keep killing it!

Fitz

A friend of mine sent me a .zip file today filled with a bunch of long lost tracks. I found a few of your old tracks in there, and I decided to look you up.

I’m very happy to see that you are still making amazing music. This video is inspiring. You are on an whole other level dude.

All the best to you my friend. Hope to cross paths with you sometime.

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I have the pleasure of living between New York and Berlin these days, which offers a lot of opportunities for comparison and contrast. Anyway currently I am in Berlin.
Last night I saw King Britt with his Saturn Never Sleeps project. It is a very free interplay between King Britt – electronics, Rucyl – vocaltronics, Kaidi Tatum – keyboards and Rui Pereira – video. Britts beats were really fantastic and held pieces together while leaving enouugh space for a lot of interplay. They actually did their own sound mix, and on the Berghain System it sounded fantastic.

I’m sure the sound system was amazing. My colleague’s cousin lives in Berlin and has talked about how awesome the sound systems are over there. From the looks of the Website, Berghain sounds like my kind of place, an open, alternative space where club music, acoustic music and beats can collide under an incredible sound-system. In NYC, the closest this comes to on a professional level is Le Poisson Rouge, the new Knit in Williamsburg or even Club Love. Still, are the economic needs of having a space like this in Berlin different than those in New York City? While I can’t answer authoritatively, I do get the impression that this sort of music is supported Berlin in a different way. An easier way? For now, I can only say ‘different.’ Or, maybe not so different as I think. Open to comments on this.

I’ve also seen Sneaky / Fingathing which is Simon Houghton on upright bass with either live drums or a DJ. Interestingly when I heard Sneaky at Arena Berlin the sound was really powerful and clean and the crowd enjoyed it but in a very appreciatively nodding manner, whereas at Cafe Zapata / Tachelis A lot of the bass sound was lost in the sound system, but they had a giant fire breathing sculpture, the place was packed and everyone was loosing their heads.

The fire breathing sculpture will definitely round out an evening!

I have seen three other shows at Berghain,
Aufgang (two pianos and a drummer), interesting concept but, the two pianos were taking away from the purity of one another, and the aesthetic was a bit too trancy for me.

To this, I say concept can only go so far. Ultimately it is about the musicality of the performers that determine the success of the night. I’m not familiar with Aufgang’s music, but based on your experience, I can only say that those pianists should have listend to each other more.

Autechre, they’re always incredible but the sound system had the bass turned up so stupid loud that all of the nuances of the music were lost. It was a big letdown compared with how pristine and perfectly corrupted they sounded at the Williamsburg Music Hall a while back.

Flying Lotus – Well as it was my first time at Berghain I was really impressed by the crowd and the Sound System. However just like the Autechre set it felt like all the rest of the music was just window dressing for the bass. Thats not the impression I had gotten from listening to his music on remixes and albums and such, but I don’t know whether or not its his aesthetic. Thats said for bassheads it was a paradise.

Are ‘bassheads’ and people who want to hear more musical nuance completely at odds? I read an article with a dubstep DJ Joe NIce and he was ragging on what he called a ‘brostep’- style sound where there was tons of “chainsaw bass” and not much else. I personally don’t mind the chainsaw bass as long as it exists with other interesting musical elements, but maybe there are just some people out there that simply want to feel bass – and nothing more. Maybe to them it’s like they’re at a ride in a carnival that never stops. That’s cool and fun and everything, but from what you’re saying, it sounds like Flying Lotus and Autechre, who bring a ton of musical depth to what they do, could go either way. The “bedroom” music they make also translates to the club, but it’s a different audience and, to the chagrin of ‘bedroom listeners’, a completely different listening experience. Maybe what you’re looking for (and me, too) is a sort of middle way. A bedroom sound with crispness and clarity, but played in a powerful room that you can still be viscerally involved in.

I saw Flying Lotus and Nosaj Thing at Le Poisson Rouge last month and was deeply impressed by their musicality on stage, along with the clarity and crispness of their music through LPR’s expensive sound system. Flying Lotus, in particular, sounded like his beats had a tangible “weight” to them, like you could take a bite out of them. This may have been related to his studio production techniques and use of saturation on his drum tracks, but who’s to say. Still, while Nosaj was furiously working his MPC like a broker on the trading floor, Flying Lotus was casually, cooly coaxing the beats out of his Macbook like a great jazz drummer. He made it look easy, and his sounds were soulful and rich.

