I sob. I tried to scrape a split squirrel off  the windshield wiper in the red emergency light. I turned down the car’s sound system, which had otherwise been blasting continuously – Wagner had spurred me into a race with myself.

“Hello, my name is Roger Christensen – I just hit a squirrel. I’m sending my coordinates.” He trembled, crackling in the receiver. “No, it’s completely dead.”

The insurance will pay for a new windshield. I drove on carefully, nodded to the guard at the electric wire fence, looked into the pupil-scanner, then lowered a hatch to an elevator, drove many floors down below the surface – until I reached my crew, who as always sat apathetically in a light blue sofa arrangement under a wall decoration with a knight’s glove embracing lightning watching Godard or football. I pick at a plate of dry vegetarian tapas.

My pilot David hummed along to a hair-metal ballad – probably Bon Jovi – as navigator Paul picked his nose – which was uncomfortable for Kim, our EWO, who had dyed her hair with henna recently. “Nice hair, ginger – sorry I’m late…” The team looked up from a Superbowl rerun and exclaimed: “500 dollars in the penalty box” in unison. What the hell, someone has to pay for their snotty brats’ pizza at our next summer party.

The alarm goes off – but it’s not the fire alarm. It’s a high-frequency pulsating howl, I routinely grab a napkin, roll it and block my ear, then we grab our helmets and head towards the elevator: “Damn, another damn exercise. Good thing I’ll be retiring in 2 months.”

When we hit the dark surface, a cart is ready – we are dropped off in front of a ladder leading up to a stinking cockpit. I strap myself in – synchronize my system with Kim’s, we sit tandem on the lower deck of the aircraft without windows in front of banks of screens. The engines roar, we roll down the concrete, pushing the 300-ton heavy plane upwards.

Kim’s screens doesn’t update. “Have you heard any rumors about this exercise?” She smiles – “It’s probably just the usual gas – a few air refuelings over Greenland – and then back home – or a round trip from Texas to Bornholm and back?” The captain curses on the radio. Finally, my screens update – I see 12 missiles under the wings and two antiquities and some drones in the bomb bay. WTF? I beep the captain: “Can you explain what we’re doing?”

“Code purple!” He mumles gravely. The purple procedure requires all radios to be turned off now, so we cannot be influenced by false AI-generated orders or emit traceable signals. I look over at Kim, but her screen doesn’t show any course directions, only sensors picking up radar, radio, and infrared signals around us, mostly civil traffic, tele- smog and mobile masts.

“Any idea what’s going on?” Kim looks worriedly at me: “I haven’t heard anything – but I don’t keep up with the news anymore – my best guess is a training mission with the old stockpile, maybe a show of force parade run against China or near Ukraine?” She points  at my screen, which shows our cargo: “Fortunately, we don’t have to bomb anyone today – those antique weapons are massive – maybe there’s an airshow with a Cold War theme somewhere in the southern states?”

We press the full auto menu and eat our pre-packaged sterile lunch boxes and doze off as if there were sleeping pills in them. We wake up when the fuselage is hit by a fuel hose from a massive tanker drone. The screen shows we circle over the the North Sea now.

The captain has placed a red box in our laps. We open the boxes – there are 5 pills – probably some caffeine and valium to increase our stamina on long voyages – they usually feels quite pleasant. But there’s also a chip, we break it open to find a hidden code inside.

We enter the code into the terminal, which then show Severomorsk on a satellite map – a northern submarine base near Murmansk, only 1500 km away. My stomach churns as the plane automatically goes down to treetop level over the almost endless Norwegian forest.

I put on my helmet and fasten the seatbelts again as everything starts to vibrate and jolt around. Through the headphones, I can hear the radar signals grazing our heavy iron eagle, despite endless modifications, still designed in the 1950s.

Kim activates the new jammers, my Chinese digital wristwatch dies. I guess she just fried all non-NATO chips within a 20 km radius. Even though the wind resistance and machines are loud, screams from the pilot’s deck overpower everything. I crawl up the ladder but get blinded, put on sunglasses that don’t work, and then hit a button that releases the cockpit curtain. I throw myself flat and shout: “Gain altitude – incoming shockwave.”

I crawl over to the pilots, fumble for the morphine and inject needles into their thighs, then drag their limp bodies down to the rest berth at the back of the cockpit so I can strap them securely. Then, the shockwave hits. It’s as if everything in the cabin is boiling for a few seconds, as we are pushed through the sound barrier with a blast, the wings creak and flutter like a seagull. Fuck.

Kim pops her head up on the pilot’s deck: “I’ve put everything on full auto and synchronized our screens with the cockpit, we might have to take over the mission.” We take over the pilots’ seats and cautiously roll up the curtain. The light is strange. We stare fearfully at the screens, but they update slowly – thankfully, a “mission aborted” message pops up – phew…then a chilling “await new target.”

The plane banks and goes down to treetop level over an endless snowy landscape – we see radar tracks ahead on the map, then our SRAM missile shoots out from under the left wing, accelerating to Mach 3 and disappearing a few hundred kilometers into the horizon.

“Fuck, the AI has taken over – maybe because I’m not in my correct seat…” We see a bright ball of light at the end of our missile’s trajectory, about 120 km away. “There goes some of Russia’s air defense.” The EMP radiation has significantly reduced all electronic activity outside the plane, but the Geiger counter starts to click like a woodpecker.

We turn the plane so we can surf on the shockwave from our missile’s explosion. The AI takes over again, and as the dark clouds below us disperse, an incinerated city is revealed. Kim starts sobbing: “While we were asleep, the fools fought a nuclear war…”

I try not to think about what it looks like on the home front right now – and decide to try to squeeze her clammy hand, as we can’t hug strapped into our seats. Maybe we should take more pills now – before the others stop working?

“I guess we’re circling around, waiting for the satellites to see what’s left of Russia – so we can finish them off…” Kim clenches her teeth now. A couple of missiles drop from the pylon under the left wing and fly left and right – probably to suppress the ground air defense systems and scorch everything living around them. At the end of their trajectories a few hundred kilometers away, small suns ignite. We still have 9 missiles left under the wings. I dare not think about what’s in the bomb bay.

Kim starts pounding the keyboard as if in a bad movie where the protagonist hits the steering wheel of a car in impotence. I consider laying her down, as she could compromise the mission, but get distracted as our two blind colleagues in the back start moving, so I give them morphine again, then water drops.

A gray haze covers the landscape, the sun’s rays cannot penetrate. Hundreds of smoke columns rise towards the stratosphere. Our GPS no longer works, the satellites were probably smashed by the enormous EMP discharges from detonating nuclear weapons and various ABM and anti-satellite weapons.

We’ve been flying for over 12 hours now…I guess the first wave of submarine-based Trident missiles has neutralized the Russian missile silos – hope they didn’t have time to react to the radar and shoot back. I silently hope we also managed to eliminate their submarine-based nuclear missiles before they could destroy my homeland. My guess is that we’re now waiting for coordinates for Russia’s mobile systems in Siberia – it would make good sense to boil them now. I jab Kim in the thigh with morphine, she must not disturb me now with humanistic sentimentality.

I cruise down to treetop level again, it’s feels like a giant rollercoaster. The plane automatically releases flares and chaff to distract shoulder-launched heat-seeking missiles, as our sensors have detected life down there.

