By Alexander Cheves
The dog wants to join us on the sofa. HUGH K, perhaps better known as Triplescorpio, pauses mid-sentence to lift the dog (named Rufus), and for a minute the interview stops so they can cuddle a bit.
It’s my favourite moment with HUGH K, a Ghanaian-German DJ and producer based in Berlin with many aliases and sounds, who connected with me via BCCO, the Berlin techno label and platform behind the city’s cutting-edge New Faces mix series. BCCO is a big friend of SEVEN, the music label that runs Hinterhaus.
HUGH K has a long list of passions, and in this chat, we cover them all: astrology, psychology, alternate futures, and dogs.
Over the last five years, HUGH K’s music has evolved from bludgeoningly hard techno to a sound he describes as groovier, more playful. He releases music under HUGH K now, though FUCKHUGHMAN (his Instagram handle) and Triplescorpio, an alias he isn’t quite ready to retire, are still parts of his artist profile.
Last April, he delivered a mix for PORNCEPTUAL‘s PRNCAST series. The mix “experiments with new genres and moves beyond the usual comfort zone,” built on “risk, variation and surprise,” a mission that could describe most of HUGH K’s life so far.
Tell me about your artist names.
I ask him which one is the primary one I should use, and what do the others mean?
“HUGH K is just me,” he says.
“I’m just doing me, and I’m trying to keep on doing me.”
FUCKHUGHMAN was the second name, which he adopted when he stopped fully identifying with his first artist name, Triplescorpio.
“I had a time where I was not really identifying anymore with Triplescorpio. So I was like, okay, what’s more than Triplescorpio, what’s me? And I was like, okay, FUCKHUGHMAN. It was cute for a while.”
Triplescorpio isn’t fully gone. “I will keep on being Triplescorpio. It’s still a part of me, and I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to keep on doing it. I haven’t ended it yet. It’s an alias.”
The name has a story. “I started finding out about my zodiac sign. I started diving into this astrological universe. I’m very curious about finding out what people believe in. And I found out I was a triplescorpio. And I was like, that’s so cool!”
A triplescorpio, he explains, is someone whose sun, moon, and rising signs all land on the same sign, a rare enough alignment that it felt like a message, something to stake his brand on.
He explains: “Zodiac signs are based on three planetary signs that represent different things about you. The moon is your inner self, your feelings, and rising is how people perceive you, how you look to people. The sun sign is what you actually are. Finding out that all three were the same for me was pretty special.”
“I thought, wow, I am a Scorpio, I look like a Scorpio, and I feel like a Scorpio.”
Then he checked with his birth certificate.
“My mom always told us all of my siblings and I were born at the same time and minute, and we were like, wow, that’s special because she had a C-section. So I thought, okay, maybe she planned everything, because my mom is very organised like that. Every one of our names starts with an H, for example, my sisters and siblings, like her. So I was like, okay, that sounds legendary, and my mom is legendary. But then we found my birth certificate, and my mom was not exactly right. All of us were born at different times, and it turned out that I’m a double Scorpio in Aries.”
How did that feel? “That was so embarrassing,” he says, laughing. “It was a weird moment for me, because I was like, okay, now I’m a DJ, but why would I be playing as Triplescorpio?”
What does it mean to learn you are not the zodiac profile you thought you were?
It’s a bit wild to me, since I don’t believe in the zodiac. But HUGH K does, and because of this discovery, “I can’t a hundred per cent connect to that name anymore, though it’s still part of me.”
Why does it matter? He explains that he puts less stock in the stars themselves than in how they can be used as tools for self-analysis.
“The perception of self is so precious. I have an idea of myself now, and I don’t know if I want new information to alter it much. The perception of self is something we spend our whole lives trying to develop and protect.”
That’s why the zodiac matters, he says. “That’s important.”
Can you tell me about your work outside of music?
Off the decks, HUGH K works as a set manager on fashion and advertising shoots.
“Set managers manage everything around the equipment on set. From the production side, for example, if we’re shooting outside, we’ll need a tent, we’ll need benches and tables. Where’s the catering going to go? Do we have parking spots? It’s a lot of moving parts, a lot of organisation.”
I tell him it sounds very stressful. He says it’s not so bad.
“I’m a neurodivergent person, I have ADHD. I think it goes with the territory. To make it as any kind of creative, you have to be wired a little differently.”
“There are a lot of things in my life which are very chaotic, but then it fulfils me if I have tasks to build structure inside of them. In my mind, so many things are going on at the same time, but I can compensate for all of it by managing and structuring things.”
