German DJ Ben Böhmer spoke to 's Ramsen Shamon in his trailer before closing out Lollapalooza. The former city kid shared his album inspiration and how his music, earning well above 50 million streams, is a safe space for his fans to process their emotions. His upcoming album, , will be released on Sept.
27. A_I'm feeling very excited, very nervous actually. [That] didn't happen often that I close a festival, [on] stage here on a multi-genre festival.
So it's a big honor, and very exciting. There are some rituals [that] I like to do. Meditating is one part of it.
But the one thing I always do with my crew—we have a playlist of songs from the 2000s, plus or minus, and there's one song called from TLC. And this is the go to song to get hyped and in the mood. And we all sing it together.
And this is literally the last thing [I do] before I go on stage. I think I played already six shows here. I never really had time to discover the city.
Until today! And I went to Lake Michigan. And there's a beach in the middle of the city, which is really beautiful. It was the highlight from a perfect touring day.
It's in some ways overwhelming and really amazing to see that so many people like my music. But it's also at the same time confusing because it's a big number. You cannot really see that, but once you see people [while] doing concerts, crying, or smiling, or dancing, this is where it gets, like visible, you know? And this is very, very beautiful.
It's the most beautiful thing, really—playing concerts and making people happy, or giving them space to live their emotions. This is why musicians do that. It's beautiful.
It's very nature inspired. I was always a city kid, and was always living in cities, but after all these years of heavy touring, I found myself in lots of nature places. And I wrote part of the album in a mountain house in Italy—northern Italy—like very isolated.
So it's a very calm, but in the same way, also diverse album, and having nature as inspiration was very helpful. One and a half years. I live in Berlin, and there is the Tiergarten, where I live close by.
It's a very beautiful park with lots of little lakes and bridges, and surprisingly, this is a park which is always not that packed, and I really like to spend time there. In the beginning of the '20s, when I moved to Berlin, I was actually 17. This was such an amazing playground with all the freedom you can imagine, especially in the electronic music world and in the club scene.
I never experienced a similar club scene anywhere else on this planet. There's just lots of acceptance and freedom, which is the most beautiful thing. And you can really, really play around and find yourself and find what you like and where you belong in some ways.
Emotional. Indie. Dance.
Hans Zimmer is an incredible producer, but I also love to listen to soundtracks. [It's] just beautifully made. I have a studio, but for this album, I produced it partly in nature.
I built a home studio. And I really like that, to just wake up and the first thing you do is working on music. This was also really helping the album.
Fifteen years ago, I did an internship at a place where they build and repair pianos, and it was a really fun thing to do and just beautiful work. I also like to do things with my hands and do something with wood and build something—create something. This is something I would probably do.
Since 2018, I'm playing every year in India. This is a country where it just has a beautiful celebration culture, and the shows there are just amazing. And always unforgettable.
This is probably the place where I really enjoy playing. My favorite German word is . It's the fan above the stove.
Just a beautiful word..