The plane jerks as the bomb bay doors open, completely changing our aerodynamic profile. The camera shows a city and automatically drops a 4-ton barrel-shaped B53 bomb, which immediately deploys a huge parachute – so we might have a chance to get away. The timer delays the explosion for 240 seconds – at a speed of 800 km/h, I can only get about 50 km away from the detonation. I try to override the automation, turn on all self-defense systems, gain altitude, and push the throttle to the max.

The rear-facing camera shows the bomb standing on its flat nose with a long parachute tail on the roof of a factory-like building surrounded by residential areas. I pray the bomb’s timer is set for the longest possible delay. I put earplugs on under the headphones and cover my eyes with a sleep mask.

Even though we have our backs turned to a fireball with a 2.3 km radius over 50 kilometers away, everything turns white in the cockpit. Then all liquids boil – thankfully, our fuel is in fireproof tanks, but our drinking water evaporates. The rear-facing camera melts, and the tail rudder gets stuck. Then the shockwave comes. Balckout.

I wake up and vomit on my boots. Concussion – and a ringing in my ears. Kim is bleeding from the mouth but twitches. A smell of burnt flesh comes from the berth behind the cockpit. I press the terminals and find that only the the old system that determines star positions works, a map appears. I do a search. We have enough fuel to reach an island in the middle of the Baltic Sea, in NATO territory, I fly manually and glide over an intact cliff landscape.

The Geiger counter is silent, so I head towards a civilian airport where we might be able to refuel – or at least where they have doctors, water, and food. During the approach, I see a burnt-out Russian Hind attack helicopter surrounded by what looks like NATO forces at the control tower.

Damn. I had hoped for a paradise island with a functioning analog telephone booth so I could call home. Naive dream – I think the shit hit the fan globally.

The runway is a bit too short for us, as I brake, the rear landing gear punctures, the rubber is probably melted – we end up with the nose only 30 cm from a concrete wall. I reverse and turn the plane back into starting position, take Kim’s pistol, I’ve always been wary of having only a single handgun on foreign ground.

No reason to move the rest of the crew until I know the area is safe. There’s a civilian waving about 200 meters away – he seems friendly. I put everything on high alert so I can start quickly, then lower the ladder.

It’s strange to be on the ground again after so many hours in the air, I stumble over my numb legs. The civilian comes closer, wearing a blue sailor sweater and a bizarre beanie.

He helps me up and stammers something resembling a Dutch dialect: “Hello new American friend, are you ok?”

“I could use water – and a doctor, please…”

He leads me through the empty terminal to a vending machine with canned soda, but my credit card doesn’t work, so I smash the window with a fire ax and then fold my jacket so I can use it to carry a bunch of cans of water and coke.

The sweater guy looks frightened – maybe it would have been more elegant to ask if he could lend me some coins. He utters some gibberish to a rentacop who shows us a van forward – we hoist the limp pilots into the trunk – the rentacop promises to take them to the hospital nearby. I want to go with the rest of the crew, but the last man must never leave a loaded plane.

I thank sweater guy for his help – he tells me he’s a potter and points to a small house close to the runway. “Hungry?”

I wake up Kim, who is silent and in shock. We go into sweater guy’s thatched house and sit down at a plank table in his pottery workshop – jazz plays through a tube amplifier, and a crackling fireplace warms the room, he opens a bottle of schnapps – I don’t feel like it – and then serves smoked herring with scrambled eggs on homemade rye bread with seeds that are about to crack my teeth.

Kim finally stammers: “Any news?”

“No, radio and the internet are down – but our island was attacked by Russian commandos in helicopters… they tried to control the airport.” He pauses for a moment… “but they underestimated our national guard. We’ll bury the poor souls tomorrow – or burn their corpses…”

Kim bangs her head down the table and sobs. Our polite host shows us to a annex with spiders, a double bed, wilted flowers in quirky vases, and a colorful thick handwoven bedspread.

I look out onto a beautiful cliff landscape that reminds me of Scotland. We awkwardly hug and sob – Kim brushes against my groin, but my penis feels like an ice shrimp – maybe it’s her fake red hair. Neither of us dares to say that we might have killed a few million people – and that we might have to fly on and continue the doomsday work – even though our families, everyone we know, yes, our entire world – is probably gone. I lie awake and all the possible events that triggered this war spins in my head…russian first strike, technical glitch, tactical nuclear exchange in Ukraine, AI takeover?

In the distance, I see the wind turbines turning – they’re turning towards the east. After we listen to some crackling vinyl staring at the ceiling  trying to sleep, the Geiger counter starts to crackle.

We get the sweater-pottery-artist indoors – I seal the windows with duct tape and block the extractor fan with plastic bags. We play chess in the bedroom, then I go to check the fridge for food. The kitchen sink is filled with long white hair – the pottery man must have combed himself and sits bald in the sofa, reading Celine with a bottle of cognac. I spare him the full story.

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Some African-American pioneers in Detroit feel overlooked today – in a world dominated by feminist Instagram neo-trance and sponsored nepo kids throwing cakes in the faces of ravers at stadiums using lame premixed playback – or Beyonce claiming the entire house/LGBT+/club culture on her latest album.Clearly, the veterans are tired of the idiots making money dancing in their footsteps. Clearly, Detroit techno comes from Detroit – but does techno come from Detroit? Is techno originally Black? To talk about race-related origins in a music genre based on sampling is absurd. What about “I Feel Love” Donna Summer & Giorgio Moroder’s prototype hit? To claim techno as originated frem a specific race or city is historical revisionism…and gatekeeping?

Techno is not mine or belongs to a certain segment, or are the product of Japanese drum machines – techno is more than the sum of its parts – techno is ours – in bodies and brains that is shaken when techno is played in a room. Techno is an experience that momentarily suspends time and space, and thus geography. Some will argue that it can also suspend race, gender, and class for a second…a sonic utopia!

LISTEN TO MY NON-PURIST RETRO-FUTURISTIC CLASS TOURIST NON BINARY UTOPIAN TECHNO HERE

Some would argue that techno is not the music of the future anymore: there are rules in techno now – its a almost nostalgic genre – nostalgia for a lost vision of the future, now reduced to soul-less overcompressed e-arobic dance tools?

It feels a bit nostalgic to talk about origins and location in a ever evolving internet-based global electronic music genre. Isn’t techno just in the head and body of the dancer and listener, us – across continents and races?

