Every weekday we ask one of the hottest names in dance music 5 probing questions and get them to tell us their current Top 5 tunes. Then we post a new one here every day at 5pm UK time. How nice of us!

Germany’s Gregor Tresher first made a name for himself in Electro circles long before the genre was adopted by the ‘next big thing’ brigade.

Now he’s busy turning out exemplary cuts that could happily be called Techno, Electro or - dare we even say it - Minimal. However Gregor isn’t simply following the latest trendy musical bandwagon, as his releases on Great Stuff, Cocoon and Datapunk earned him recognition as Best Producer 2007 from German dance bible Raveline.

His debut artist LP, A Thousand Nights, has just dropped so we caught up with him to find out how he manages to stay at the crest of the musical wave…

What influences you when you are making records?

“I find it very important to be out in the clubs and listen to new music a lot, this is one of my main influences. Of course, I’m influenced by all kinds of different music ranging from electronica to pop, whether from the past or current music.”

Which clubs do you think are the best in the world right now?


“My favorite clubs right now are Watergate in Berlin and Fabric in London. Cocoonclub in Frankfurt is also very good and well worth a visit.”

The sort of techno/electro you make has become very popular in more mainstream clubland recently – how do you think this has effected the music?

“Well, my sound changed over the last two years into a slightly different direction, I’m not into so-called Electro at all at the moment, especially not the kind of “Electrohouse” everyone´s talking about. I like Detroit Techno very much right now and there’s a lot of great new music coming from that direction.”

We hear you are moving into playing live too, how is it going and what do hope to gain from the experience?

“I’ve only played three live gigs so far, which were all very good. I’m really enjoying playing live, but I want to keep it quite special and will only play live for special occasions. I’m planning not to play more often than just a few times a year. Playing live is completely different from DJing, especially since you can´t really react to the crowd due to the limitation of tracks.”

What else are you up to in the coming months?

“In a few weeks there will be a remix 12 inch release from my album A Thousand Nights with remixes by Dubfire and Extrawelt. Then there will be a new 12 inch release on German label Moon Harbour Recordings in March, called Break New Soil. I just did a remix for Dubfire’s new label Sci+Tec for an artist from South America called Delete, and I’m working on a few other things right now, I’m planning to do lots of new music in 2008…”

Gregor’s Current Top 5

1. Ripperton - Zugunruhe (Daniel Stefanik Remix) - Connaisseur Superieur
2. Gregor Tresher - Black Rain (LP Version) - Great Stuff Recordings
3. Haito & Diringer - Perception (Simon Baker Remix) - Kickboxer
4. GTMK - Panchakarma - Intacto
5. Audio Soul Project - Taking Shape (Samuel L Session Remix Part 2) - Systematic

(Interview: Tom Kihl)