Change Of Focus

Those who've been following baze.djunkiii on twitter might have seen hash tags like #backtoprivacy and #leavesocialnetworks appearing more and more throughout the last months and wondered what that fuzz is about. As well they might've read that there has been a decision to retire from promoting events and parties, recognized that pages like myspace are abandoned (after everybody left for the next social network hype), formspring as well as the facebook fan page for baze.djunkiii have been cut off and, although that's for a while now, baze.djunkiii quit doing radio shows for Byte.FM. Apart from that 2012s DJ-schedule has been heavily reduced compared to the last years and all that's been happening for a reason. For more than one to be honest and not all of them are about to be mentioned or explained here but it's a fact that, after being in love with electronic music since the mid- / late-80s when AcidHouse appeared, after being actively invlvd in this scene for around 15 years and after seeing things evolve from vinyl and dubplate culture to what's now called digital DJ'ing, seeing a scenes spirit going down from "it's all about music" to "it's all about fashion / the next hype / what the blogs talk about / what... ever", after working on the creative forefront of genres like DarkJungle, Breakcore, Dark Garage, Dubstep and others, after pushing people forward, setting up shows for the reason of adding something new to this cities nightlife, for the reason of pushing boundaries further, to present things that are upfront and way beyond the electronic mainstream, after - more than once - losing money on these shows instead of breaking at least even, after all this the time has come for a time out, for a change. That goes for most activities - promoting has been cut off already, networking will be reduced as well as I'm tired of investing energy and money in other people rather than in my own career and projects without getting anything out of it and more is to come. When it comes to DJ-sets... well, I still like to play out somewhere, at places where people are willing and open for something different, where people appreciate music that's not played in every other club and where promoters are reliable and willing to pay proper fees. Or at art spaces. At places were people do not come up with stupid requests like "please play some Kalkbrenner" or "...David Guetta" - this happens too much these days, even at Drum'n'Bass-shows - or are complaining around 30 seconds after they've entered the room, asking the DJ to play "something everybody knows". More examples of these can be found via No Breasts No Requests which is great fun to look at. And musicwise - within the last years I've recognized a huge gap between what's hip and trendy amongst punters and what I personally do like and play out, a gap that's always been there but these days it's getting bigger and bigger... I've turned my head towards more song-structured stuff like PostPunk, Indie, (No)Wave or the DesertRock-influences brought up by Trentemoller in album works like "Into The Great Wide Yonder", fell for bands like Darkness Falls, discovered Minimal Wave and other genres and when it comes to electronic music I see the percentage rate of "playable" - using this term referring to todays (or german) club music standards - music in my monthly charts decreasing although I've been buying more stuff recently. But this stuff is rather too niche like Future Garage or - proper! - Electro to be recognized by a wider audience or too hard or unknown like Tribe Tekno, Hardcore and related or at least too abstract, slow, non beat focused like some great Ambient / Drone records that have been released throughout the last months to happen in clubs anyway. Or too song or weird or whatever. The sad fact is - the music I love is hardly happening anywhere, even what I'd call proper House or Techno is hard to be found except like one or two occasions a year, one reason why I quit clubbing a while ago apart from going out to play my own sets and prefer a good concert or a nice bar to most nights in a club now. And I think I'm happy with that, mostly. Pioneering things eats time and money, sometimes even your love for music and homelistening does not. Still, I'll be reviewing music on these pages, be selling records at Otaku Records and working somewhere in the background but not to that extend I used to. There are other things to do now, other goals to achieve, some of them way more important than I thought they'd ever be.

But to unveal a glimpse of future things as well - there'll be a monthly column to be published in the new FAZE Magazine dealing with electronic music, a remix for No More's forthcoming album is to be crafted alongside my mate and BETA-ZERFALL partner in crime Herr Brandt in the next weeks and some DJ-sets are to be played as well, e.g. in Mainz on May 26th. Plus: there are vague plans for further productions, maybe some art-related projects and - if there's enough money floating in - the next Intrauterin Recordings-releases might happen as well, somewhen. There are some pretty awesome and still unreleased tunes by several artists sitting around here, stuff I'd regard as timeless and - to me - not growing old so these will see the light at some future point, no matter how far or near that might be anyway.

All promoters dedicated to music beyond the norm, willing to take a risk, burning for things new and fresh, club owners loving raw & classic vinyl only sets, aiming to reclaim the spirits of the good old days without necessarily setting up so-called revival nights or anyone else coming up with great, challenging, inspiring ideas for shows - feel free to contact OHA! Music for booking conditions. That goes for publishers as well as there are... well, but that's another story related to the mentioned art projects. To be told another time.