it,” he says. “If you want pop, do pop.”
He’s aiming to open it soon. “Hopefully by the end of February or beginning of March.”
In the beginning, he says, it’ll just be open on limited nights to see how the city responds.
“At first, we’ll just open on Thursday, Friday and Saturday,” he says. “We want to see the reaction.”
“I have friends who can do well in a listening bar. They have great taste.” Shaking his head, wrapping this talk up gently, he adds that this is a perk of running events, making music, and being Pink Concrete: the people he knows and meets.
“It’s the best part,” he says. “I have the sexiest, most insanely talented friends.”
Words: Alexander Cheves
Images: Mara Menzel with photos provided by Pink Concrete
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.