Africa’s funk is important – Kraftwerk is obviously inspired by James Brown’s rhythm section, adding almost romantic European melodies on top – and sound design tools that was only available through technology only available in conservatories and expensive electronic music studios. Detroit is clearly inspired by the resulting early elegant romantic synthpop, sci-fi and European conceptual industrial music. Even proto-techno mutated in all directions – and now we have the internet in our pocket…

For the purists, the party officially starts with Cybotron’s “Alleys of Your Mind” from 1981, which sold 15,000 copies, and A Number Of Names’ “Sharevari”. House finds its nascent form with ‘On & On’ by Jesse Saunders & Vince Lawrence in 1983. But in 1979 Casio merged calculator and synth:

LISTEN TO MY NON-PURIST RETRO-FUTURISTIC CLASS TOURIST NON BINARY UTOPIAN TECHNO HERE

I can just off the top of my head mention a lot of things that are techno – before Detroit-techno: cheap Japanese and American music technology, German avant-garde and tape manipulation, Indian drone music, Eno’s ambient, Lee Scratch Perrys dubs, Zapp, Yello, James Brown’s funk, disco, Afrobeat, found sounds from film and media, Belgian New Beat, Italo disco, Giorgio Moroder, Electro, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Flash’s “Adventures of the Wheels of Steel” & Steinski, Pink Floyd, Kraut, Industrial, Suicide and DJ megamix culture. Bernie Worrel’s synths, Sweet’s “Fox on the Run” intro, Who’s “Baba O’Rieley” intro, Pink Floyd’s “On the Run,” Pierre Schaeffer’s tape manipulations from 1942 and onwards, cassette tape pause buttons, Fuzzy, Herbie Hancock’s fuzak, original tribal music – I can go on…

Here’s my personal – strongly generalizing early techno history told in music:

LISTEN TO MY NON-PURIST RETRO-FUTURISTIC CLASS TOURIST NON BINARY UTOPIAN TECHNO HERE

Techno: my early years

LISTEN TO MY NON-PURIST RETRO-FUTURISTIC CLASS TOURIST NON BINARY UTOPIAN TECHNO HERE

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Morten Vammen: “I suppose I have to drop some pompous nonsense – its tradition in music journalism – but please don’t ask me about influences or childhood stuff….” Vammen was one of the first to release acid/techno in Denmark in the early 90s, but preferred to  be invisible outside the underground – the focus is music. LISTEN HERE.

“I really hate genres – but I tend to use “Electronica” as it is more open that “techno”. One new thing is that people don’t care about the music itself anymore, but about who makes the music. The public is more interested in celebrities and how a certain artist is more famous — than the music itself – pop music is a kind of reality show now. It changed the way the audience relates to music, its about style signals and parasocial relation and most listeners have no transcendental connection to music and its quality anymore, they just wants the glamour. “Electronica” doesn’t want to be part of it, because it’s not about humility, or arrogance, it’s not a posture ′′we don’t want to be famous, we’re underground”. None of that. “Electronica” is about the human soul, not about the appearance. “Electronica” has values, teaches to live the moment, work together, and especially to respect the next and look to the future, it’s about being open in the now for everything thats possible. “Electronica” is an international language that represents freedom, because of its roots in rebellion and mind expansion. “Electronica” makes people feel good about themselves.”

ENJOY THE NEW ALBUM HERE

As a kid Vammen went to music conservatory and made industrial funk tapes and played in weird bong bands and started to DJ back in the 1980s, then he made the first Danish danish acid/techno album as AUM, toured the states in the 90s, composed a lot of jingles  and soundtracks and a more genre blending second solo album, A*A*A.

Then he became a writer, directed adds, documentaries and music videos – but he still bangs out tracks for fun and ghostwrites behind the scenes. Fast forward to present time, where the lockdown made him dig up old files: “Nobody make fucked up dubby post acid anymore…I had to release my archives as well as new stuff thru my label Sofarave.”I met him in his home studio playing with his charming daughter and some shimmering pads from a tall retro rack:

Tell me about the making of the first AUM album? “Imagine the 80s –  no sample banks, genre norms – and no internet …DIY times…and a high learning curve and absolutely no media focus…I  made a lot of tapes for fun influenced by Tackhead, Public Enemy and Throbbing Gristle – some avant-funk  shit. Then the more danceable Detroit, acid and Frankfurt sounds arrived and I blended everything in my home studio via simple hardware samplers and analoge trash. Then I took a stack of DAT tapes to Anders Bonde, a master of one of the first harddisc editors – the waveframe – and we made a puzzle of tracks forming a long DJ set in one accelerating flow – and released it on EBM label Decay.”

“Techno was not really an album format then, as most electronic music was long 12″ tools on vinyl for DJs. It was fun to play live back then – people were confused – as the rave scene where split into minimal, Goa and EBM back then, so people was confused –  I made a personal hybrid.”

The hard second album?  “A*A*A: connoisseurs cornucopia  was released in 1996. After the first Aum album I made some tracks for Lars Von Trier – so the tv and film industry became my main clients and I paused my DJ activities – the club scene was getting nasty and filled with e-robic bikers and fashionfiends on coke and the music suffered. I locked myself into my new studio. The A*A*A album was made with Cubase – and post-jungle chopping was hot. Its a more diverse collection of tracks – there are some jazzy breakbeats and D&B as well as bits from my soundtracks, ads and fashion shows –  tracks for clients like Lars Von Trier, Søren Fauli, Franz Pandal, Kelloggs, Braun, Sygesikringen Danmark, Omo, Vaseline, Ikea, Masterfoods, Lego, PBS, HK, DR, B&O, Psychocowboy, Lowe, Carlsberg, Metroexpress, DR, Nestea,  DR2, Spon Diego & Mads Nørgaard – so the album is also a catalogue of my ideas regarding those brands musical profiles. There are some harder “classic AUM” tracks om the album as well. I edited it in Sweden on 2CI sweating – I cant recomend it. Thomas Erhard made the cover art.” “The  new  album, Perfumes Volume 1 is an ambient collection – I toy with a new edge style, not hippie-healthy new age, this is darker and weirder soundtracks and drones for work, meditation and rituals.” “The AUM archives vol.1, is  drum orientated funky uptempo instrumentals that will appeal to DJs and film directors – as well as a lot of people that find pop too shallow and jazz, rock and classical dated – and techno too static.”

The second albums working title was survivor? “Yes, I survived a lot of harsh stuff in the electronic subcultural scenes and avantgarde ghettos the last 35 years – a lot of friends went insane, used drugs and got used by drugs, became boring, sold out or committed suicide. I somehow survived all the bullshit – making music is a nice way to heal when reality is too evil – music is a mental survival tool – and a pleasure. I could also have titled it AUM 2 or AUM flashbacks, its heavy on the 128 bpm 303 mutations.” “Perfumes & Artifacts Volume 3 album is a blend of the dubwise styles hinted at on the A*A*A album – and more New Edgy ambient drone stuff parred with a post-triphop dash.” Rave Museum Vol.4 is a more dubbby acid rave collection that blends well with The AUM archives vol.1 It also contains a fresh ambient drone and a downtempo beat track. Enjoy volume 4  here…

What’s the  Sofarave label concept? I try to make music that enhance or relight what’s around you so reality becomes a meditative adventure. I’m a designer of atmospheres, I make sonic perfume that can be used as mental tools, smoke and mirrors or enjoyable, safe drugs.

“The corona quarantine made me dig up old, raw files – and instead of remixing and polishing, I just released what felt right now. The obsession with the new is a trap, superficially things change fast – but the basics remain the same. Some of the tracks date back to the late 1980s. I attempt to create a kind of musical scenery which is not entirely “primitive”, not entirely “future” but some place and moment impossible to locate, either chronologically or geographically.”

