There's no denying it: Burak Sar is a busy man these days. No wonder it took us almost three months, countless emails and two postponed meetings until we finally managed to talk to each other face-to-face. During that time, he moved from Offenbach to Berlin, started his own label, released a new single, prepared another one and completed a number of remixes, all while maintaining an impressive record of live shows and DJ gigs. As if last year had not been successful enough, it seems as if things are really about to kick off this summer for the man who calls himself SIS on stage.

"It is true, I'm currently reaping the rewards of a truly astonishing year," he explains while he fiddles around with the built-in iPod device in a Frankfurt hotel room. In a couple of hours Sar will take over the decks at Cocoon Club. It is the first gig he's played in his old neighborhood since he moved to Berlin a few weeks prior to our meeting. Although it has become a bit of a cliché for a producer to move to the self-proclaimed techno capital, the reason behind Sar's move was purely practical, and also a bit wet: "We had a burst pipe in our flat, and about the same time, we heard of a vacant flat in Berlin. So we basically just packed our things and moved. I'm not even sure if I really want to stay in Berlin for a longer time, although I'd really like to set up a proper studio and get some more hardware. The good thing is...I can finally choose where I want to live at the moment. It's a good thing, this freedom of choice, and I only lived in Offenbach for about a year anyway, so the decision wasn't all that hard."

Despite his short stay, the club scene in Frankfurt and Offenbach played a vital role in Sar's career. It was here that he was introduced to electronic music in the first place. Growing up in a small village not far away, weekends were regularly spent in well-known clubs such as the Robert Johnson, and it didn't take long for him to move from the dance floor behind the decks. "I asked myself, if people without musical training can become a DJ, why shouldn't I become one as a musician? I had already played a couple of instruments when I was younger, so I went out and bought turntables and a mixer. From then on, I went not only to the clubs, but also the record stores in Frankfurt and Heidelberg, and while my friends bought four or five records each time, I brought home 15."

It wasn't until 2003, however, that Sar decided to start producing himself, and it took another two years for his first release to see the light of day. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was mere coincidence—a term that pops up several times during our chat—that he happened to know a girl who was dating Nick Curly at that time, and who urged him to send Curly some of his tracks. Curly, as it happened to be, was running a small label out of Mannheim called Amused Records, and he signed Sar right away.

"I didn't see many labels with which I could identify myself and my sound with," he remembers, "so I didn't really send out demos. One thing just came to another, basically." And it certainly did, as two years later Curly, among others, launched one of the most successful German labels in recent history—Cécille—and SIS' La Garúa became its second release, subsequently catapulting him into techno prominence. Although he acknowledges the help of the Cécille crew, he eagerly avoids being pushed into a certain scene. If one thing becomes clear during the interview, it's that Sar is a man who doesn't like to be pinned down. "I don't give a crap about all that talk whether a sound 'belongs' to a certain city or scene. There was so much talk about it last year. Who wants to hear any more of this? It's boring. It's political. Of course I see myself as a part of Cécille, after all, it is my main label, and it wouldn't work if we weren't friends. But the whole discussion is usually started by people who are not producing, who always need to put things into drawers and who follow an agenda. I try to stay out of it. As long as my music makes people dance, [that's] the only thing that matters."

Making people dance—it remains the ultimate credo, the essence of techno and house music. Sar seems to have found the right formula to do so—two of his tracks from last year, namely "Nesrib" and "Trompeta" ranked among the top in several charts by the end of the year. The latter, released on Ricardo Villalobos' Sei Es Drum imprint, was yet another lucky coincidence: It was an unlikely Balkan-influenced dance floor stomper which became one of the most memorable tracks of last summer, much to the surprise of its maker. "I'd have never thought that 'Trompeta' would make such an impact….A friend of mine visited me and we were exchanging some tunes. He had a lot of different kinds of music on his mp3 player and a remix by Balkan Beat Box caught my attention. The same evening I listened to this specific track, and before I went out later that night I produced the first version of 'Trompeta.' It all happened rather quickly."

But while the success of a single track certainly has its perks, it can also impede an artist's development, pushing him into a corner where he has to meet the audience's expectations. "It is both a curse and a blessing to have such a huge track. I must admit that I've begun to get bored with it, as it is still the climax of my live set and people expect me to play it. But on the other hand, it always brings me back to that wonderful summer in Ibiza. Eventually you get over it and move on, and the track becomes just one of many."

Despite the recent attention, Sar remains level-headed, and occasionally it seems as if the success did indeed come as a surprise to a man, who admits that he's currently "living like a king." And before? Well, it's hard to say. It's tough to get Sar to talk about his life prior to music. It seems as though he considers the last three years as a fresh start, and judging by his answers throughout our interview, he seems to be more than pleased with it. When I ask him if he's a reclusive person, given the shortage of information, biographical details and even pictures around, he replies with a smirk: "Isn't that a good thing?"

"Ten years ago, almost nobody had a website. And it worked."

"I don't want to become part of that whole 'business-techno' shebang. Sure, some people may think different, but for me, there is no reason to change anything at the moment, so why should I throw all [this] uninteresting personal information around? I'm on MySpace, which is the biggest social network there is, so why should I further complicate things for my fans? Why do you need three different websites? It dilutes...and distracts from the most important thing: the music. So I try to keep things as simple as possible. Ten years ago, almost nobody had a website. And it worked."

His critical attitude towards the web notwithstanding, Sar is a staunch supporter of digital releases, even though he started off as a classic vinyl DJ, and he still remains an avid record collector. With his increased live touring schedule, however, he's gotten used to using a laptop with Traktor Scratch for his DJing purposes as well. When asked, he pours some gasoline onto the debate, which has arguably been burning for as long as mp3s have been around. "I'm the last one to scream that mp3 kills vinyl. Let's face it—hardly anyone is able to notice the difference in sound anyway. Not the DJ, and certainly not the people down there on the dance floor. There is a lot of elitist bullshit and shop talk going on. For me personally, I don't care whether one uses vinyl or a laptop, as long as he puts some effort in it and not just stands there synchronizing two tracks in Traktor with a mouse. Even my grandmother could do that."

Speaking of effort, a week prior to our chat SIS played live in Stuttgart with a massive cold, thus forcing us to postpone our meeting. The fact that he played the event at all shows his dedication to his job and passion. He may not be one to talk endlessly about the current state of techno, preferring to state his presence through his music, but with the launch of his own label Cocolino Records, a future installment in Get Physical's Body Language mix series and a semi-secret collaboration with Johnny D taking place in Barcelona soon, we should be hearing from SIS quite a bit this summer either way.