We go deeper into Henrik Schwarz’ history, his early infatuation with computer music and why he doesn’t DJ today in part 2 of our interview with the artist
When we left our conversation with Henrik Schwarz, we were deep into the future and the technological advancements influencing his own music career. This time, we’re turning back the clock to Henrik’s origins, driving over the Swiss/ German border to buy records and discovering the possibilities of the computer as an instrument.
We discuss his eventual affiliations with Innervisions, and that first collaborative release with Dixon, and Âme that turned out to be a milestone for everybody involved and started a life-long friendship and collaborative partnership between the artists.
That partnership played somewhat of a significant role in Hernik Schwarz’ decisions to eventually abandon DJing to focus on his live performance, something that still sets him apart in his field.
He’s maintained a steady and consistent discography, reinforcing his sound with each release. Between LPs and EPs, he continues to operate in sprawling musical aesthetics, but his continued involvement with labels like Innervisions and Sunday Music keeps his music grounded on the dance floor.
It’s in that context we’ll meet him next at Jaeger this Friday, but before we get there, we have got part 2 of our interview with Henrik Schwarz. You can read part 1 here.
Even though we are touching on Detroit and the future, I want to step back into your past. I know you were driving to Switzerland to buy records when you were young. Why Switzerland?
I was in the very south of Germany and there is no big city and no Autobahn. You are a little bit lost there if you want to connect to the world, at least at that time. I was interested in music and although we had a small record store, where I worked, and a club, when I wanted to buy records, I had to drive to the next big city, and that was Zurich at that time. Zurich had a few record stores that were importing from America and the UK; the newest, latest thing.
What was the newest, latest thing back then? I know you had grown up with Hip Hop, but were you buying Hip Hop records at that point?
When I started buying records it was already after my Hip Hop phase. I was very into the first wave of Hip Hop that hit Europe, and when I started buying records I was already looking for the originals of the samples. I was buying Funk, Jazz and Soul and then electronic music a little later.
Were already making music at that point?
Yes, I started in 1992. This is when a friend of mine got a computer from his dad, and when I saw it, I thought; “can we make music with it?” I had a strong drive to make music, but I never learnt an instrument.
How did the thought even occur to you back in ‘92? Even though computers had been around for some time, people weren’t really talking about making music on them yet, as we understand it today.
I never really thought about that. I had a few machines like an 808 (drum machine) and a small mixer at home, and I was experimenting, but that didn’t really work for me because the sequences (the amount of notes you can record in the machine) were too short. I wanted a little bit more, and at that time magazines were writing about a soundcard. The new thing, and this shocked me, was that this soundcard could sample. I put all my money into this soundcard and put it in my friend’s computer.
You had an 808 – probably one of the most legendary, and today most expensive, drum machines – and opted to go with a computer.
I was always attracted to new technology.
Going from those early experiments with making music, to actually putting something out in the early 2000’s, what was that progression like?
Well, it took ten years, and everybody around me told me what I was doing is shit. Maybe they were right, some of it was noise.
At what point do you find that there is something there that goes beyond the noise?
Never, actually. It was Sasse (Klaus Linblad) from Moodmusic (and Sunday Music) that did that. I played something from a CD that I had when I was warming up for him. After we finished the night, he came to me and asked about that track, and I said I made it. I gave him the CD and half a year later he called me and said, ‘let’s make a record.’ At that time it was my dream to make a record. I would have never done it myself. That was a dream come true
Those early records on Moodmusic were very sample based and later on your music takes a turn to more synthesiser focussed pieces. At what point do you leave the sampling behind for the sound that you are known for today?
It was a slow development. The sampled music came from Hip Hop. I had all those records that were used for Hip Hop and I thought I could use them for House music. DJ Sneak was doing that with great success; a simple Disco loop and a clever combination of sounds, and you had something really fresh.
Theo Parrish and Kenny Dixon (Moodymann) were also super important to me. They came with a new sound from Detroit that really shocked me. They also had samples in their music and they were using them in a very inspiring way, it was very raw.
I was into Detroit Techno, which was mostly short loops, but not many samples. Then those new guys came and I think they were coming from a Hip Hop background using MPC samplers instead of drum machines.
In the case of Theo Parrish it’s very much there in his DJing too in the way he almost cuts and pastes records together in an almost kind of psychedelic manner. There’s nothing rooted in strictly sequenced music.
Yes, I was very influenced by him; in his music and his Djing and that showed me a new perspective. It was super slow compared to the Techno that came before and that was something I really liked. My first record was 99 BPM.
I was going to bring that up, because that must have been unusually slow for a dance floor record even back then. Was that something that you purposefully set out to do?