“I toy around with the idea of a “Sofa Rave” genre – a kind of energized organic ambient rave, but without the formulaic arrangements and stupid drops. Mainstream club culture is horrible now, so I like to dream up alternative scenarios – I try to make undefined music for new undefined spaces, new emerging undefined situations and emotions  – I try not to make site or time-specific music – I like music that bring new light to different scenarios, music that could work in a home situation, on headphones, in a forest or on a boat, as a ritual tool, in the back room of a club or as a film score – the only place it won’t work is on chart radio – but is anyone listening to that anymore? “ Listen to the APPENDIX E.P. here  “The lockdown EP is an exploration of 2020s new mental landscapes: “Upper” is a uplifting hypnotic meditative tool made on a mix of analog, digital and modular hardware. Feel it. “#Metoo” is an ambient ballet for the new post rave world. “Virus” toys around with vocals, and the EP ends in the blissful drum-free void of “Safespace”. The EP is an expansion of the Sofarave paradigm – hypermodern music to take the position of dusty jazz, clinical classical and boring adult rock – sonic drugs and perfumes for  all situations, mediation and film.” Listen to the Lockdown E.P. here

Soundtracks vol.7: “sofa tourism or the missing link between Basic Channels dub side projects, trap, 90s triphop and Blade Runner? Its as if downtempo stoner music and dark ambient had a kid who ran away from the yoga classes and the club dance floor into a new undefined territory. The album starts out with a mutation of gongs and discreet beats, then swirls into a breathtaking cloud of great beauty. More floating textures follow until you start nodding to at Princeish beat, before the 303 hits. It continues the style of the rave museum album: “Krauterblut” is a nod to German 1970s postrock cloned into house. The manic “Happytalism” stay uptempo with 909 drums and a weird raw arpeggio. The album ends with “Betabux Brad is a Doomer at Heart” – listen to an ambient drama here..
“The Insider E.P. is revisiting a mutant dubby universe spiked with chopped breaks, punchy electro-boogie, and echoes of 80s NYC and 90s Berlin recorded as heard from a womb. The tracks mix neon nostalgia with hope for new magic post-lockdown social orgies.”  Listen here Listen to CLUB MIRAGE hereListen to FLASHBACKS here

LIsten to AMNESIA here

Listen to Hyperthymesia here

Listen to Elite Bubble here

Listen to Bliss here

Studio tactics? “I prefer to start from scratch and build a unique studio setup – and a hybrid of genres – for each track as I try to remove references and fix points, I prefer a more organic structure and arrange beyond drop fixated body music or hookline fetishism. Proces still fascinate me – even after 35 years in studios. The proces is so random – you can have a perfect idea, mood and setup – and work a lot on a track that ends in the bin. Or vise versa, you can be depressed and blank and bang out a killer in 20 minutes on a rusty crap workstation, like you’re channeling something.”

“I try to dance and use a lot of inputs apart from the mouse and keyboard –  music is a body thing, and I try to avoid studio work that feels like building a ship in a bottle. I even dusted off my old MPC and got some modular stuff and a weird deep 2000s Roland synth up from the cellar, to avoid eccesive screen time. Next up is the W30 I used on my first record, I like its limitations, there is a kind of zen to it compared to the vast laptop options – but hardware eats time. I avoid beeing an architect – Im more like a stripper in the studio. I try to make something that affects in a more abstract way, as I find the emotional palette in modern music too compressed.”

The future? “Watch out for an online mixtape album with some tracks containing uncleared samples – I even got a chilly boom bap mix – and an old live and dj sets on mixcloud.  I got some new  tools I have been waiting for that finally is available.  I will also start a collaborative album with the cream of the crop from my musical journey. And hopefully I will kill my angst for vocals and start to sing on the next albums?”

Do you still DJ? “I prefer to play conneisseur clubs, private parties, events, outdoor stuff and art openings – so I can sleep before 02 – I still love to see how people react to sound and test new tracks and just party.”

Inquire for soundtracks, remixes, live performances and dj sets here

Peter Smith

The post Vammens soundtrack catalogue appeared first on BLAZAR.

Corona cleared most dancefloors, and turned DJs into streaming knob twiddlers. But just before the collapse, techno peaked – not artistically – but as corporate festival fodder, e-arobic muzak for the masses, who where fed up with anachronistic indierock, nihilist logo trap and bombastic shameful childish EDM. But is techno dead? We have collected some visual evidence:

The crowds finally found pleasure in more mature electronica in the good old safe Detroit/Berlin/Roland tradition. But the new heros – djs like Solomun, Nina Krawitz, Drumcode & Charlotte de Witte broke away from the often black blank bedroom image of stealth-mode classic techno bedroom auteurs, they have no problem playing cheesy techhouse, uptempo prog trance and 90s classics and being open and happy about it – dancing for days like coked strippers. The “real” purist techno underground – who prefer to buy rare vinyl from obscure imprints on discogs, discuss remakes of 80s drum machines, noddle modular synths and play for exclusive crowds of trainspotters retro-nirvana was under treat so they reacted  – and nailed the new parasitic bizztech industry sucking the blood from  their “true” subculture – so the anti-biztech meme was born as a comment on the following bizztech characteristics: A/ The influx of rich kid DJs using PR, ghostwriters and SoMe managers etc. on the techno scene. B/ The oversaturated EDM scene needed to “go back to the roots” for a more adult, less gimmicky sound and hihjacked techno C/ The need for novel sounds for safe mass spaces for intake of horrible dance aerobic drugs  D/ general greed trend – invest in PR and recoup on the festivals or thru sponsor deals E/ In biotech ghostwriters making enormous amounts of  over-compressed loopbank based semi minimal/trancy festival ready tracks for sale online for instagram-strong headliners with Spotify and beatport playlist insider connections… F/ A lot of idealist dis sucked dry from the cocaine “honeymoon is over syndrome” G/ Corporate style marketing, weekly posed pro gram photos, dull generic obvious music, hardware producers out of touch… H/ Bizztech using Paris Hilton as a role model, not Jeff Mills.  I/ Bizztech exposed the “techno underground” as a parallel universe to the backpack goden age rap continuum – 90s retro is king. J/ Bizztech artists is paying 5-10k for a front cover and bribing journalists = mainstream modern pop music business and marketing ethics – now applied to techno. Now biztech is popping up in the dance music press, the blogosphere and the worst techno memes ever group on facebook, where a funny dude called Mitch Davis use it to promote his satirical music videos.And the next step is killing of the old elite via #metoo: Erick Morrilio committed suicide after accusations, and manic Detroit icon Derrick May is getting slandered – get the popcorn ready – immortal techno is about to turn around once more in its grave. So back to the bedroom, back to the pirate bunker party where it all started. Even the “Mozart of techno” – Aphex Twin –  felt the crisis, and released a mashup of a remake of a 1982 synth – the sh101 – that – dispite its clever new feature – having a separate sound for each key – a first on a monosynth – is more collectable fanboy retro merchandise than 2020 music tool – please make some software James… The high priest of cosmic minimalism, Jeff Mills, is not shy on merc – skateboards, car key chains and even a very rock n roll leather jacket… To top it off, parts of the black community feels techno has been hijacked by whites. As far as I remember, US techno was inspired by YMO, Yello, Suicide and Kraftwerk – as well as Japanese instruments and scifi. Techno – like all music – used to be ours. Reclaim all music – corona killed the cash element – nobody except Spotifys CEO can life off streaming. As always, blame it on technology – in the beginning, of techno – one had to physically find weird vinyl and expensive music machines designed for jazz and rock and abuse them beyond the manual, learn how to record, master, package and print the result – to a micro-scene using fax machines – WITHOUT ANY YOUTUBE TUTORIALS or manuals or internet! Now you can take any phone or laptop and slap some loops together and put it online in a day from scratch – tracks are like coins in a online streamning casino, and the real goal is live dj jobs, free drugs and sponsor deals. So maybe we should go back to enjoy, play around with and compose music for fun again?

