Giegling Co-Founder Responds to Article Alleging He Made Sexist Remarks

Update [June 22 2017, 11.20 AM]: London's Sunfall festival announced that it has removed Giegling from its bill following the allegations of Konstantin's sexist remarks about female DJs.

Konstantin, co-founder of the German collective and label Giegling, has been called out in an article in Groove Magazine for allegedly making sexist remarks about female electronic musicians.

In the latest issue of the publication, journalist Laura Aha paraphrased a conversation she had with Konstantin in which "an irrelevant anecdote unraveled into a quite unexpected discussion about feminism in general and explicitly women in electronic music," according to a translated version of the piece which THUMP has verified with a native German speaker.

In the article—a profile on the Giegling label—Aha recounted that Konstantin said he "finds it unfair that female DJs are so heavily promoted, although they are in his opinion usually worse at DJing than men are." She went on to describe how Konstantin said that women seeking a career in the electronic music industry "must lose their 'female qualities' and become 'manly.'" Aha—who has also contributed to THUMP Germany—declined THUMP's request for comment.

Konstantin and Giegling also declined THUMP's request for comment, but in a statement made to Resident Advisor today, Konstantin said his comments to Groove were taken out of context: "These words are not a direct quote and are in my opinion misleading. I actually learned to DJ from my friend Sarah and of course I don't think women are worse DJs than men."

He went to say that he "completely regret[s] what was said in that private conversation with the journalist," and that she did not "appreciate [his] bad sense of humour."

After the translated portion of the Groove profile surfaced online, a number of female producers and DJs have come forward with accounts of Konstantin making similarly off-color remarks.

The Black Madonna tweeted about a recent encounter between the two of them in which she said Konstantin said to her: "You're a feminist? You might not want be near me. I'm a chauvinist."

The all-female collective Discwoman also tweeted a screenshot of the most troublesome portion of the profile, adding that "Konstantin has said this verbatim to our face."

Aha also wrote in the profile that she reached out to Konstantin's fellow Giegling members, Dustin and Frauke, to confront them with his alleged remarks. They confirmed to have already been aware of his viewpoints. "Both then assured me that this explicitly is a single person's opinion", the article said. According to Dustin and Frauke, all the remaining members of the label unanimously distanced themselves from any sexist viewpoints.

Konstantin—also known as Mr. Koreander and as part of Kettenkarussell—is scheduled to play Melt! Festival, the Freqs of Nature, and Cocoon Ibiza this summer. He has often performed in clubs such as Berghain and Bassiani in Tbilisi, which are known for fostering equality in the DJ scene.