As The Ghost rifled through their record bags, the crowd behind them reached a fever pitch. It was 9 AM, and the UK duo were headlining the first part of their seventh birthday celebrations on board the MS Hoppetosse in Berlin. A short conversation ended with a nod of affirmation, as James Creed proceeded to place a record on the turntable, while Josh Wareham swayed gently to his left. Over the next three hours, they masterfully wove together a selection of ethereal, stripped-back rhythms that keep the dance floor enthralled. The music was dynamic and rousing, with a deep, captivating sense of groove.

The Ghost are known for playing hard-to-find tracks, records you may never hear again, which gives their sets a distinct sense of presence and a blink-and-you'll-miss it urgency. Their mixing is flawless and unobtrusive, leaving room for the tracks to play out in full and giving the duo plenty of time to ponder what to prescribe the crowd next.

As Hoppetosse wound down, most of the crowd meandered over to nearby sister venue Club der Visionaere, where they were greeted by Creed and Wareham once more, now joined behind the decks by close friend DJ Pipe. Blissful cuts of laid-back house welcomed the blend of fresh-faced newcomers and the straight-through crew. The sun was shining, the atmosphere relaxed and The Ghost were in their element. As afternoon turned to evening, all four members of the back-to-back—which now also included Peach—were grinning, taking turns spinning some of the most scintillating records heard all day. There was a sense of celebration as the group rounded off the party together, surrounded by friends, in the first booth where Creed and Wareham were ever billed as The Ghost.

Childhood friends from the UK, James Creed and Josh Wareham started The Ghost in Berlin in 2015 as a mobile record shop.

Childhood friends from the UK, Creed and Wareham started The Ghost in Berlin in 2015 as a mobile record shop that operated out of a Mercedes camper van. The name references the now-you-see-me-now-you-don't transience of a shop on wheels. Thanks to expertly curated racks of records, a sharp resurgence in vinyl culture and something slightly novel about two British lads slinging wax out of a van, The Ghost quickly earned a substantial customer base.

As their reputation as vendors spread, their skills as DJs also began to garner attention, offering them new opportunities to showcase the vinyl treasures they'd kept for themselves. Following years of gigging, The Ghost eventually rose to the forefront of a scene centred around some of the world's most proficient diggers—an echelon of DJ that includes Nicolas Lutz, Evan Baggs and Vera, all of whom were loyal customers of The Ghost from the start.

Amid an increasingly heavy gigging schedule, The Ghost closed their shop in 2022, selling the van and the remainder of their stock. The focus, now, was DJing and running their new label, Ghost Recs. When I met them at a café in Neukölln, I was greeted by two relaxed, friendly characters who exude the self-assurance of artists who are exactly where they deserve to be.

The Ghost are known for playing hard-to-find tracks, records you may never hear again.

What are your earliest memories of DJing and collecting records?

Josh: I was inspired by a friend in the year above me at school who had a set of decks. I started buying dance music when I was 17 at HMV in the Corn Exchange in Cambridge. It was all pretty bad, commercially pressed stuff that I had probably heard on the radio. There was a point when Traktor Scratch came out where I transitioned to digital, but collecting records has been an on and off part of my life since then.

James: My timeline is a bit different. I moved to Berlin in 2008—not a DJ—aged 23 years old. I thought I was too old to start DJing. I was into clubbing, going out every weekend and I was making some not very good house music on my laptop. I landed a job doing bits and bobs for Luca Lozano's label, Klasse Recordings, and really it was him who convinced me to go after it. He sorted me a couple of gigs so naturally I thought I was really good, really quickly. But then I saw Zip close Panorama Bar sometime in 2011—it was a moment of realisation that I had lots to learn. Pretty much immediately after watching him play I got obsessed with buying records, which was around the time Josh moved to Berlin.

JW: "I was inspired by a friend in the year above me at school who had a set of decks."

Where were you before, Josh?

JW: We both moved to Leeds for university, but James left after two years. I stayed there running a party called Louche and playing as a resident, but not really getting booked elsewhere.

JC: I remember going to Josh's nights and standing on the dance floor wanting to get involved, but not even considering it a possibility, as I knew he'd already been DJing for years by that point.

As The Ghost's reputation as vendors spread, their skills as DJs also began to garner attention, offering them new opportunities to showcase the vinyl treasures they'd kept for themselves.

So it was in Berlin where things really came together?

JC: There was a close group of us all going out, digging and playing tunes for each other. We were regulars at Club der Visionaere, Hoppetosse and Get Perlonized! for years, and that was the period in which the foundations for The Ghost were laid.