I didn’t have anything in mind. I was just doing it. This just felt right. I liked the fast Techno, but this had a new energy.
Also the sound systems changed. For the first time, you had something that sounded better. Before you could play Techno on a shitty soundsystem, and it would sound great, because the kick drums weren’t so low, and the energy comes more from the whole spectrum.
There was a change in the sound aesthetic, because people started spending money on sound systems. That’s when those super low kick drums came to full effect and those worked at slower tempos, because you wanted that (physical) Boom!
By 2008, and your first record on Innervisions, your sound had moved towards faster tempos again and this more melodic focussed Techno sound you are known for today. Was there a shift in the way you made music and was there an outside influence like the clubs changing?
I don’t know why I got faster. I think everything was getting faster. I also started making remixes and the originals were often fast. I started playing keyboards and got more confident, and that’s why I started getting into theory. I had to get into theory with the remixes, because I found the remixes coming in from outside the dance music world, much more interesting.
Very often you get music that follows more traditional musical structures and rules, and because I wanted to play my own chords over those structures I had to find out the theory. Slowly I learnt what a root note is, what a scale is, what a chord is and how they worked together, and I think this led to a change of sound as well.
Your relationship with Innervisions is a long standing one, starting with that first track with you, Âme, Dixon and Derrick Carter. “Where we At” pretty much launched the label and an early marker for the success that label would enjoy. Was there some kind of synchronicity there that developed all of you at the same time to that point?
Yes totally. It was shocking in a way. I met Stefan (Berkhahn “Dixon”) on a bus to the airport in London, and we got to talking about going into the studio together. We started working on what would become “Where we At” and it was so easy.
We agreed on so many things and at some point Stefan said there were these two other guys, who had just released the first record on his new label, Innervisions. He said, “let’s bring them in”. We had a very strong connection. You present something and people would say “this is good” or even, “this is not good,” and this even went as far as shoes or t-shirts to a ridiculous extent.
You clearly all had an influence on each other, and again if I can cite this interview with Frank Wiedemann (Âme), you were also part of the reason he stopped DJing and started playing live. Was this the same case for you?
Yes, for me it was very clear pretty early on. When Ableton arrived, I was immediately there. For a while a DJ’d and played live, but both are very time consuming. If you’re DJing you have to listen to a lot of stuff, and that takes time. I wasn’t able to do both. I thought let’s stop Djing.
Being in the four-people group (with Âme and Dixon), you have these people that you just trust and this is a very important thing. When Stefan hears something, he can immediately tell you if this is the way or not. Kristian (Beyer, Âme) will often bring in a new idea that you wouldn’t have thought of and with Frank it’s been super close musically from day one. I am always a super fan, and when I need keyboards I always want him to play it, because it’s fantastic.
There’s a very natural agreement there.
Do you ever think you’ll get back to DJing?
I get asked to do it, and there’s part of me that would love to do it, but it would be a lot of work. I can do it from a technical perspective, it’s like riding a bike, but the selection of music would take a lot of time. I have a lot of stuff, but I don’t spend a lot of time selecting music for the dance floor.
So you’re still consuming a lot of music that’s not your own. Do you still find inspiration in other people’s music?
I was finding a lot of inspiration in new music for many years, but it kind of stopped five years ago. Before that, there would be some new music every year that blew me away. For example, there was a year when all those Arthur Russel records were re-released and I had never heard of him before. I was blown away and it inspired new things. I don’t know why it stopped, and I still buy new music, but I haven’t found a new artist, where I thought; “wow I hadn’t heard this before.”
How has it informed your work beyond the DJ booth and in the studio?
What do you remember of the nights at Space @ Bar Rumba?
How did you and Honey start working together?
You mentioned, Garage was big when you were teenagers. Is that around the same time you started to make music?
James doesn’t feel queer is a “sexual statement,” but rather an ideology. “I know cis straight woman who identify as queer,” he says as an example. For James, queer is about a “rejection of patriarchy” and a the celebration of “alternative lifestyles” on dance floors. “As long as they bring love and joy to the dance, then everybody is welcome,” insists James. Even though the party they “do in New York is a different crowd to the one in London and the one in Berlin is different to both of those,” that queer element remains at its core and James “love
Tell me about WINDOWS. Is it an album and/or a live show?
Ida and Naomi both grew up in what they consider a “small town” called Sandefjord. Both had taken an early interest in music albeit from different points of view. While Ida was “drawn into singing very early,” Naomi was an avid listener, consuming all she can from Beyonce to Dimmu Borgir. At around the age of 11 Naomi’s dad built her a dance studio in the basement with “some cheap speakers and different kinds of disco lights” encouraging the impressionable youth towards electronic dance music. She would be “dancing like a crazy person to Benny Benassi” in her basement enclave she remembers fondly today. 
