Friday Mixtape: Benedikt Luft's mix of tunes from his teenage years

Frankfurt-based illustrator and designer Benedikt Luft has been a long time friend of us here at It’s Nice That. Writing about his practice over the years, it wasn’t until we went to Eike König’s After School Club in Benedikt’s home during the summer that he ended up telling us about his love for music. He might have even been dragged into singing a karaoke rendition of The Smiths Bigmouth Strikes Again to an audience of attendees, who then cleared the room, with us too… sorry Eike and everyone who witnessed that.

In light of Benedikt’s work being featured in the new issue of Printed Pages alongside our trip to After School Club, we asked him to make our Friday Mixtape this week. Over to the man himself!

It’s Nice That: Why have you picked these songs?

Benedikt Luft: It’s pretty much a collection of some louder tunes I (still) enjoy these days. Some of the bands have stuck with me since my teen years and I still like to listen to them from time to time. 

INT: When or where should this mixtape be listened to?

BL: Christmas is just around the corner. Grab yourself a hot chocolate and sing along with your family around the Christmas tree.

INT: Are there certain albums you listen to during the different parts of your creative process?

BL: In the process of finding ideas and making sketches, I enjoy the silence around me or something that really doesn’t grab much of my attention, but there’s not a specific genre.

When I’m elaborating my sketches I like listening to something motivating, currently, Todd Terje works for me really well. His music has a really nice flow and the songs are funny in the way they are arranged, but they still don’t need my whole attention to be enjoyable. I also love listening to the African music mixes of the RE:BOOT crew I’m doing most of the graphics for, you should check them out.

INT: What records did you listen to when you were a teenager? 

BL: My father had a really wide-ranging and modern music taste, so as a kid I grew up with Fatboy Slim, Jamiroquai and The B-52s.

The first record I bought on my own was Willenium (what an album title! Haha) by Will Smith when I was around 11 if I remember right. Pretty much because I loved The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Two years later a classmate bought the latest Blink 182 album to school which I listened to on repeat. After this, I jumped into the world of skate-punk and melodic hardcore with bands like NoFX or Satanic Surfers and went to every concert I could go to. Later my music taste opened up and I started to enjoy softer and silly tunes as well.

INT: If a feature film about your life was to be made, what song would be on the trailer and why?

BL: Die Amigos’ Mein Vogelsberg. Simply because of the glamorous band members Bernd and Karl-Heinz and because it’s a Schlager about the area I grew up.