JW: I ought to mention Chalet, a club in Kreuzberg that I did the bookings for around the same time. I used to be able to book any of my mates on any given weekend to play in Room 2, which gave us an opportunity to express ourselves musically in somewhere other than each other's bedrooms. There were a lot of moments there—it was the first place we ever played back-to-back.

Was it also a pivotal time in regards to digging for records?

JC: Knowing that you were gonna go to a crack on and you'd found a new tune that all of your mates were gonna love meant a lot back then. I guess there was some sort of mid-20s boyish ego thing going on.

JW: We were quite private about finding tunes but I guess we were all simultaneously getting better at using Discogs. Apart from weekly visits to the old Record Loft, most of our digging was done online. It wasn't until we opened the shop that that changed.

JW: "When you hear a track that sounds like something you've never heard before, that's a special feeling and it doesn't come around that often."

Where do you go to find music nowadays?

JC: I try to get into stores as much as possible. I used to be very Discogs-heavy but I enjoy digging in person a lot more now. It's nice to know what you're listening to rather than taking gambles on buying stuff you can't hear. I like not having any data in front of me to cloud my opinion.

JW: I'm on Bandcamp more than I've ever been before. Not that it's particularly fruitful, but I've been enjoying snooping around.

JC: "Nowadays I have a deeper appreciation for the context in which the music was made. I've become less critical of small details and I try to respect the tunes for what they are."

Have your tastes changed much since the early days of the shop?

JC: Definitely. When I think back to the very first collection we bought, we only held on to about 500 out of 10,000 records for the van. We had fairly strict rules for vetoing records. Anything with a vocal would be disregarded which, in retrospect, means we missed out on a bunch of great stuff. Nowadays I have a deeper appreciation for the context in which the music was made. I've become less critical of small details and I try to respect the tunes for what they are.

JW: I've got a good example of what we're talking about. I bought something at Hard Wax earlier today that was in the same collection James mentioned, and it's a record we decided wasn't good enough to sell on The Ghost—probably because it was too trancey. This time I bought it to play. It'll probably go straight in my record bag.

JC: Confidence is definitely a big factor in trusting your taste more. In the early days of playing out we were too cautious of making a wrong move, so our selection was a lot more predictable—but in time we've learned to take more risks.

JW: I think the fact we're no longer playing exclusively to music nerds changed things too. At somewhere like a big UK festival in summertime, I'm up for dropping a track that some might consider cheesy if I know it's going to work. We were probably a bit too focused on the approval of the aforementioned nerds, peers and diggers to have done that before.

JC: "Confidence is definitely a big factor in trusting your taste more."

What do you look for in a tune?

JW: Uniqueness is key. I like stuff that's not too obvious. When you hear a track that sounds like something you've never heard before, that's a special feeling and it doesn't come around that often.

JC: I don't have any strict criteria. The essence of the tune is more important to me than a genre that might be assigned to it. Its energy and what it does to people on a dance floor is what would make me decide to play it. It's a hard thing to articulate, as someone's taste is representative of their entire musical journey. There's a thread that runs from me being into reggae and indie in my early teens all the way into the music I play now.

JW: There's definitely some hip-hop influence in my selection, and I'm still a sucker for a nice minimal track hailing back to my days in Leeds.

It'd be interesting to hear you describe each other's tastes.

JC: I'd say there's a cheekiness, sleaziness and sexiness going on in Josh's selection. It's very groove based. But then when he plays heavier, techno-leaning stuff he approaches it with a different vision—a bit more dry, flat and acidic.

JW: There's a garage and ragga flavour going on in James's love for big basslines and breakbeat-y drums. He likes a lot of trancey, tracky rhythms, but equally he's got a deep affinity for sweet and soulful house.

JW: "It's important to play to both groups: the punters and your nerdy peers. Somewhere in between is the sweet spot."

Do you think it's important to play rare or unheard music?

JC: My opinion has calmed down on that a lot. It's still important to me and I think that's where my drive to make edits comes from, but if I find a tune I like in a shop that's not obscure, I won't worry for a second about playing it.

JW: It's gotta be authentic, rather than original for the sake of it. You don't want to be just playing tunes you think no one's heard before, as you end up sacrificing so much good music out there. Most people in the crowd are just out for a good time. There's probably only going to be a handful of people who are listening out for specific tunes.

JC: It's important to play to both groups: the punters and your nerdy peers. Somewhere in between is the sweet spot.

How did owning a shop influence your approach to finding music?

