Times are good for Berlin double-act Trickski. Longtime collaborators and friends Yannick Labbé and Daniel Becker will soon unveil an artist album which, on the strength of their past releases, could rank as one of 2011’s best.

Having made their name on Sonar Kollektiv (their 2005 compilation Members Of The Trick is still a gold-mine), the duo is now aligned with tastemaking UK label Delusions Of Grandeur and Suol, the stable overseen by Johnjon & Chopstick in Berlin. This weekend sees Daniel travel down this way to represent Trickski at a couple of club shows, so we checked in with the house specialists.

So, the big news for Trickski is that you’ve got an album coming on Suol. How close to completion is it?
We are very close to finishing the album, even though we still need to do some work. The playlist needs to get finalised and the mixdown and mastering of the album is still due. But all the tracks are there, which makes us very happy. Ah, also the artwork still needs to be done – we do that ourselves as well, like on the MOTT series on Sonar Kollektiv.

Is it daunting to structure an album? Do you want it to span a whole range of moods?
Yes and no. We had about three parts of an album in tracks lying around for quite some time, but we did not find a way to put them together. So it is very important to structure things well. On one side we wanna show a variety of moods and styles, on the other hand it is not supposed to be ‘kraut und rüben’, a German expression for a wild mixture that doesn’t make sense.

I think we found a good way to do both: we present different moods, feelings, attitudes and styles and combine it in a way that does not feel random. A trademark sound is still very important and present, I guess… I hope? Seriously, I think we have a unique sound, even though we produced music in pretty different styles and tempi in the past. I am really happy about taking that freedom and still achieve to sound recognisable.

Both Point O and Pill Collins on your After & Before EP have that real enveloping warmth to them. Is it a ‘warm’ sound that you look for?
Hmm. In a way, yes. We need to feel it. They can be dark, they can be deep, sometimes they can even be happy or a bit tacky. But we need to feel a certain warmth to give them a ‘go’ instead of sending them to the trash can. So in a way we are not consciously looking for that certain warm sound, but we need to feel it.

There is not such a situation when we say, “Hmmm, this is not warm enough” or “how can we make it warmer?” Tracks can be very rough, hard and even noisy. There is not a single warm ingredient. But in the end, the track still has this warm or rather soulful touch. Soul can be cold, sad or angry and still touching and emotional. So I think I prefer ‘soul’, more in a sense as the opposite of purely functional. Soulful means to us that it comes from the heart and is not necessarily designed to fulfil a certain effect on the dancefloor. There are enough tunes like that. I think and hope that people can feel that, when they hear our music.

In September last year Trickski released the ‘After & Before’ EP on Suol, the label overseen by their Berlin allies Johnjon & Chopstick. ‘Pill Collins’ is a slow and slinky moodsetter that coaxes you to the dancefloor; you can hear it embedded below.

Do you enjoy working with slower BPMs? Does it allow you for more depth in the track?
Yes, we do very much. We feel like there is the most space for ‘music’, or maybe even soul [in slower tracks]. Sometimes we tried to pitch our songs up to make them more ‘appealing’ to the majority of DJs, but somehow they lose the groove, I can not really explain why. Maybe fast tunes can become too dense. There is not enough room between the tones. Sometimes they even fight each other.

Plus we just love that very groovy and sexy vibe of the slow tunes. Sometimes fast tracks lose their sexiness and turn into pure energy, which is also a great thing. But our producers’ heart lies in the ‘slow-lands’. The groove is just different. More booty, more sexy, more soulful. I mean: hip hop is slow as well and people don’t complain about it being too slow.