You’re talking about the early nineties?
Igjen, sinnsykt takknemlig og ydmyk for å ha vært så privilligert til å få gjøre dette så lenge. Takkskarruha! 
“
Wilkes
13 years is still a long time for a club night, especially at that time, when everybody was going from one thing to the next quite quickly. How did you maintain that excitement around it for so long?
You got pigeonholed as a DJ, somewhat unfairly, in that Deep House trend after “Your Everything.” What effect did it have on what you would do next and how did you eventually sidestep it as a DJ?
Who is that?
Lars grew up in the
At 13 he had heard his first DJ playing Disco records consecutively, and by 15 he went to his first club and bought “Ten Percent“ on Salsoul. The speaker hanging out the window soon developed into a party in his apartment, and requests to play at other people’s house parties followed as he became a local mobile Disco music of some repute. “I just loved the music, it was just everything for me,” he remembers. At 18 he had made something of a career out of it, playing mostly commercial music, before somebody dropped “a stack of what they called Loft records” at his feet. “I was like ‘Whoa, what is this sound?’” It was a selection of expensive, limited press- and imported records, the kind of which they had been playing not only at the Loft, but also Paradise Garage. Although Morales had not yet been to either club, since they were strictly private clubs, he started making inroads as a dancer frequenting venues like Paradise Garage and the Loft through acquaintances with memberships, and eventually befriending people like Mancusso and DJ Kenny Carpenter. It was through Carpenter that he was inducted into a record pool, the first organisations that supplied DJs with new, unreleased music for the club, and it was through this pool that he would have his first major break as DJ.
The first release on the label came via KiNK, with the aptly titled “Home,” and in that record we find similarities to KiNK’s music from “Under Destruction” as tracks play on similar rhythmic and melodic themes, distilled down from traditional music, with titles like The Clock and The Grid redefining the concepts contained in their titles for western ears. Accompanying the release and future releases from a small, but dedicated community of artists, are a series of photos – most of which taken on phone – from Bulgarian DJ legend DJ Valentine. Alongside the music it consolidates a label that for the first time will distill some of that Bulgarian traditions into a contemporary platform.
They had known they “had something by the first record” , the rather wordy “some, but not all Cheese comes from the moon.” That record, released on Planet Noise in 2004 had put Ost & Kjex on the map in Norway, but it was when they “sent the first tracks to Crosstown Rebels and they called back” they had something special according to Petter. “When Crosstown Rebels called up, we knew the outside world was listening” reiterates Tore and by the time of Cajun Lunch their sound was truly established. 
Do you remember a specific moment or track that inspired you to first mix two songs together?
Tell me about going to the Loft.
Did he just play on Blå’s soundsystem?
Did you ever talk to him about the peak era of the Loft?
She gives my a side glance before answering; “Obviously there is a correlation… do I need to follow that…. A bit if I want to, but not really.” It’s understandable why she won’t acquiesce to the archetypes that dominate DJ culture today. As she insists, she 
That was my introduction to Jaeger’s “Diskon sound” as I came to know it and throughout my tenure here, the sound system kept growing, shrinking and moving in a constant evolution that owner and resident Ola Smith-Simonsen (Olanskii) still refers to as a ”work in progress.” It’s been in a constant state of flux that has taken a life of its own as the venue, the DJs and the audience kept changing around it and as it kept retreating further into the structural makeup of the room and the dance floor it’s allure is indistinguishable between these elements. And as Ola starts talking about the next phase of the system and the recently-installed bass traps settle into the walls, it’s an evolution in sound that refuses to come to any natural conclusion. 
“It’s like money,” collates Rosner in a RBMA lecture; ”you can never have too much because you know you can give some of it away. Loudspeakers can never be too big, because you can always turn the volume down.” In one of Rosner and Mancuso’s crowning achievements at the Loft their combined efforts resulted in creating a tweeter-array system that helped spread those higher sonic frequencies more evenly and further across the room, so that even the person sitting in the back could hear every element in the music rather than just the bass frequencies, which naturally has the longest reach. Even though Rosner didn’t initially agree with Mancuso’s tweeter array idea, he soon came around when he discerned ”the more you have up there the better.” It’s a sonic philosophy that’s still noticeably adopted today when you see towers of horns jutting out high above the DJ somewhere like stalagmites on a cave wall, but while it’s certainly helpful having all that sound on tap, it’s pretty pointless if it’s not pointed in the right direction.