JC: We started buying collections for the shop just before the big revival in vinyl culture, so we managed to score some ridiculous deals. One of the first collections we bought was 1,000 perfectly curated '90s tech house records and we got them for next to nothing. There was another one in Austria where we ended up paying 20 cents a unit for 10,000 records. The price of collections started to increase pretty sharply after the first year as more shops opened up.

JW: We were buying tens of thousands of records and listening to every single one in my flat before putting them up for sale. Every day we were listening to so much music and anything that was good we'd immediately look into the label and artist, which opened up this door to a wealth of knowledge. We bought collections in England, Italy, Austria and Germany, so we got to hear music from all over the place.

JW: "Nicolas Lutz was a regular customer of ours—in fact, he was the only person who received the special service of us driving to his house."

Did you set up the shop with the intention of developing a career as DJs?

JC: Definitely not. When we started it, we just wanted to open a sick record store. We came up with the concept for The Ghost and knew it was a good idea. From that day onwards we committed everything to it and just rolled with it. The initial buzz was that we had loads of DJs we rated coming to dig.

JW: We didn't do a gig together as The Ghost for a while, and then it was very casual when we did. After a few months we were asked to play at Club der Visionaere, and when they asked what to bill us as we decided the name of the shop would be the easiest thing. A couple of other gigs rolled in after that. Around that time I remember getting a text from my brother saying he reckoned we were one good podcast away from seeing some success. He was pretty much right.

It seems like it happened quite naturally, then.

JC: It all just fell into place. Our residency at Hoppetosse came about because we were selling records outside in the van. Before that first party, the thought of playing there felt like a pipe dream after visiting as ravers for all those years prior.

JW: It's a similar case with our first podcast. We'd been finding a bunch of cool tunes and hadn't really done anything with them as The Ghost until we put that mix together for My Own Jupiter. Nicolas Lutz was a regular customer of ours—in fact, he was the only person who received the special service of us driving to his house. We used to park up at his place every couple of weeks so he could have a dig, and one day we asked if he'd be up for putting out a mix of ours. It ended up coming out around a similar time as that first party at Hoppetosse. After that we began to get the feeling we were onto something special.

Following years of gigging, The Ghost eventually rose to the forefront of a scene centred around some of the world's most proficient diggers.

You both seem to be using CDJs a lot more nowadays.

JW: I'd say we play about 75 percent records and 25 percent digital. Pre-Covid it was different—we were pretty much exclusively vinyl DJs—but since then we've really come to appreciate having a digital stack. I think because of owning the shop, we were a bit narrow-minded, and we were pressing lots of dubplates, but then that stopped when we had no gig money coming in. Looking back it was a bit naive, because at gigs where the turntable setup might not have been up to scratch, we didn't have any way around it.

JC: We've got full respect for all DJ mediums. It's especially nice to make an edit or receive a promo and be able to play it that same weekend.

You've mentioned edits a few times. What sort of tunes do you edit, and what's the allure?

JC: For me, the fun of making an edit is seeing real beauty in certain parts of a tune that would otherwise be unplayable. Usually it's some perfect drums that catch my ear. They become quite personal tracks as it's rare that anyone else has decided to spend an afternoon rearranging the same track, never mind in the same way. They don't always work out or it might not land when you play it to a crowd, but that's part of the process. I try to add new edits onto my USB regularly.

JW: Sometimes a tune loses its way at some point in its duration, so making an edit is a nice way of helping it retain its magic. Certain elements can kill a tune for me. Editing out a few phrases that feature something like a techno-y ride [cymbal] can help to rescue the vibe.

What's the process of making an edit?

JC: I record the vinyl into Ableton through my mixer and a nice sound card, with a non-DJ elliptical needle. It's already at a nice level before it reaches the sound card, but I can also boost it there if needs be. Once it's recorded in, I'll start by chopping out all the things I don't want, then I'll start rearranging it into something I like the sound of—which is the fun part. I try to squeeze a good five minutes out of an edit most of the time.

JW: I'd recommend taking extra special care to make sure the kick drums line up perfectly, especially in the intro or outro, as that's when it can really throw a mix out. Making sure it lines up properly gets quite fiddly and boring towards the end, but it's essential.

JW: "Sometimes a tune loses its way at some point in its duration, so making an edit is a nice way of helping it retain its magic."

Do you have any tips for recording a mix of mostly vinyl?

JC: I'd advise to have some fairly fresh needles, a decent mixer and a decent sound card for starters. After you've done the mix, go through it all and see if any of the tunes you've played are noticeably louder and do a bit of gain management on it to smooth it out. You could chuck a really soft compressor on it, and a limiter too, but overall we personally don't overthink things too much in that regard.

