Preparing Melt 2011

I am getting excited about this years Melt festival. Again, I will be taking care of some artists, to my very pleasure, the ones I would have liked to see most as a visitor as well. My place again is the stage down by the lake, the beach stage with lots of dubstep, experimental electronics and some pop appeal. Among the musicians are Nikolas Jaar, A.T.O.L., Jamie Woon, Modeselektor, Gold Panda, Cosmin TRG and Apparat. Here is the official trailer, hope to see some of you there!

Ich bin’s, der Nutzer

Das ZDF hat eine Doku gemacht, in der ich “der Nutzer” bin. “Wir machen uns nackt im Internet” ist die These der Sendung in der Reihe “Zoom”. Ein Team hat sich eine Woche mit mir im Internet beschäftigt und ist mir heimlich durch Berlin gefolgt, hat dann eine Menge Zeug ausgedruckt, alles an die Wand gehängt und dann vom “Medienexperten” Hendrik Speck analysieren lassen. Was lernen wir daraus? Nicht viel.

Leider weiß ich nicht was der Beitrag uns sagen will. Dass wir alle Angst haben sollen vor den bösen Datensammlern, dem Staat und Stalkern? Dass alle Druck verspüren sollen, mitzumachen im Social Web, weil das erwartet wird, obwohl es doch gleichzeitig so gefährlich ist? Dass Facebook, Google und der Staat morgen in meinem Schlafzimmer stehen? Ehrlich, die Einzigen, die mich je gestalkt haben, sind das ZDF.
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DJ together with turntable.fm

Great fun this thing, and one of these “Wow, internet!” moments: On turntable.fm you can enter a room and play songs to each other, like 5 djs playing back to back, and it’s designed like a little club. I just stumbled into a session by Numblog and this is what it looks like:

Hop behind the dj booth when there is a free space. You can search for tracks in a database and select it to your playlist. The djs play on from left to right and when you’re on, the song from top of your playlist is played next. Everybody in the room can click “awesome” and the avatar starts dancing. If enough people push “lame”, the next dj is on. Simple idea, well done, playful interface, like I said: great fun!

And there was this great moment also when one of he founders Seth Goldstein entered the room to see if everything was ok. We clapped his shoulder, congrats to turntable.fm, made some wishes (export playlist, real mixing) and let him step up to play one song. “Soldier” by DJ Cadim it was. Good luck, Seth and turntable.fm!

Thank you for showing me some music in a great session with Barbnerdy, Saetchmo, Silke, Fakir Ayonto, Uwe and others!

New Stylewalker DJ Mix: Nudisco to deep

Stylewalker playing at BergstüblBergstübl last friday and here is one hour mix of that session. I played more than 5 hours which I haven’t done in a long time. Here is a mix I recorded in the beginning of the evening, it starts of with some nice remixes including Doors and Grandmaster Flash lyrics, brings in Trickski’s überhit Pill Collins, Rodion’s Electric Soca, Chopstick & Johnjohn’s Clear Eyes, Cruel Intentions by Simian Mobile Disco (Maurice Fulton remix), Louder by Major Lazer always is a good tune to wire people up, Black Van – The Calling is next, Pawas – It’s Working (Trickski remix), the Blackvan remix of Aeroplane’s Without Lies, Test is a pretty deep track by Mario Basanov and Vidis, I tried to mix in Reckless with your love by Azari, the Manuel Tur remix,and here we are in more elctronic surroundings with Antony Shakir’s Detroit State of Mind and this is where the mix ends. It was a great evening, thanks to everybody who was there.

From Disco to Deep by Stylewalker

TV on the iPad: Tizi

I admit, I still love to watch tv. Here is one tool which let’s you carry around the screen: a DVB-T tuner for the ipad. I could test it and it’s definitely approved, it works fine and fast and is very easy to handle. Here is a little foto session to see how it works.