Vammen: 7 new releases

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In today’s transient net-driven culture, where the secret stuff you like now is aborted as bad taste as soon as it hits the mainstream tomorrow, it’s nice to go back to the classics:Red planet: LBH-6251876 / Listen to this in a poly Prada shirt and parachute boots sipping ginger juice watching NBA on a projector

Public Enemy: Fear of a black planet / Listen to this breakdancing, burning cop cars in Jordans and urban camoflage spaying qoutes from Malcom X biography as a clever fucking wigger.

In the 80s, rap became a recorded product, as cutups of the hole history of music flashed by with a cornucopia of slang on top. The Bomb Squad production crew took that game to the next level, and peaked on the third album, Fear of a black planet.  Music history was hacked and atmospheric layers of atonal noise pulled from funk classics, quotes from Black Panther speeches, heavy 808 sub-bas kicks, off-center beats, militant drum rolls and horn blasts made a overload of sonic information and builded a monumental soap box for Chuck D to unfold his wordplay sounding like a triumphant basketball anchorman stiving to raise the consciousness of the masses. As the sugar on the often bitter pill, Flaver Flav was his crackhead clownish antidote. Topics include Hollywood, drugs, police violence and race/class – but in a new humorous funky arty format. The sound was dense and raw, made of samples from scratched 70s vinyl thru 8 bit Emu and 12 bit Akai samplers mixed on a broken analoge Neve mixer by hand, no computer – with absolutely no dead air – making a cinematic experience unmatched even today. Even stoner Spike Lee used Public Enemy as soundtrack to “Do the rigth thing”\’b4s final riot scenes. The album is the peak of the sampladelic era, and as the lawyers smelled money and stopped this creative metod spurred on by a oversampled James Brown, unwillingly provider clones and spare parts for the hiphop industry. Its estimated that today this album would cost Public Enemy double the shelf price pr. album just in sample and publishing clearances. Fear of a black planet was the crossroad where hiphop turned into adult danceable retro-futuristic avant-garde noise, hail the prophets of rage! Jon Hassell: Dream Theory in Malaya: Fourth World Volume Two / Listen naked in a silky waterbed, stoned in the twilight, trying to read Kilton Stewart´s book on the Senoi tribe. After his highly lucrative work building sound cathedrals for the awful Jesus-freak Bono, producer Brian Eno is seen as a pretentious sellout villain coasting in posh galleries. But in the 70s he was the godfather of hip, and after his glamourous work with Roxy Music, he took pride in inventing ambient music (John Cage..Terry Riley?), our generations answer to classical, or muzak? Ambient is music with beats, vocals, solos and even ego removed, long floating abstract often soothing tape-loop soundscapes to tint reality for background play, made using vast amounts of synthetic reverb and echo, like very white dub with no soul or body. Eno explored this anti-rock concept for a couple of albums, but he needed a lead voice to foreground his vinyl landscapes: enter  trumpet magician Jon Hassel, who already crafted sonic fictions on albums evoking a unreal ethnic futuristic “fourth world” headspace since the mid 70s. A couple of sensual masterpieces, Possible musics 1-2 was the de facto soundtrack in the 80s to play stoned and naked making your bed a space capsule floating downstream in a uncharted area. Eno then reversed-engineered these tactics and used them on nerdy and clubfooted post-punk Talking Heads – kidnapping them to the same Compass Point studios in Nassau Grace Jones used, crafting their only masterpiece, Remain in light – adding a more african trance rhythm approach and the hallmark spacious treatments to their arty-farty cut-up ramblings with cameos from Hassel, who continued to churn out high quality maps for nonexistent exotic futures in a unreal ahistorical places like a reverb soaked white Miles Davis but without any “real” instrumentation. Later in the 1980s, The Orb and the chill-out generation reinvented ambient using turntables and samplers as a meta-pastiche on every vinyl collectors beatles stoner gems, and now, even in the extremely conservative jazz world, Hassells proceeded tone is widely imitated, as ambient sound now is a Hollywood stable, but as always, check the originals. Psychic TV: Dreams less sweet / Listen to this a trance ritual fully erect inspired by  Crowley´s “Magic In Theory and Practice” , wearing a grey catolic shirt (shaved head optional) or during weapon training.

Someone must make a big Hollywood movie of Psychic TV´s main man Genesis P.Orrigde’s life: first, he was a fluxus hippie making avant-garde performance body-art, before he turned into the evil Elvis of his self invented Industrial music genre, spearheaded the mythologic Throbbing Gristle. They provided the most uneasy listening ever, taking stoner drone space post-rock into a bad trip diving into our collective nightmares, historical failures and primitive impulses, in a macabre cabaret of noise, toying with images of fascism. Genesis P.O. assumed his preacher role, evoking daemons like a modern Alister Crowley, chanting mantras and barking army commands in an attempt to discipline the audience into a critical, higher consciousness. TG split at the peak of success due to internal erotic tensions, and G.P.O. regrouped with master sound alchemist Peter Sleazy Christofferson, conning a huge advance from major label Warner, crafting a string-ladden album verging on muzak, but filled with subliminal occult references. This was the fundraising and propaganda wing of their new Temple of Psychic Youth (TOPY), turning fanboys into a uniformed chaos magic global network, receiving personal ritual instructions for magical tantric sigils, performed on the 23 every month worldwide. Their second album, Dreams less sweet, is the tour de force, recorded in locations chosen for their occult history with a dummy head instead of a microphone for a 3-d effect. Quotes from cut-up beat godfather and author William S. Burroughs, imprisoned hippie cult leader Charles Manson and suicide cult shaman Jim Jones make a tapestry of ideas soundtracked by oboe, wolf howls, uzi and cellos, shifting between bittersweet folkish emulator pop and naturalistic musique concrete weirdness, complete with tibetan thighbone solos. After this, Peter Sleazy Christofferson formed Coil, intensify his sound design and post-gay psychedelic journey until his untimely death. G.P.O. transformed into a third gender, complete with silicon and steel teeth. Go investigate yourself. Yello: Stella/ Listen to this puffing cigars in a tailor-made suit in a highstreet gallery, browsing thru painting and models with a black book with own poetic musings in inner pocket near your heart or lounge on a vintage yacht feeling lonely reading Lyotard.