JW: Clean your records too! Even if they're a bit battered, people can appreciate a bit of crackle, especially on a good, deep, cool podcast tune.

How long have you been musical co-conspirators?

JW: Since about 2010. We've known each other since we were 13, though, which is probably where a lot of the back-to-back chemistry comes from deep down.

What are the benefits of being a duo?

JC: You get to share the good times and the bad.

JW: From a creative perspective, it's nice to have a whole tune to work out what you're gonna play next. From a practical perspective, we've saved a lot of flights by being a duo. We end up playing the role of each other's tour manager from time to time.

JW: "We've known each other since we were 13, which is probably where a lot of the back-to-back chemistry comes from deep down."

What are some things you've learned about playing back-to-back over the years?

JW: In the first year there was a point where we were playing two tunes each. I guess we thought it would help things flow better, but all it did was make it more disjointed. One-for-one is much more enjoyable, and keeps it cohesive. Figuring out what to do while standing in front of a crowd for one tune is hard enough, never mind two.

JC: We've definitely refined when to communicate while we're playing. What some people don't like about playing with someone else is that you don't know what's coming next. We've found letting each other know about things, like when a tune is really short or has a big breakdown, helps a lot.

Is there a sense of competition between you?

JC: When we first started, both of us played with the intention of wanting to be the person who had the best tunes on the night, which wasn't the right approach. With experience, maturity and practice, we've become much more focused on teamwork. I won't chase the crowd's reaction just because Josh might've played a bomb. It's more about picking the right record for the moment. Recently we've been on a hot streak of playing longer gigs, and when you're playing for four or more hours it's really important to take the energy up and down, rather than going full bang the whole time.

JW: Unless we feel like it, of course. When we spoke before about playing stuff that's unheard, I think a big part of what keeps things fun is playing new stuff for each other. If one weekend James pulls out five new sick tunes it'll motivate me to get on Discogs to try and find some of my own. It's a healthy pressure that makes us better DJs, but maybe competitive isn't the right word. Another pressure to keep adding new records to the bag comes from people filming and posting clips from our sets on social media too.

JC: "It's all good wanting to know what a tune is and spending some time trying to track it down, but it's not the way to find your own voice."

How do you guys feel about IDing tunes? People seem to go after yours pretty regularly.

JW: It's flattering. We were there once, going to Get Perlonized! and standing at the side of the booth at Panorama Bar trying to spot any words on the centre labels of Zip's records. You get into clubbing because of your favourite DJs. It's only understandable to want to know what they're playing. But at the same time, the way to make it for yourself isn't by copying other people.

JC: I get it. It's all good wanting to know what a tune is and spending some time trying to track it down, but it's not the way to find your own voice. It's easy to play a tune you've heard another DJ play that boots off. It's much trickier to make that decision for yourself.

You mentioned that Houghton Festival last year was a very special gig. What makes a good gig for you?

JW: That one was special for so many reasons. The [previous] cancellations, both of our parents were there, the sun was shining. We thought it might take a while to get going because we were starting at midday, but there was a crowd there before we'd even put a record on. We were nicely prepared and got in the flow really quickly, and because it was the Friday everyone had phone battery, so we got loads of sick content from it. We weren't thinking about that at the time, but it's easier to remember gigs fondly when you can see videos of how it was.

JC: In terms of a good gig, a good sound system is important. Nice promoters and the promise of a good amount of sleep is always reassuring too. It's hard to pinpoint though, because sometimes on paper gigs can look great but then on the day something is just not quite right. There are a lot of variables at play, you never really know until you get there and start spinning.

JC: "There's something attractive about a bunch of interlinked artists who are really good at the same time with a shared sound and a friendly buzz."

There's a crew of contemporaries associated with The Ghost. I was wondering about how that came to be.

JW: A circle began to form in Berlin made up of us, KRN, Youandewan, DJ Pipe, Gene On Earth, Huerta and Sugar Free in 2013, but it's not like The Ghost was fundamental to their development. All of them are such talented individuals that they no doubt would have become recognised as they are today.

When we got the residency at Hoppetosse in 2016 it presented us the opportunity to give our mates a credible platform in our favourite club. It was a bigger stage than we were used to, and we were all at a point where we were good enough to make the most of it. It turned into a bit of a snowball effect where people would discover us all at once, which is I guess how the little bubbles start.

JC: There's something attractive about a bunch of interlinked artists who are really good at the same time with a shared sound and a friendly buzz. The thing is, we're all fairly similar people. You could remove the music and we'd still be friends. We rarely even talk about tunes now, though over the years we've all learned lots from each other.