Tizi is a little box which receives the DVB-T signal with an antenna and creates a wifi you connect on with the ipad or iphone. With the Tizi app (free) you can then watch digital terrestrial television. In Berlin there are most of the major channels (ARD, ZDF ect.) on and some digital radio stations. Price: 150 EUR at Gravis.

Had it not been so cold, I could have even taken it downstairs to take out the garbage.

Martina from TLGG gave me this gadget to test it. Thank you!

Remixing Tarantino, Coen(s), Scorsese and Kubrick

Here are two video remixes who cut together scenes from movies by Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers, and by Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick. A real hommage by Leandro Copperfield, a visual designer from Brazil. A great love to these directors is noticeable in these pieces which must have cost many hours of work. The fact that I have seen most of these movies surprises me at the same as it feels comfortable to see Mia dancing again (Pulp Fiction) or watching Joe Pesci say “Funny? Funny how? How am I funny?” (Good fellas). Thank you Leandro for this!

Kubrick vs Scorsese

Tarantino vs Coen Brothers

via Kraftfuttermischwerk

Find the cosy and affordable hotel in Paris

eiffelt_tower_parisParis is one of the most expensive cities. This counts also and especially for part time lodging and tourism.

Say you want to stay there for some days and know for sure that there has to be that one little hotel or bed and breakfast, a little worn and old maybe but cosy and charmin. Where to find that? Searching the web is impossible, you’ll find tons of lists and hotel room merchants from hrs to tripadvisor so I asked around via Twitter and Facebook and here is what I got:
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Reflektionen über einen Motorroller

Sie sind schön, diese alten Vespas. Vor allem die, die ich im Auge habe. Zur Zeit steht sie noch im Vespa-Laden an der Kastanienallee. Sie sieht stolz aus, ein bisschen wie ein Schwan, sie ist eine 1981er, 50 Special. Sie hatte noch etwas Stroh im Motor, der Vergaser muss eingestellt werden, der Auspuff ist ausgewechselt und jetzt kommt noch das Getriebe.

Und dann muss ich fahren lernen: Immer die richtige Menge Gas geben, im richtigen Augenblick schalten, die Bremsen kosten ordentlich Kraft. Das Schalten ürbrigens auch. Und ich hatte mir schon Sorgen gemacht, auf dem Roller körperlich zu verkümmern. So eine Vespa ist schön, aber auch ganz schön zickig!

Und jetzt kommt die entscheidende Frage? Bin ich der richtige für eine Vespa? Ich habe schon Fahrräder verloren, Computer fallen lassen, ich habe keine Ahnung und auch kein besonderes Gespür für Bautenzüge, Gaszüge, die Geräusche, die ein Motor machen SOLLTE und was sein könnte falls er das nicht tut, nichts fällt mir leichter als zu vergessen, Öl beim Tanken hinzu zu geben, damit es keinen Motorschaden gibt und ich soll eine alte Vespa fahren? Sollte ich nicht lieber eine schnittige Hongkong-Schleuder nehmen?

This weekend: Berlin Festival

This weekend Berlin will finally see some big festival inside the city. It has, in my opinion, a killer line-up, and takes place at one of Berlin’s most historically charged places: Tempelhof airport It was built by the Nazis, hosts one of the world’s biggest buildings, was used by the US army to fly goods in while West-Berlin city was blocked by the soviets, it’s a vast place with lots of space and now home of the Bread & Butter. And the Berlin festival. (If the site is offline, try the Google cache version)

Friday and saturday there will be shows by Deichkind, Peter Doherty, Jarvis Cocker, Dendemann, The Rifles, Moderat, Saint Etienne, Zoot Woman, Digitalism (DJ Set), Peaches (DJ Set), The Thermals, Junior Boys, Florence and the Machine, WhoMadeWho, Bodi Bill, Bonaparte, Berlin Battery and many more.

As a teaser, I recommend Shir Khan’s Bombaklaat live mix:
[audio:http://www.dj-shirkhan.de/shirkhan_bombaklaatlivemix3.mp3]