Yello is the Swiss maximalist cousin to the dry stark minimalism of Kratwerk. Founded by conceptual artist, painter and writer Dieter Meier and the lovely named sonic genius Boris Blank, they continue to churn out lush dramatic ear movies using the broadest of brushes. Blank is self-taught non-musican, but a master of equalizing and space and the daft playful collage, juxtaposing odd samples. After a few albums, he finally tamed his Fairlight keyboard and the SSL mixer to an seemingly hyperreal level, making even Frankie Goes to Hollywood producer Trevor Horn tremble in envy. Thematically, and contrary to the bleak black and white postpunk and electropop of their opponents, Yello dived full on into the good life, emulation a Raymond Chandler-like universe of postmodern desire, crime and seduction in cars, bars, and aircraft with a distinct Cannes yacht feel. A cosmopolitan Memphis-styled mix of crooning, latin percussion, guitar hysterics, b-movie horn riffs, divas and field recordings integrated to make perfect pop singles and clubby yet stylish kitchy 12″ vinyl. In the middle of it all was Dieters vocal, a tuneless dark patinated instrument better suited for storytelling than for singing. After “Stella“, they infiltrated the world of advertising jingles and soundtracks and became their own cliche, copying themselves endlessly like a electropop equivalent to the Stones. It´s  still a nice formula, but the new not so mad adventures feels more like a souped up Audi TT than pieces of art today. Use their app and make your own Yello music now, or take Stella for a spin.Kraftwerk: Computerworld  / Listen on epo on a very expensive racing bike 

The German sound fetishists – that made rock feel outdated in the late 1970s – took electronic music out of the ghettos of the conservatory studio labs, put Beach Boys-inspired vocal harmonies on top, added Bach-like melodic elegance and Stockhausen´s virtual sonic manipulations and set it to a funky James Brown-inspired but sweat less syncopated robot-beat. This approach was a virtual revolution in post rock, more like a animation, not a live recording of a band in a room, and during the 70´s they refined their unique avant-garde-pop formula, reaching the unlikely US marked with their very European ode to the Autobahn (1975) and the Trans Euro Express (1977), originally constructed by the Nazis, shaking off the whole German guild complex of the second world war in superb style and cover art, mixing Russian constructivism with camp deadpan humor on The Man Machine (1978). Their absolute peak was their prophetic Computerworld album, where they invented electro, later sampled by Afrika Bambaataa and jazz genius Herbie Hancock, giving birth to electro boogie, Miami bass, Ghettotech and Electronic Body music – inspiring a zillion mutations from Detroit Techno to The New Romantics – and designing a set of drum kits that are a standard preset in digital instruments even today. 1981´s crystal-ball-like Computerworld even addresses net-dating, the reduction of a globalized world to numbers and pre-echoes the home-computing cottage industry – as well as hand held music devices – 30 years before musical iphone apps – presented in one long mix forecasting the endless beat of dj culture. Kraftwerk balances between hopes of a promising future and an Orwellian dystopia here – a digital world ruled by secret services and megabrands – Deutsche Bank und CIA. The following Albums, the minimalistic MTV-hit Electric Cafe (1986) and their latest, Tour de France (2003) – show that the pioneers are not ahead anymore – especially after the means of production, affordable samplers and computers, hit the marked in the late 80´s – but the sheer quality of the albums stand the test of time like an old Audi Quattro, a Hasselblad camera or a Luger gun. Bowie and Jackson begged for tracks for their own solo albums, but Kraftwerk politely declined. Today they are trapped in their own retro-futuristic vacuum, playing MOMA, Tate and Roskilde festival this summer – in 3D, arguably another dead medium, like Kraftwerk themselves? Kraftwerk stand still, even on stage, as the man machine music motoric elements is removed from the bands performance, only appearing as body effects in the audience by the flick of a switch on customized sequence controllers running Cubase. But the audience, often dressed in red shirts and black LED ties, sing along and break-dance, like a weird old school sci-fi global folk ritual. And maybe Kraftwerk will use their users data from their app to generate future tracks, like netflix used data to generate the House of cards series. And when the final surviving member dies, holograms will probably take over from the mencn-machines. Go investigate yourself. Rhythm & Sound : Rhythm & Sound / listen in a vast concrete Berlin coffee shop The development of post Kraftwerk music is like a pendulum between increasingly advanced post analogue sound design and stripped down post-song structures – its sometimes feels like the producer-auteurs try to remove music’s original raison de entrée, pitch and harmony. The controlled information and limited images emitting from Kraftwerk´s Klingklang studios was a brand building masterpiece. The next generation took this information-minimalism and reduced it to mere abstract graphics and serial numbers in an almost autistic isolationist anti-marketing strategy. A series of legendary loopy and dusty minimal 12″ vinyl surfaced in the early Berlin techno scenes hub, Hardwax on the Basic Channel label. Nobody could figure out how the deep mystery sounds where made, at once both starkly modern yet vintage, as it was recorded thru a matrix of tube compressors, space delays, and analogue modules and pitched down on reel to reel tape. The tracks arrangement structure was inspired by the minimalism of second wave Detroit producers like Robert Hood and Jeff Mills, but with a more airy warm feel, reduced to just a ambient atmosphere and a very imitated synth stab being tweaked in endless shades and variations of grey, erasing time, very fascinating but without ANY hummable or memorable hooks or vocals. The records sounded pre-scratched, the grooves integrating the sounds of worn vinyl, skipping in and off-beat. The sound of glitch-dub was born, inspiring a host of quality artists like Monolake and Vladislav Delay and mutated further on labels like Chain Reaction. The sound probably reached it´s peak with the release of the Buddha Machine gadgets. In a retro-futuristic move, the mysterious crew lead by Moritz Von Oswald returned to the origin of bass music – Jamaican reggae, and collected the post-club results on the this fantastic compilation, probably inventing European digi-dub in the process, spiced by toasters like Savage and propelled by the deepest baselines in the business, sometimes even removing the instruments for the pure poetic buzz of malfunctioning gear. Today, Von Oswald is investigating live electronic jams with his trio, playing his trusty Prophet keyboard to the processed percussion of Sasu Ripatti and torn apart by Sun Electrics live mixmaster Max Loderbauer in an smoke screened improvised attempt to marry a odd couple: freeform ambient and live dub. http://blazar.dk/guide-musikgenre-aevl/ http://blazar.dk/hugo-chavez/    

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Vibskov and wursts

PEOPLE & MOOD:  It’s a new golden age in the cornucopia of Copenhagen, we are fealing it like Rome’s last fun filled days in a connected city with smart bridges, roof top gardens and cool, funky sustainable solutions – centered on pure pleasure – believe the hype. Its a green fairytale city stuffed with great festivals , hygge & food fetishists. Its like a tiny Monocle or Wallpaper installation – without the anal stress for perfection – run by the most beautiful, well educated and liberated folks on the planet – don’t be fooled by their seemingly cool attitude – it’s only a sky look. Make no mistake – we are not arrogant, superficial or cold – just deep and understated. Denmark is more than vintage porn, The Bridge series, The Muhammed Crises, bacon, Lars Von Trier, Blixen, Borge, Bohr, Paludan, Aqua, Olafur, Viggo, HC Andersen, Vammen, Mø and all the soccer gods. And after the succes of Tivoli, Christiania and free porn in the 1960s, we decided to clone it and make the whole city into one horny minimal eco-Tivoli for adults.

Another wild street party

So come and play with us in spring – in May – and leave in September before the Kierkegaard-ish dull winter. Come see understated elegant horny people roam the city’s catwalks like designer peacocks – radiating health, biking with bags of micro brews and well curated music playing on their B&O headsets – in contrast to a multitude of weird custom bikes playing digidub-dancehall topped by human beatboxers on dwarf trick bikes in fashion icon Vibskovs latest gear – casually high on pot, as if it was already legal. White limousines, horse-carts, old military trucks and S.U.V.s. packed with preppy-styled “Generation Horse (Ketamine)“ in ironic pastel Ralph Lauren and Yeezy gear cruise around spraying the few remaining bums with splashes of magnum bubbles, as they pass Japanese and Italian tourists eating gourmet grasshopper parfait and chat to SS-Ilse lookalike blondes in the world’s happiest almost funtex-free city.