The same instinct, he says, shapes his work in DJing and production. But before music, he had planned on a future in psychology.
“I love analysing people and social interactions, and coming into this job, there’s a lot of social interaction. It’s connecting with the crowd, playing music, and imagining how my music will make them feel, what kind of things they are going through in their lives. I feel like it influences how I play and how I interact with people.”
He connects these same instincts to his work as an occasional door selector at a major club in Berlin (for privacy, he requested it not be named). “They influence the way I interact with people at the door, when I let them in, or when I don’t.”
How did you start in music?
He grew up musically minded, inspired by his family.
“My brother-in-law was DJing back then, at home, just in his room. I admired him, always looking and watching. It was very interesting to me, because I felt this connection to his creativity, but not only to creativity, also listening to the music, to dancing.”
His grandfather, too, was a musician, and his mother toured with him when she was younger.
“My brother-in-law was an icon to me. His making music was always so fascinating for me. One day I told him that I also wanted to do it. He is a big supporter of people teaching themselves, but he gave me some basic knowledge, what I needed, what I had to do, and how to find more information. He bought me a Virtual DJ for Windows XP. This is the entry-level DJ mixing software many self-taught DJs cut their teeth on before graduating to professional tools like Serato or Rekordbox. I started working on it at home.”
So you’ve been making music since childhood, since your brother-in-law taught you?
Not quite. The passion dimmed, but “five years ago, Corona happened.” The lockdown was the pause he needed.
“It was kind of a blessing. The world stood still, nothing moved anymore, and I was like, okay, I can take my time, stay at home, and do whatever I wanted to do. This is where everything started. I started painting again. I started DJing, and also started modelling. I started so many things at the same time. It was a creative burst.”
His music production began with a sound that was hard and fast.
“I was new in Berlin, so everything for me was like, okay, let’s decimate people on the dancefloor. In die Fresse, I would say. Right into the face.”
His sound has changed since then.
“All my friends are DJs, and they all started with the really hard stuff, and they’ve all moved away from that. I have too. I feel like it has to do with the scene changing. Everything grew, but in a nice way. I’m much more groovy now, and everything is much more bouncy. It was influencing everyone in the scene. Even if it’s hard, it got more groovy. Berlin house music got much more groovy.”
He realised his music was reaching people when BCCO invited him to record a set for their mix series.
“BCCO is a platform I deeply admired, even before I started DJing. BCCO is so cool. I played a party in Berlin one time, and then, all of a sudden, I got the invitation from BCCO to do a set for them. It was so nice to be acknowledged as a DJ by this nice and huge group, this community of music makers and listeners.”
BCCO is one of the biggest electronic music platforms in Europe, based right here in Berlin.
What does your family think about your work in music?
“My mom is a weird mix of trying to be conservative but also trying to be modern. She brought up four children in a Western country and tried to integrate as far and well as possible.”
Now, he says, his mother “fully supports” his music, even if its genre isn’t fully to her taste.
“My mom was also in the music industry, the performance industry. My grandpa is a musician, and she would travel with their band and even perform with them on tour. So with the genre, I don’t think she has anything against it. She supports me as much as she can.”
What else drives your passion?
Outside music, there’s a lot HUGH K loves. He answers with a list.
“My hobbies include sports and the gym. I like moving. I love taking care of my dog. I love fashion. I love music. I love painting, drawing, creating. I have strong opinions on interior design. And learning languages is one of my top priorities.”
He counts eight languages he can have a confident conversation in, with a ninth underway. He is fluent in English, German, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, alongside a few languages tied to his family’s Ghanaian heritage.
“I love so many things,” he says, then adds:
“This is ADHD. I try to do everything. I love set managing and I love DJing. I’m loving all the other stuff I do. I want to do everything at the same time.”
Near the end of our chat, only half joking, he sketches an alternate future for himself if working in clubs ever starts to feel stale.
“I’ll become a psychologist. I’ll have my family, children, a house. It’ll be this conservative life, quiet life, this soft life where I have my car and my dog. I’ll have a big car, a family. And who knows, it can still happen!”
I tell him this possible future sounds very warm and nice, and I say there’s no rule saying he can’t do it and still keep a hand in music.
He nods, and I realise this dream is less of a plan than a place he lets himself visit, something akin to how the name Triplescorpio never retired: a current in him still humming along as the music producer in him, HUGH K, makes increasingly groovy beats. ★
Listen to HUGH K / Triplescorpio on SoundCloud and follow him on Instagram.
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. Follow him on Instagram and visit his site.
