Conturbanaries Opening Party

970410_458115057635308_1544835530_nOn thursday CONTURBANARIES starts, a festival for contemporary and fine arts. I will play at the opening party, before and after the highly respected Pitchtuner. Expect an inspiring mix of art, performance and music in an exciting and rough location, at Revaler Str.99.

Running order

Top floor
22.00 CHURCH OF FUNK (top floor)

Basement
22:00 EFALIVE of the JAZOBURBS
0:00 Mutfak Drt
0:30 Stylewalker
1:00 Pitchtuner
1:40 Stylewalker

I am excited and look forward to seeing you there!

Stylewalker’s Sunny Summer Mix

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I used to play a lot of fluffy house music back in the days. And I still have a heart for warm, groovy and sunny 4-to-the-floor tunes. So here are 60 minutes of easy get away which would fit well on a rooftop in Barcelona, a bar in Thessaloniki or a ship in the Adria.

It would also fit well for a sunny weekend to listen during the daytime. Make a coffee, open the windows, get a book and relax in the sun. Which is what I am going to do right now.

Includes music by Sirius Mo, Oliver$, Bonobo, Cosmin TRG, Mathias Kaden, Martyn, Cut Copy, Sbtrkt, Rooflight, Martin Buttrich, Justin Martin, Veitengruber ao.

Testing Traktor for iPad

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Finally, Native Instruments released an app for the ipad called “Traktor DJ“. Since Traktor is the widest used DJ software and the ipad has so much to offer to manipulate music with its interface the expectations were extremely high. And they didn’t fail. The price of 18 EUR is ok for what you get and after reading the first reviews and I instantly had to download and try it.

I spent a nice long ride on the train with figuring out the thing and produce a little mix. The app runs smoothly and is very intuitive, it comes with effects like looping, delays, flangers and filters or freezes. The freeze function is certainly the most innovative. While in a loop, you can touch certain parts of the loop and play it, like single drums or sounds. While playing, mixing or skipping, it never gets out of synch, and combined with a soundcard you can send different sound signals to master and prelistening. So this is actually a serious alternative for a gig in a bar, maybe not in a club.

So here it is, enjoy 30 minutes of bass music with Benga, Kryptic Minds, Redrum and Fused Forces.

The mixes can be recorded directly within the app. I was a bit annoyed at first because I could not find a way to export it. But with a little help from the NI support I found the way. This is how you export and save a recording from the Traktor app for iPad:

“In order to export your recorded mix you need to sync (connect) your iPad to a desktop computer, then open iTunes and click on the iPad tab. Select the “APPS” tab and then scroll down to the section “File Sharing”. You will see TraktorDJ in the file sharing apps list. click on it, it will show you the recorded files which you can save now with the “SAVE TO” button to a location on your harddrive.”

Here is the official promotion video with Richie Hawtin preparing a set in the taxi:

My “Massiv e Sharif” dubstep mixtape

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I recorded this mixtape a while ago, inspired by my stay at Outlook festival. It’s called “Massive e Sharif”. Massive as in big and voluminous, living bass lines and Sharif as in noble protectors of the tribe for elegant grooves and sophisticated rhythms. Enjoy.

Tracklist:

Badman VIP – Kryptic Minds
Blackout – Jack Sparrow
Kingfisher – RSD
Good Music – Bombaman
Sidewinder – Killawatt
Sweat – Untold
Booyant – Distal
The Raven – Biome
Avalanche – Photek
Deep Tech – Icicle
False Flag – Moving Ninja, Pinch

Outlook 2012 – Saturday

Wow. This place is amazing. And worth every minute of the odyssey it took me to get here. Remember: I wanted to visit Outlook Festival 2012 and figured out a cool way to travel from Berlin: To Venice by plane and to Pula, Croatia, by boat. Here’s what happened.

The boat ride was not at all as glamorous as I had imagined it. Instead of elegantly floating in at the harbor with a glass of Martini at hand, the boat jumped over 5 meter tall waves for three hours constantly. Almost everybody got sick on the boat including the dog. Finally in Pula, the storm and rain was immense, streets drowning in water, flashes and thunder all around. Yay, welcome to the summer festival experience!

So no more festival for me on Friday. I had checked in at a nice hostel, the Riva hostel which is directly down at the harbor and very friendly and cosy, went out to eat and fell asleep almost instantly. Saturday consisted of looking at some sites in Pula like an old Franciscan monastery, skillfully explained by a girl I had met on the boat and who happened to be a archaeologist. Great! That is the thing about travelling alone: You get to know so many people and interesting stories because you’re so open and flexible.

The hostel hosted mainly “Outlookers”. With very very dirty shoes. So I decided to get some new ones to avoid ruining mine. I chose cheap white trainers to get the most out of the upcoming dirt experience.

With a bunch of English girls, a Canadian and a Finnish guy from the hostel we took a bus and after a long walk ended up at the beach with a bar, a little reggae stage and people playing around in the water.