The male Mermaid – By Elmgreen/Dragset

Copenhagen is the epicenter of liberation and post-feminism – the sexes have switched roles several times throughout the last 60 years and they flirt like it’s a large outdoor latino disco filmed  in soft focus, just before the clothes are torn off in the red-purple dusk. Its like life’s reality-bubble is evaporated, outdated, passé. A couple of playboys with skateboards dressed as tattooed Antwerp diamond dealers politely debate the latest trends in fonts or colour grading on the corner between secret über-designer microboutiques. The good life is almost a law here.

Chill in style – Royal Greenland fur – Denmarks fantastic colony

After the last romas are imprisoned for begging, it’s as if reason, aesthetics and pure guiltless enjoyment have finally prevailed in our airy city, and our world now is recharged with meaning and energy again – after the dark middle age of the late-postmodern tunnel. Copenhagen is EU’s own Christiana, Germany’s  clitoris, where even the most marginal avant-garde ideas can have a lucrative life. Copenhagen is so safe, and over the city a discreet noise-free monitoring airship  hangs permanently, after too many complaints about scary black spy helicopters.

Even pollution is poetic here

The city’s lively natives can be divided into two main groups – “the perfect people” – who are insatiable and ambitious in their quest for the best – and the  more zen-like mature Danes fueled by identity via  creative practices, emphatic pursuits & pure lifestyle games – sucked up in the local Nirvana-like-mindstate: hygge – and hysterical upbringing rituals – “curling-parenting”. Both groups enjoy Teslas and  Christiania bikes, and meet over glasses of organic vine in shorts in  public parks or on a boat. The original native originals with their cosmopolitan and critical consioussness are suppressed and marginalized by an invasion of middle class yuppies from Jutland camouflaged as hipsters – they dominate politics and the media too.

No wonder my billionaire NYC friends revisit every year – Copenhagen is one of the few places in the world where ugly people can get laid in flip-flops without flashing funds – and trust me, even trust fund kids need that kind of romance. Copenhagen is so sensible the over-taxed that cars are about to be illegal and it’s almost impossible to get non-ecological food or go to a non-designer bar without a curated indie soundtrack and model staff. The last sterile barista innovator or crazy mixologist is not born yet.

Fine neo-brutalism deconstructing the harbour

One could argue that Copenhagen is a tiny dark and mystic mix of cities like Amsterdam, Hamburg and London, and provide little original twists – but the perfect balance of old low buildings and brutalist Lego stuff like Blox make a stirring but transparent backdrop for Copenhagen´s main course…or curse maybe ; hygge. It’s one big tastefull – but not vulgar – no stress zone. End your trip with a little golf in Dyrehaven – the green is popping with psilocybin and randy Bambi´s – next to at rough version of Tivoli – Bakken and beaches filled with waterpipes. But let’s cut to the chase – the unique Copenhagen flavor in my list of unique fail safe Copenhagen experiences:

The new Noma by Bjarke Ingels – I want to live there

FOOD – A never ending cornucopia of eateries pop up and close again – I return to these stable players: down to earth food is available at Bistro Boheme (french), Salon (by “Den røde”), Sankt Annæ or Aamans (Smørrebrød at lunch), Atlas bar (hippie), Holmens best La Banchiana, Shawarma no. 1 (cheap Lebanese), Plant power food (for food monks) and Fiskebaren (fish). And don’t forget cakes at La Glacé or fantastic ice-cream at the Sicilian in Skydebanegade or Nicecream at Enghave plads. Check Noma – the mytological epicenter of new nordic relocated to a new BIG-designed location – but book your table before your flight ticket.

Hotels – smell authentic hygge via airbnb or sleep at Sanders next to the royal Theater – or at Nimb next to the horrible Tivoli – or make a safe investment in an apartment here before it reaches London´s prices.

Olafurs new bridge

Transport – central CPH is originally built for horses – you can walk or rent a bike as all the main hotspots are max 30 min. apart. Forget about cars here. Or rent a electric boat. NIGHTLIFE – generally the music sucks, the soundsystems are cheap – and you have to stand in line with very young drunk people – bars tend to be more friendly. Clubs are usually about tables and bottles – find Dorsia, Arch, Lusso, Dandy, Søpavillionen and Dolores on facebook if thats your game – or Kødbyen and Chateu Motel for a younger, more relaxed “can of beer” vibe – or Mayhem, Culture Box or Loppen for “underground”. For good music you have to watch out for specialist music events and festivals. Avoid theatre and local bands. Go to Cafe Malmø for the ultimate Bodega trip – ask for Ole, the owner – he will sort you out – or play pool naked. Swim in the clean habour nearby to clean your head. Take a shot more…repeat.

Commit suicide in style – visit Louisiana

MUSEUMS –  A lot of central crucial museums are connected with parks where you can look at naked teens – or go to Charlottenborg.

If you are up north visit Louisiana – its a bit Taschens-Book-ish, but nice in that dry Scandinavian way. Check out current art events on kopenhagen.dk – check the fernissage page, as the Danes love to get tipsy and flirt in galleries showing collectable, but absurd art. Avoid conversations about the show at openings.

Invest in your ass

SHOPPING – You can get the usual arcade-semi-high-end brands here, but forget about shopping your Balenciaga in Copenhagen –  stick to the local minimal classics – shopping those understated puritan icons is a guiltless timeless experience and feels like buying art or having therapy – and your heirs will love you later. Illums Bolighus have the most of the classics if you want to live like a German dentist, and in Bredgade Bruun Rasmussen sells the patinated and out of stock collectors stuff – and Jorn, Hammershøj etc. Go to Andersens for the next Olafur (he´s not really Islandic) In the center resides a true magician. The Danes hate all things fake – botox look cheap and robotic – so they put pride in aging with grace. If you share this point of view, book a TCM treatment at Nui – a fave for the local divas you love from the Nordic noir films.

My favorite walks:

Try this…

Central Copenhagen tour – a posh arty design foodie route – combine boats and bikes or walk – featuring most of the aforementioned hotspots

Social art in the ghetto – uniting symbols from dead utopias

Slum it in on the romantic pre-gentrified edges: most of the refugees are outsourced to the non-designer provinces and the poor are expelled to suburbia – but if you really must see some “autentic” folks – and be a tourist in other peoples misery – and snap some looser portraits with your Leica – go to the North West hood  – squatters, radical muslims, Romas, trancers, gangs, crusties and bikers peacefully coexist here, it’s totally safe, but remember to dress down. Hipster Hellholes: check Jægersborggade, Elmegade, Istedgade, Lars Bjørnstræde, Stefansgade, Den røde plads, Nansensgade, Dronning Louises bro, Kødbyen – if you´re into  dead “subcultural” lifestyle museums.

It took a lot of weed to build this lovely house

Do visit Christiania if you want to see an X-squat area turned into a hippie-museum – enjoy the world class selection of hash that even takes out Amsterdams selection – don’t be afraid of the masked gentlemen trading – they are only masked for the cameras (no photos please) – choose some organic weed if you want to operate heavy equipment and wonder at the local versions of historic dead subcultures mating. Visit the legendary ALIS shop and ramp – ask for super-nice owner Albert. Chill out by the lake and be inspired by the non-restricted amateur-auteur-arcitects huts – Noma is around the corner if you get the munchies and need order again.