It was Alex Rosner that introduced Long to this world, as a kind of fixer for his sound systems and it would be Rosner that would also inadvertently put him into business. In “Last night a DJ saved my life,” Francis Grasso described an incident where Rosner sent Long out on a job, and Long usurped his boss by outbidding him on the same job as an independent contractor. Rosner remembers it differently in the RBMA documentary. According to Rosner, John Addison (Studio 54) had phoned Rosner up in the middle of the night to ask about doing some work for him. Rosner swiftly hung up on Addison, noting the lateness of the call in what I assume was short conversation littered with expletives. Addison in all his ‘70s cocaine-fuelled cock-sured fury was not a person you would hang the receiver up on likely and put his next call in to Rosner’s budding apprentice effectively putting Richard Long and associates into business.
“Drugs, nothing more,” says Tornike, but “when they raided the club, no-one was arrested for dealing drugs and they couldn’t find any drug dealers inside the club, only finding 2 or 3 grams” on individuals. The club owners were arrested too, without a warrant on some overblown claims of obstruction, which never resulted in any charges brought forward, but what happened directly after the raid, was a force of solidarity in a clubbing community that we haven’t seen since the time of the criminal justice and public order act. People like Tornike, who had started gathering outside Bassiani as the police were carting off their friends and colleagues, were protesting the arrests. “We were trying to figure out what was happening,” explains Tornike who “didn’t even know which Police station they took them to” at the time.
In the month of October, DJ Lekkerman hands over the reigns of his weekly residency to a couple of stalwarts on Den Gyldne Sprekk roster, and two DJs and music enthusiasts that know the concept inside out. Beastie Joyce and Jørgen Egeland host another month of Den Gyldne Sprekk at Jaeger with a series of concepts that go from another KIZZ pøb to the blood-curdling sounds of Memphis Rap for Halloween as the pair resurrect their Funk Boys alias to invite a host of kindred spirits to the lineup for October. 
KIZZ PØB returns! What is it about the band in your opinion that continues to draw old and new fans to their music?
How did you feel your set at Jaeger went?
Do you consider yourself a veteran of the scene in that respect?
The music you guys make on Rebound to me sounds like its all built on a foundation of House, but there’s also that frosty Norwegian sonic element in there. What conscious steps do you take in creating that sound?
I spoke to Carl Craig recently and he told me that DJing was the day job to afford the passion of making music. But I have a sneaking suspicion that’s the other way around for you, that DJing is the true passion?
I think it would’ve been that way. I know DJs who just don’t have the attention span to make music. Some guys from Detroit I would really like to see out here, more. They are excellent DJs, but just don’t get the opportunity because they don’t have the patience to sit around and programme music. 
Jann Dahle started making music in 1992 in Tromsø when he moved there to study law. It was a fortuitous time to be making music in Tromsø as the critical point for a burgeoning Disco and House scene that would eventually spread around the globe. “I met Rune (Linbæk), Bjørn (Torske) and Kolbjørn (Lyslo aka Doc L Junior) and I started professionally DJing back then,” remembers Dahle. “There was a lot of buzz about Norwegian Disco at that moment, because of Bjørn,” but Tromsø being a small city, Dahle “got to know everybody” involved in music and landed a job at Brygge Radio alongside Bjørn, Rune, and Geir Jenssen (aka Biosphere).
When and how did Techno exactly come into your life and what drew you to the genre?
What do you look for in a Techno track to make it into your sets?
Channeling that experience of touring and playing live into this record, Dave Harrington Group favour an uninhibited approach on “Pure Imagination, No Country” as they capture that raw intensity and power of a live band in the studio. Nick Murphy emphasises this energy through post production, which on their previous LP, favoured a slicker, more refined approach. Dave Harrington’s guitar takes more of a central role on the LP, where it appears mostly unprocessed in its natural state taking the stage front and centre in the production across the album.
Working with TB Arthur and people like BMG, do you think It’s changed the way you make music?
Like every DJ out there today you have an agent that takes care of your bookings, but do you have the final say where you’ll play?
Why these particular remix artists?
I’ve read that your philosophy is about exporting the Black Motion, and in extension the South African sound to the wider world.
“It’s really simple,” he explains. Some of his “family lives in Hamburg” and he would often visit them there. He became familiar with the label through the music of Kasper Bjørke and sent them the demo for “To Grieve”. Two weeks later HFN answered “yes, it’s cool, we want to release it,” but y then the idea of an album had started to take shape, and Karol would only give them the single if they released the album. The acquiesced and “Truth” was born.