Getting back on topic, Kode9 was sandwiched between Nosaj and Flying Lotus’s sets. He played a straight-up DJ set which seemed to sum up the current UK electronic music underground (and beyond). It was a 2-hour set, especially long for someone who had come to see Flying Lotus, but when he left and Lotus took over, a sizeable portion of the room left also. I was genuinely surprised by this, but I think the music Kode9 was playing and the way it was mixed, slightly more on the clubby end of things, offered more appeal to a good deal of people in the room. Lotus was speeding up, slowing down, playing oftentimes challenging music, but while his sound was more overtly soulful and elastic, Kode9 seemed to adhere to a dancefloor orthodoxy. This was satisfying to certain attendees in the way that Lotus’s set wasn’t, but for another group of people, myself included, Lotus’s set was preferrable: easily digestible, unpredictable, absorbing, dynamic, less purely functional. Ultimately the big winner in this was Le Poisson Rouge, who managed to get the two ‘groups’ of music listeners under one roof and sell out the show, all while making a killing on overpriced booze.

So it seems that the Berghain sensibility is directed at people who want to feel the sound experience as powerfully as possible. I think for minimal techno this might work really well, though the sound at the Bunker parties in Williamsburg is as good as Ive heard minimal techno sound anywhere, and it is also a really balanced array. If you want something different than that punch you in the chest bass, and pehaps some high end reflecting off the roof at Berghain it seems you have to do the sound mixing yourself.

I think you are correct in that from an audience perspective it is probably more inviting to listen to a set of performances which have something in common… even if it is just the taste of the curator. While I may wholeheartedly enjoy listening to or engaging in open experimentation, it is not something I am going to tell all of my friends that have to come and see with me. Sometimes just having a conceptual aesthetic in mind can reign in abstraction just enough so that the people who are there and have the patience to enjoy it, will think to them selves oh I have to bring my friends b and c next time because I know this sonic aesthetic would really appeal to them.

I think a conceptually balanced night of music is a worthy goal, wherever it’s held. That concept takes a team of people who are all equally committed to seeing the unified vision executed excellently. It could be argued that Le Poisson Rouge is a giant concept of a venue: indie rock, contemporary classical and electronic music all in one intimate club setting with a few core curators. Low-End Theory is another concept that has proven to have traction in the place it originated from. Good nights have strong concepts and go beyond genres. While I’m still exploring and discovering my ‘dream concept’ in my ‘dream space’ in the city that I live and work in, NYC, it’s good to know what else is out there and what our potential audience members, collaborators and colleagues really want in an electronic music night, or just a night out.

great insights… hope to keep up the dialog,

I have the pleasure of living between New York and Berlin these days, which offers a lot of opportunities for comparison and contrast. Anyway currently I am in Berlin.
Last night I saw King Britt with his Saturn Never Sleeps project. It is a very free interplay between King Britt – electronics, Rucyl – vocaltronics, Kaidi Tatum – keyboards and Rui Pereira – video. Britts beats were really fantastic and held pieces together while leaving enouugh space for a lot of interplay. They actually did their own sound mix, and on the Berghain System it sounded fantastic.

I’ve also seen Sneaky / Fingathing which is Simon Houghton on upright bass with either live drums or a DJ. Interestingly when I heard Sneaky at Arena Berlin the sound was really powerful and clean and the crowd enjoyed it but in a very appreciatively nodding manner, whereas at Cafe Zapata / Tachelis A lot of the bass sound was lost in the sound system, but they had a giant fire breathing sculpture, the place was packed and everyone was loosing their heads.

I have seen three other shows at Berghain,
Aufgang (two pianos and a drummer), interesting concept but, the two pianos were taking away from the purity of one another, and the aesthetic was a bit too trancy for me.

Autechre, they’re always incredible but the sound system had the bass turned up so stupid loud that all of the nuances of the music were lost. It was a big letdown compared with how pristine and perfectly corrupted they sounded at the Williamsburg Music Hall a while back.

Flying Lotus – Well as it was my first time at Berghain I was really impressed by the crowd and the Sound System. However just like the Autechre set it felt like all the rest of the music was just window dressing for the bass. Thats not the impression I had gotten from listening to his music on remixes and albums and such, but I don’t know whether or not its his aesthetic. Thats said for bassheads it was a paradise.

So it seems that the Berghain sensibility is directed at people who want to feel the sound experience as powerfully as possible. I think for minimal techno this might work really well, though the sound at the Bunker parties in Williamsburg is as good as Ive heard minimal techno sound anywhere, and it is also a really balanced array. If you want something different than that punch you in the chest bass, and pehaps some high end reflecting off the roof at Berghain it seems you have to do the sound mixing yourself.

I think you are correct in that from an audience perspective it is probably more inviting to listen to a set of performances which have something in common… even if it is just the taste of the curator. While I may wholeheartedly enjoy listening to or engaging in open experimentation, it is not something I am going to tell all of my friends that have to come and see with me. Sometimes just having a conceptual aesthetic in mind can reign in abstraction just enough so that the people who are there and have the patience to enjoy it, will think to them selves oh I have to bring my friends b and c next time because I know this sonic aesthetic would really appeal to them.