Wow. And here it was, the magical festival moment. I had lost my faith almost with all the rain and the hassle, but wow. I could feel the good vibes and sense a bass from far away.

To explore the site, I had some experts on my side again. Kleinski and Sesner from the Riddim Box took me under their wings and showed me around. And there was much to see. The area is huge and the festival has more than 10 stages.

During the day, there’s music by the beach and boats float around in the Mediterranean with soundsystems organized by different labels. At night there are two big stages down by the harbor, one middle sized stage in between the beach, the harbor and the fort. The fort is from the 19th century and in and around are 6 more stages. Some of them only with a capacity of 120 people which brings in a true club atmosphere. In total I would assume Outlook festival has about 20 000 visitors.

So, totally overwhelming. Great sound, great lights and crowd consisting mainly of young British bass music lovers mixed with enthusiasts from Croatia and the rest of Europe. It took a while until I started to figure out what each stage was like. I basically ran around in between floors bumping into people I had met before and just enjoyed the music. With no particular highlights I have to say. I must have seen Ben UFO, Mensah, Hyetal, Fantastic Mr Fox and Kode9 and everything was good but maybe a bit too much to digest at once. And also the constant rain got on the nerves after some hours outside. Still, I was so happy to finally being there and having made the decision for this little trip.

Getting home was another lucky encounter. I met a girl who works at the hostel I stay in and two of her friends and we were going share a taxi. But the drivers wanted to charge five times the usual price. “Bastards, that’s too expensive, I call my dad!” said one of the girls. Dad came, drove us home and I had a funny conversation about football on top. Great day, great finish. With the bass still in my head, I fell asleep.

My best tracks from the Devorama party

The Devorama party was a big, packed, sweaty and joyful event. I was superhyped and excited that everything went so well and sat at the terrace with the last crew until the sun rose. The party guests showed their devotion with buying more drinks after the 30 free beer crates were gone. And of course, I took my chance to play some tunes after Symbiz had finished the energy loaded show. Here are my favorites of this quite dark dubstep set which actually made some people dance in the end.

Starting very dark and intense with Kryptic Minds – Badman VIP

Spill in some echo reggae sweetness, RSD – Kingfisher

It gets a bit funkier and people start to get it with Killawatt’s Mantra

And my highlight Distal – Booyant

I ended with more straight tunes, like Martyn and Mike Slotts All Nights

to hand over to Paula who continued with discoish tunes from the Loftus Hall

The pic up there is by Matze Hielscher, finde more party pics here!

BMX bike controls digital DJ software

Am I getting this right? Did these crazy Japanese kids actually map the movements of their BMX bikes to the Traktor software to control music? Looks like it, the product is called Turntable Rider and the description reads as follows:

“The Turntable Rider is an epic bicycle accessory which converts a bicycle into a musical instrument.
The bike wheels, become jog wheels.
The handbrakes, become sound pads.
Mix and scratch at will.”

Wow.

(via Roberdo)

Auflegen im Schau Fenster

Last week I tested my new digital DJing set Traktor Scratch A6 at Schau Fenster gallery and it was really fantastic. The vinyl feel and controlling abilities combined with the ease of digital storage just kicks it. I won’t stop to buy vinyl though, but I feel some new possibilities have just been opened here. Here are some nice pics, shot by Sebastian Glowinski für GOOD GUYS ENTERTAINMENT.

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Party Arty 37 – avec Stylewalker

“Woah, that’s a big flyer”. Hell yeah! It’s a big party. I am excited because I’ve always been a fan of Party Arty and now finally I get to play there. Stylewalker on the decks again! This saturday, Ritter Butzke.

I always liked it because it was different. Always with big ambitions, Yaneq, the party dictator and organizer, tried to mix “vibes from different tribes” and presented diverse music, installations, performances and always a good crowd of people. In case you’ve never been there, here’s your chance: comment or hit me up via mail or Facebook if you want to be on the guestlist.

This is my personal agenda: The more people come, the more likely it is that I get a room on my own. And I want that, together with DJ Gaucho we would give you a good time on a little club floor.

And the rest of the crew is grand too, Sirius Mo and many others, check the line up here.

Not convinced yet? Watch this video of party mayhem and get your ass there on saturday!

Oh, music? Sure! Go back to my Party Arty 37 tracks selection and listen to this mix by Gaucho

Und wer immer noch nach mehr Hintergrundinfos dürstet, dem sei hier dieses Interview (aus meiner Küche) gegeben:

Fluxus and me

Next friday I’ll be playing at an event with some legends from the 60ies Fluxus art movement. I am thrilled!

Come around to see Ben Patterson, one of the Fluxus founders, Iput, Eric Andersen and Willem de Ridder at the Schau Fenster Gallery at Lobeckstr.30, from 8pm. A good way to end the week and start the friday night!

The opening party is part of the “Fluxus Today” conference by the Akademie der Künste and the exhibition “The lunatics are on the loose“.

Pretty cool to see my name in such an arty environment. Let alone the question: What am I supposed to play?! Well, I have some days to think left, I guess. Suggestions for songs are welcome in the comments.