The idea of dugnadsånden is also how Ra-Shidi had her start as a DJ. “I just went up to the manager at Circa and asked if I could play there, and he just said, ‘yeah sure’.” Unfortunately, Circa is coming to an end in two months, and Ra-Shidi is hoping Storgata Camping will carry the beacon for the clubbing community, with more reserved bookings but with a bigger impact to attract the larger audience to fill the dance floor.
We just can’t get too much of a good thing, and while many of us are still reeling from Mr. G performance in Jæger’s basement from last Friday, Filter Musikk sneaked in a copy of That Cold Sweat EP to keep the momentum going. It’s a limited release produced specifically for record store day and if you were in our basement, you might remember one or two tracks from his set.
Drum and Bass producers make great music, no doubt. DnB might the genre they are known for, but loads of the artists also make supercharged beats that carry on that vibe of the genre, but at a more reserved pace. Drum and Bass is a genre that co-opted the technology back in the 90s in the UK and the result was a whole new style of music that paved the way for much of today’s electronic music, beyond that singular genre. Think IDM, hardcore, dubstep, Techno… no…Yes. Drum and Bass is everywhere, you here an amen break or a saw tooth wave bass, and one label in partcular has played a significant part in spreading that gospel, Metalheadz.
The way you explained it was that the shop, Afro Synth is very much a labour of love for you. Can you tell me a bit more about what inspired you to start and run the shop?
The origins of Techno
That all changed with the New Jackson / Elliot Lion split, Cin Cin 006. The label achieved a visual identity with that release that extends up to the most recent release, Cin Cin 010. Featuring artwork from Arnau Bi Ponany, the look of the label was largely influenced by Greene’s tastes and his admiration for the aesthetic of labels like Whities and Live at Robert Johnson according to an exchange between Tillett and Greene on Thump. 
Issue no. sixteen with Broken English Club (Oliver Ho) comes to mind. Ho’s known obsession with JG Ballard and especially the novel Crash is brought to real life through the photograph on the cover. A human torso at the wheel of a car takes on the form of a mannequin (perhaps a reference to Mannequin records) in a flesh-body suit that compliments to blue hue of the automobile interior perfectly. “I wanted to embody that, mix it up a bit,” he explained in Resident Advisor. “Something like Eyes Without Face meets Crash.” He continues: “I wanted it to have this androgynous, non-sexual feeling. That’s why I used the tin body suit with medical braces. I wanted to push my design off the table top.”
“After DJing for six years, it became pretty obvious to most people that I actually was a woman, not a man”, she told XLR8R. Raving George started to “lose its purpose” and she “didn’t feel the need to hide behind a male alter ego anymore.” A changing landscape in the electronic music world and Raving George’s services were no longer required, with Charlotte de Witte free to make this an eponymous career free of prejudices. “This is who I am; I am a woman, playing and producing music, and I’m bloody well proud of it too.
Mikrometeorittene’s closest descendant is Mechanized World, but offering a much more contemporary approach to the Techno genre. I wonder if it is down to an evolution in their work, but Truls suggests not. “I feel in a way we go in a circle” and redefining the parameters between the projects has allowed them more freedom to explore these more purest forms of their cavernous electronic music interests. KSMISK is a “different vibe in general” according to Robin who also believes they should’ve separated these different sounds “years ago”.
Olav packs his computer away. The pristine cover is a mesh of colourful stickers, hinting in no subtle way to his affiliation with the Mutual Intentions crew. 
Fredrik didn’t go straight from metal to Techno however, but drumming played an integral role in th DJ prowess he displayed early on. Fredrik’s acute ear for rhythm took to DJing very naturally and as a tram goes by in the background by way of serendipitous illumination, Fredrik explains; “I can hear the tram go by and I can immediately feel the rhythm.” He “always knew what DJing was about” because of his older brothers and when he turned 18 and “started partying” DJing came from Fredrik’s desire “to perform music”. He bought “some cheap decks” and through a period of “listening to commercial, shit music” started DJing. 
Later that evening after our interview the energy is electric in Jæger’s backyard, peaking at excessive levels, and then suddenly a drop in the bottom end. A wispy melody of some unknown origins builds tension and the whole crowd lurches forward, towards the booth as one. There’s a moment of inextricable pause… it’s nearly silent… and then an exhilarated whoop from the audience as the bass and drums kick back in to the pulse of the dance floor. 
It seems however that opinion is divided between a high profile DJ like Thaemlitz and the DJs that still work at a local, subcultural level. While a DJ like Thaemlitz is openly opposed to mixed spaces as it heteronormalises the queer aspects of the culture, a younger generation of DJs like Terje Dybdahl and Timothy Wang are embracing and indeed welcoming the mixed orientation of the audiences. As more previously rigidly queer spaces and events like Kaos, overwhelmingly welcome mixed audiences, albeit retaining their queer identity, it appears that a mixed philosophy is becoming the acceptable norm. My first thought was that this might be predicated on a regional aspect since in Europe and the UK this music and its culture was first adopted by a heterosexual audience, but this doesn’t really concur with what US DJ Jason Kendig from Honey Soundsystem told me last year during an interview for Jæger’s blog. He put emphasis on the fact that he and the soundsystem’s “first experiences in dance music were not necessarily in queer spaces”.