Copenhagen is still an easy place to go and snatch up fresh ideas and new partners – see you soon – for special arrangements and guides mail us here

HYGGE IS LIKE HEROIN

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Kim Kemi – a Copenhagen-based DJ- legend with a wide smile.. His latest offering: the ACID MARKED E.P.

Kim’s all time top 5 favorite albums – in no specific order – always give me a shiny eye and goosebumps –  Ricardo Villalobos – Alcachofa / Sasha Funke – Bravo /Matthew Dear – Asa Broad / Paul Johnson – The Other Side Of Me / Laurent Garnier – Unreasonable Behavior

Kim’s rider: a dark room and several bottles of vodka and a little to eat. and  2 technichs 1210er and 2 cdj2000 pioneer and a djm 800/900 please. I bring the rest.

Kim´s top 5 Synths may be: Moog Source / Dave Smith Prophet-6 / Roland 303 / Yamaha DX-7 / Andromeda.. With those in my studio, the bus is running!

LISTEN TO THE MAN HERE: Beatport: & SoundCloud:

His dj name fittingly depicts the intense chemistry between him and the audience. He transforming his delight in the music and the extra energy he receives from the crowd into sizzling bursts of enthusiasm and joy. He will pull the audience into his sets and look like the happiest dj you have ever seen. Still, the word “melancholy” keeps popping up, when he talks about what moves and inspires him.

As a kid, he would run into the room of his older brother to steal his mixtapes with 80s music. He would copy them and listen to them for hours and hours, deeply absorbed. And the sound of the 80s is still his greatest inspiration.His interest in electronic music was sparked by a Prodigy concert in Copenhagen in the beginning of the 90s. Before that, he was mainly into thrash and death metal. The electronic sounds of Spooky, Depeche Mode, New Order, Bryan Ferry, BoyTronic,Yello and Tricky took over, and he started frequenting the parties of the emerging electronic scene of Copenhagen.

Jean, Kemi & Mathiass

In 1997, he started dj’ing. Four years later, he met fellow electro afficianado Amox, and they released their first record (“Me So Horny”) in 2004 on Lasergun Rec. Over the next five years, Mr. Kemi & Amox released several records on Lasergun, Mis Rec, Gold Und Liebe, Opossum and Darek. Later on they changed their name to 2 Working Donkeys and released another two records on Opossum and one on Darek.
Kim Kemi’s strong bond to Berlin was established when he ran his own monthly club night – Zink Club – at Sternradio from 2006 to 2007. Since then, he has played at Panorama Bar, Deep, Polar TV, Sage Club, Sternradio, Watergate, Arena Club, Bar25, Golden Gate and at the Love Parade in Berlin. His groovy, deep and sexy sound, which he likes to describe as futuristic disco-techno, has given him dj-gigs all over the world (from Chile, Italy, Iceland to Schwitzerland and Spain), and he has run regular club nights at the best clubs in Copenhagen, like Culture Box,Dunkel, Jolene and KB18.

His newest project is PhonoKemi, teaming up with fellow Dane and friend Jacob Phono, releasing tracks on Highgrade Rec., Fantastic Friends and Bump Music. They also run the bi-monthly club night “De To Spillemænd” at Dunkel in Copenhagen – a club night dedicated to pulling the crowd through a multitude of different genres, mixing and blending high quality stuff from the 80s to the present. And the intimate dancefloor and late opening hours of Dunkel suits his style and the mood he wants to achieve perfectly.
“I like to play the late morning sets”, he says. “Where people get extra sensitive and really let themselves be pulled into the music”. And somehow, while the sun is rising and he is pulling the crowd into his set, he will, despite his many years of experience, manage to look like he just discovered how mindblowingly great electronic music is. Because of sheer enthusiasm. And it’s contagious. He paints smiles on people with records. Book him now! 

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Hugo Chavéz: future masterpiece? The next step in a oversaturated media world where you cant develop in your own space, a counter-strategy is isolationism and almost calculated obscurity: soon after the early death of Venezuela´s equivalent to Cuba´s Castro died from cancer this year, a new weird hypnotic fusion between almost tribal ritualistic beats, field recording and advanced ultra expressive synthesis where leaked on the most utilitarian non-commercial platform, YouTube.

Yeti, the first raw video  shows a forest contrasting the almost industrial microtonal attack that pushed you into a trance beyond the effects of usual music – this is sound as pure sound effect, but with weird traces of an almost religious ceremonial performance. The follow-up named The Yeti´s wife, added drummer Jaki Tucker on Serge modular to the core group of Ulver Elliason, found drums, Dr. Lydia Tommasimma, thumb piano & digisax and Aimi Miyagi on Synclavier in psychedelic almost danceable 128 beats per minute pounding live workout of their debut recorded on 4 track from a secret morning performance at Le Cat-Corner, Cannes, with a psychedelic video remix. An extremely rare 7″ disc was released, making collectors insane instantly. The Hugo Chavéz motley crew of nomad internationalists then travelled with the massive nuclear-powered Russian icebreaker 50 Let Pobedy, recording sounds of submerged animals for a yet to be released cover of the Residents avant-garde classic Eskimo/Diskomo. The arctic isolation must have triggered a reversal of esthetics in the band, as their next release, The Yeti rests, ditch the hard atonal almost tribalistic palette of the first Yeti tracks for manipulated field recordings of purring cats and bubbling champagne…with a tear jerking glockenspiel solo, evoking the vast mind space of childhood. The notes state: WARNING: Don’t use this recording while driving, as it can cause epilepsy. Don’t use when intoxicated, as it can trigger flashbacks, this is a 3rd eye meditation-self-hypnosis-session…and put me in a dream-like alpha wave mind state. A vocal whisper ends off the track: WHO KILLED HUGO? Feeding conspiracy freaks everywhere.

More tracks followed, glitchy drones and recordings of their hypnotic masterclasses. The Hugo Chavéz project is a return to music’s original roots as tools for mind expansion, bypassing the annoying cultural luggage of tradition. The loopy visuals made by Un-googable Boguslaw Luptak on The Yeti rests – turns black cats white and vise versa in an occult parody of the pest of YouTube, the cat trick video. Again turning against expectations, their latest track fragments their back catalogue – walking in their own unique shoes – but transgresses themselves with a subliminal Dylan sampled vocal, making it the most potential but unlikely subliminal future pop hit of 2012 or 2033…is it art, a joke on all the pretentious genre bending invented by the Wire-reading potheads, vinyl-spotter-music, works in progress, prank or just a sonic gas evoking bliss? Watch and turn up to listen to various tracks found on this youtube base.

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My 4 videos from one of my favorite festivals, Helsingør´s CLICK:

BONUS: photo rapport.

BONUS: Vammen´s live mix from CLICK:

Nap kystbanen til Hamlets Helsingskør, og få opdateret din virkelighedsopfattelse med et unikt mix af musik, performance, seminarer og udstilling, som smelter sammen i et helt unikt, scenisk univers i de gamle værftshaller i 24 timer hver Maj. Click er benhårdt kurateret af smagsdommere som legenden Klaus Boss og vil fryde ikke bare nørdede læsere af musik-connoisseur-magasinet The Wire, men alle med åbne sanser. Prøv Click. Der er lækkert i Helsingør, der er billige alko-sikre toge hele natten, og ellers er der et ok strandhotel med casino – og Danmarks mest ambitiøse legendariske lineup af kunst og musik. Se dette års program her.

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