Ellen Fraatz, known professionally as Ellen Allien, is a German electronic musician, music producer, and the founder of BPitch Controlmusic label. Her album Stadtkind was dedicated to the city ofBerlin, and she cites the culture of reunified Berlin as one of the main inspirations for her music. She sings in both German and English. Her music is best described as a blend of IDM and Techno music, which is dance-floor oriented and has noticeable experimental elements. She lives in Berlin.
History
Ellen Allien was born and grew up in West Berlin. During 1989, she lived in London where she first came into contact with electronic music. When she later returned to Berlin, electronic music had become increasingly popular in Germany. In 1992, she became resident DJ at the Bunker, Tresor, and E-Werk. She started her own show on the Berlin radio stationKiss FM and created her own record label, calling them both "Braincandy". Due to problems with distribution, she gave the Braincandy label up in 1997 and instead began organizing parties with the name, "Pitch Control". Allien created the label BPitch Control in 1999. She released her first album, Stadtkind, in 2001, and her second album, Berlinette, in 2003. In 2005, after releasing the albumThrills, Allien created a BPitch sublabel called "Memo Musik" for minimal tech and minimal house. Orchestra of Bubbles, a collaboration with Apparat, was released in 2006. During the same year, Allien launched her own fashion line, "Ellen Allien Fashion". After the minimalistic Sool in 2008, she released her fifth solo album, Dust, in 2010. Allien made a brief appearance in the 2009 electronic music documentary Speaking In Code. Then she worked on the music for the dance performance "Drama Per Musica", which has been premiered in Paris in March 2011 under the direction of Alexandre Roccoli and Sevérine Rième. The accompanying album "LISm" was released in 2013 and, like her DJ sets, unites different musical styles into a homogenous whole. Also the successor "Nost" sets on variety, however within the electronic spectrum. Thus she returns to her technoid underground roots and stays true to her dancefloor principles after about three decades. In 2019 Ellen Allien launched her UFO Inc. label with an EP that features the epic »UFO« which has been on heavy rotation in her DJ sets all summer long. Between »UFO« and the hard-hitting Berlin acid belter »Körpermaschine« on the flipside, the »UFO« EP perfectly captures the energetic hardware sound of Allien’s new imprint, which will be dedicated to a rough and raw approach to techno. Ellen Allien holds residencies in the clubs Nitsa, Barcelona and Circoloco at DC10, Ibiza and is a regular in clubs such as Madrid’s Mondo. She started her already infamous bi-monthly 'We Are Not Alone' raves at Griessmühle in her beloved and vibrant native town Berlin that will guest in other cities around the globe too – just as her in-store record shop happenings under the name Vinylism. You will find her frequently performing festivals i. e. Germany’s MELT, N.A.M.E. Festival in France.