Behind every good DJ is that urge to dig deeper and further, and in Christopher it manifested into an obsessive-compulsive habit when a couple of Joey Negro compilations came his way. “A lot of the House music I listened to came from these tracks” explains Christopher and what started in House music moved into Disco, Soul and Boogie’s more obscure corners. “When I hear a sample that I know from somewhere I get totally obsessed about finding it“, says Christopher. The DJ turned collector after a digging session in Berlin. Stumbling on the originals of some of his “favourite” House tracks, Christopher started exploring the outlying regions of Disco through his sets. “Felix (Klein) did exactly the same thing at the same time” and the two DJs “hooked up and started playing Soul, Disco and Boogie together.” Driven by his desire to find the original of a sample from a House track, and looking beyond the obvious, Christopher “started spending all (his) money on records” and Disco lead to Boogie and of course eventually Boogienetter… but first there was Diskotaket.
Give us an introduction
Meanwhile, even at the core, we in the First World internalize a slave ethic of mandatory participation in labor until old age. There is an insistence that we all “socially contribute” (in terms that dominant culture recognizes as contribution), and an incredible pressure not to “exploit” or rely upon the few social services that are available to us. Those who cannot earn enough to afford living in a First World culture are socially punished, sued, evicted, deported or incarcerated. Those who refuse to work are the most dreaded of all. Non-participation is such a taboo that the majority of us immediately rule it out as a possibility – yet who among us ever asked to be born into this shit world? Again, the sophistication and complexity of this hornet’s nest makes our own slavery appear to be something else. Something distant in time or location, or perhaps even something that has been overcome. This is delusion. And even if one refuses to identify one’s own working ethic as rooted in a model of slavery, any realist should easily be able to list off at least two or three types of unquestionable slavery within their own local economy. Just start by identifying the types of labor available to people without proper legal status or protections. Sex work is an easy one to get the list going… Meanwhile, how many “democracies” continue to have royal families? I believe that is also part of the Nordic Model.
I was raised in the US, and immigrated to Japan – both of which are cultures with nearly zero federal funding for art and music. So while I understand the logic of feeling entitled to a share of public funds created by one’s tax payments, I also am never surprised when those funds go to the most conservative cultural elements – like classical music halls, or galleries for housing old paintings. Similarly, I never forget futurism’s role as the official art of fascist Italy, or social realism’s role in totalitarian Chinese and Soviet regimes, etc. So both my sense of history and personal experience keeps me from ever being excited by news of countries that fund artists. 
Quarantine made an instant impression on the listener and whether you liked it or loathed it, it was definitely not inadmissible. Critics merely praised it, and accolades for Laurel Halo’s work came in abundance, but public opinion definitely remained divided. “The record’s not meant for everyone”, explained Halo in an interview with the Quietus shortly after the release. “(I)t’s not a pop record in the slightest so I think people expecting that would be disappointed by the vocal tone and production approach.” By the time you get to the second song on the album “Years” you would either be entranced or disenchanted by the beat-less sojourn through Halo’s emotive depths on her debut album. Although Halo’s debut EP, King Felix certainly had ears pricking up everywhere, it would be Quarantine that launched her career, making a vivid statement from the music right through to the artwork, designed by Makota Aira; a colourful and humorous display of Seppuku (ritual Japanese suicide). 
Hannevold’s moniker undoubtedly takes its name from the transliteration of the Chinese city Taxkorgan, a major stop along the original silk road with an oriental flavour informing the signature sound of this project. Bamboo flutes, oriental scales and plucked strings echo the lost sounds of an age-old culture, transposing them into a modern dialect through electronic means and re-establishing them in an avant-pop context. Merging these oriental flavours with elements of fringe-rock, Taxgorkhan creates a kind of pseudo new-age music without the pretence or irony that’s usually associated with that music.
That was around 2004/5 I guess?
Roland TR- 909
Oberheim Matrix 12
Roland TB-303
Universal Audio Apollo
A Korg Guy 
It kind of just happened. I missed working with music, and that was one of the first things I did feel along the trip. I’ve always been heavily interested in making sound recordings. A lot of people that travel, they either blog it or take pictures, and I thought for me, it would be quite natural to make mix tapes of the music we were listening to a lot on the road, and mix it with experiences on the road. 
Yes, I’m always collecting music, but it’s not in the way that you think. A lot of people have this romantic idea that I’m going to record stores every week and digging South American gems. First of all it’s not like that at all there, there are not that many record stores there apart from the big cities. I don’t have the space for it and I don’t have a record player on the road. I did consider getting a portable record player, but then I got scared, because half the time you just become a digger instead of travelling and all the other stuff that I enjoy. So I’m just collecting music online. 
You mentioned diversity there and I must admit hew first place I really picked up on an eclecticism in the booth becoming popular was at Trouw. Do you think that was a part of the legacy it left on the DJ scene?
T
I’ve been playing around on your “EP” at Jæger. 
Possibly the first EP to ever be released on PCB, Fantasy Mansion by Captain Credible has been installed Jæger this week for a preview. Part album preview, part art installation, part musical instrument, the album is now up at Jæger for your listening pleasure. Channeling elements of Aphex Twin and Otto Von Schirach, Captain Credible describes his music as “punk-electronica”. At times intense cacophony at other’s serene innocence, Fantasy Mansion is an EP that lives in its own dimension. “The physical manifestation of this EP is a circuit board with buttons, a light sensor and a headphone jack. This circuit board can be played as a musical instrument, and the user can easily compose his or her own melodies. It will also generate its own beats and melodies and even occasionally modify those made by the user. It will also synchronize to external hardware like drum machines or sequencers. This EP is therefore not a finished work, but instead a starting point for further experimentation and expression by the user.” The PCB will be up in our landing leading down to our basement, so bring a set of headphones and experience it for yourself, before it’s official release date on the 16th of June.
There’s a lot of emphasis on a visual presentation. What do you hope the visual accompaniment brings to the releases away from the music?
Karina
She’s vocal, yet fair on these issues and obviously very conscious of what’s going on in South Africa, and when I ask how much these issues inform her music she offers an example from “In Fragments”, the song Breathe, which she “wrote and dedicated to the student uprising.” The visual accompaniment to the single, a picture of two boys running away from a smoke grenade, which removed out of context looks like two younger men dancing, which Nosizwe brings back to the reality of the situation through her lyrics for Breathe. “I can’t breathe, I can’t see the sun for the light of day”, does not talk of a joyous occasion and after really studying the picture everything falls into its perspective. But as much as that song is about the student uprising, something that “deeply impacted” the artist, it also works in the context of American politics: “That song was definitely a reflection of the politics of SA, but also the United States with all the cop killings and the black lives matter movement.” Political issues are also moments of hope and encouragement for the artist, translated into acknowledgement and a deep seated respect in her music as inspired by the people of South Africa. “Hiya” from the album speaks of feminism and spirituality, not as a “pseudo philosophical” construct, but as a message of an openness that reflects an ingrained history between the people and the earth in South Africa and in the subtext it’s about empowerment. That “song was a thank you to my deeply spiritual and hippy sisterhood” explains Nosizwe. It is a “completely different access and entry to spirituality” for the singer and one that makes it “totally acceptable that you can acknowledge the ancestors on Saturday, go to church on Sunday and smoke weed on top of Devil’s peak on Sunday” with no contradiction between those spiritual elements, much like her album pieces together different, often contrasting things to make a whole.
A talented young artist from the Ivory Coast, Mr. Sompohi found himself in Rome and then Bergen on scholarships to study sculpture in the eighties. It was in Norway where he would have the significant encounter with Caroline Baardsen that brought Andrew into the world, but it’s also here where he expounded on his lifelong work; delving into the concepts of the African mask through a thoroughly western image.“He found the African mask at Sagene kirke”, explains Andrew, “where he saw the mask in the church door, and he saw the parallel between the African mask and western society.” He calls the concept Gla, shortened from Glalogy. “Gla is the manifestation of the African spirit tradition, African society”, explains Mr. Sompohi during an interlude on Oslo-Harlem, his voice a rich mixture of French accentuation and a booming African tenor. “Gla is the music, Gla is the fine art, Gla is the everything” and the artist focuses all these elements through the aesthetic of the African mask. Visually, the results are striking works of immense proportions with concepts that go deeper and deeper with each idea revealing the next in conceptually dense works of art with the mask as foreground. “There’s always something” says Andrew of his father’s work, work that’s consumed “45 years” of the artist’s life, which Andrew feels he has barely scratched the surface of.
Like Mr. Sompohi’s work that finds this parallel between western society and the African mask, Baya’s music draws parallels between various aspects of music and of course the theme of the mask through Oslo-Harlem. “I’m excited for this record to have this face” says Andrew of this visual element to the album. It will also be a theme running through the live shows I learn, as Andrew collaborated with his father and Red Bull to create masks that will form the backdrop to the stage, an experience Andrew quite “inspiring”. “It was like going to art school for a week.”
Oath is a very inconspicuous hole in the wall for the business district just shy of the centre of Shibuya. Inconspicuous in aesthetic, its entrance lies in a back street, but where traffic noise and very little else persist, Oath can be heard, long before it can be seen. It dominates (both physically and sonically) Tunnel, the more commercially aligned, Disco-orientated sister club in the basement. Walking through the plastic curtain over its threshold, Oath perpetuates the idiom “big things come in small packages”. A clunky iron-red look commands the interior, conservatively perpetuating the intimacy of its physical dimensions, trying very hard to contain the larger than life sound radiating through the walls, while mirrors play visual tricks to enlarge the actual size of the space. It’s barely gone ten in the evening and already a small dance floor has formed, DJ U-T representing Seltica is presiding over a small audience made up of a mixture of expats and locals. The swell from the single Tannoy® sub at my feet is loud but warm, never consuming nor overwhelming and although it’s a PA system rather than a hi-fi system, the sound in the small venue is incredibly controlled. DJ U-T plays a selection of Deep cuts that border on the malignant and darker sound of Techno eluding to more than what House percussive arrangement might suggest. The DJ stands behind the bar, where the relationship between the DJ and his/her audience is very much one of facilitator and not their nucleus of focus. Assuming the same position as that of a barman, any notion of performance is acutely missing, a universal reality I have found throughout Tokyo. 
Inspired by Nobu’s set and recent releases by a latent Japanese Techno talent ENA, I make my way to Technique a few days later looking for some new music records. Unlike SAYA and her peers, I am here solely for new Japanese artists, but a hearty Detroit section leaves me inclined to paw around in the compact space of the record store and stick a Rhythim is Rhythim release in my bag. Back on track however and with some help from the clerk, who hands me a formidable bundle of personal picks, I make my way to a listening station looking for something that jumps out at me and my personal tastes. The man next to me is bobbing his head to Robin C and Omar V’s Full Pupp split, but my bundle is solely made up of Japanese artists and labels. Immediately, titles from Britta, Gonno and Iori jump out at me, and I can’t help but fall for the latter’s second cut, “Ripple” on Less is Techno’s ( a new French label) second only release. I flip past some other familiar titles and what I come across for the most part is a sound that is reminiscent of U-T’s set from OATH. It’s a Deep House sound for the most part, extorted to its bare essentials, loitering in the melancholy fringes of Techno. A peculiar antithesis to the more upbeat, cut & paste sound of Deep House in Europe at the moment, the Japanese interpretation, seems more inclined to follow the production aesthetics of Techno, devoid of the sample-based formula distilled from producers coming from a Hip-Hop background, with machines creating new luscious landscapes from unidentified sources. I grab a melodious deep two-tracker from EFDRSD, an outlier example of this sound, featuring an Inner Science track on the B-side that entwines you in its sweet melodic prose like an artificial intelligence learning to communicate for the first time. 
Funny story: I once stayed at that Hilton when I missed a connecting flight, and with 5 hours to spare I thought it pertinent to go clubbing. With live at Robert Johnson still fairly unknown back then and cocoon on the other side of the country, I thought I’d ask the concierge for advice, which naturally led me to a vacuous Hard House club in the city centre, spitting me back into 1997. The lesson there is, never ask a concierge for clubbing tips. But I digress, back to Phillip Lauer and Frankfurt. Yes, Frankfurt is home to the Sven Väth-designed Coccon, and ATA’s Robert Johnson, two very significant players in club music today, albeit from very different perspectives.
JS:
Amazing! I can picture just the two of you doing the vocalist headset nod producer thumbs up music video thing that I reckon everyone was doing back then. hehe.. Wish i was there!! And to be honest my biggest dream has always been to roll down the streets of Manhattan in 1981, wearing nothing but rollerskates and a ghettoblaster…. well well, i had my own style in Oslo back then. 
VV: 
Rave-Enka (Ravi Burnsvik from the Fantastiske To) is on the cusp of releasing his sophomore effort on Paper Recordings, following 2015’s Påfulgen. It continues the machine aesthetic set forth on that release where musical sensibilities are transposed to the machine aesthetic, bridging the gap between genres to find Rave-Enka’s instinctive talent behind the tracks. It sees Rave-Enka go from strength to strength through three tracks with a polished production hand and an effervescent energy. In the following article we go track by track with Ravi while you listen to Rett-i-Kroppen in this exclusive stream.
