http://www.hifly.dk en-us LOCO DICE (Desolat/Minus/DE) MARTINEZ (Moon Harbour/Cadenza) Culture Box & Standard Events presents: Under 300 Presale tickets available at Resident Advisor: www.residentadvisor.net/event.aspx?318024 Loco Dice is someone who can puzzle together intangible moods with a direct approach. Via his DJ sets or his productions on labels like M_nus, Cadenza, Ovum, Four Twenty and Cocoon, he merges perspectives in his delicate sense for sounds and reflective atmospheres, underpinned with solid, physical grooves inspired by the hip hop that was his early sonic stomping ground in the mid- to late ‘90s. There’s something there for the dreamers, as well as for the 9-to-5ers who just want to lose everything in a moment of abandon on the dancefloor. Don’t think that merging of perspectives is accidental. This Loco Dice, with his mercurial temperament, may let his thoughts run away with him, but he tends to chase those ideas and make them into an artistic reality. His DJ sets, whether at Germany’s biggest rave Timewarp, Cocoon in Ibiza or a beach party in South America, are spontaneous orchestrations fueled by the nuances of a night/venue/crowd. He began a fruitful studio partnership with Martin Buttrich in 2002 leading to tracks like Phatt Dope Shit, Menina Brasiliera, and Seeing Through Shadows, and these productions are meticulously planned by Dice. It’s a directorial, cinematic outlook, which permeates Dice’s everyday life, and comes not just from the outlandish escapades and scrapes that he has sometimes found himself living out in real life. It also stems from elaborate film scripts imagined as a young Loco Dice on the streets of Flingern in Düsseldorf and the Kerkennah Islands in Tunisia. This continues to be a habit of Loco Dice’s today: to close his eyes for just one minute, and see a whole cornucopia of scenes and atmospheres. As one manifestation of this, visitors to Düsseldorf early this year will be able to see an exhibition of photographs taken by Loco Dice & Martin Buttrich during the year they spent in New York City to work on the Loco Dice album. It’s an album that re-imagines the soul of a city, built from careful observations of urban tribes that crisscross and sometimes clash, of minute details and sensory impressions. Family is important to Loco Dice, as you might have noticed if you’ve seen one of his tattoos, a Chicano-style artwork with the legend “Guadelupe”. His love for music stems from hearing soul and funk in the kitchen, and holidays with his mother to Tunisia, where he absorbed North African and Middle Eastern folk music and occasionally sneaked away to watch his grandfather playing dice at café tables on the street. Family is how he’s always regarded the people close to him, and it’s how he regards subcultures too. A football player, he’s inspired by those who build strong teams of creative people around them. This sense of family is what he wants to create with projects like his and Buttrich’s label Desolat, and an artist management agency he run with Tom Preuss called Artist Alife. When you visit the office of Desolat and Artist Alife, you’re struck by the fact that everyone seems to come from a different cultural background. Loco Dice’s experience of Germany is one that includes friends and collaborators who are of African, Eastern European, Italian or Turkish descent. Loco Dice is interested in all kinds of people and artistic subcultures: he’s proud of people who bring a creative flair to what they do, informed by lives lived ever so slightly less ordinary. In that sense, Dice’s innate understanding of people: what they sense, what they feel, what they want to imagine, is a part of what distinguishes him from other DJs. He’s very aware when playing in Ibiza of the multiplicity of nationalities that are gathered there, the morass of different desires to be catered to. His inner film scriptwriter makes him capable of translating sounds and kicking it like a local, whether it’s in Naples or in New York. Loco Dice is similarly capable of inspiring, of creating that heady atmosphere that can only be experienced in a crowd of thousands. This skill of his, first cultivated at DC-10, is also no doubt informed by his experiences touring with big name hip hop artists in the ‘90s. Mark Spoon used to promise him that at some point Loco Dice would shuffle sideways from his beloved house and hip hop to “come over and be one of us”, one of the techno believers. In a sense, he was right, though Loco Dice never leaves anything behind: he still brings out classics, whether classic techno from Maurizio to Basic Channel or gritty boompty house by DJ Sneak, and he’s still fond of composing music, as linear as it may be, that draws on hip hop song structures and basslines. At the end of the day, as Loco Dice sees it, everything runs in loops, and it’s his job to trace a line, to sketch out the next scenes in this soundtrack. Even if life tends to be unpredictable, a little chancey, the next move doesn’t have to be a gamble. In fact, Loco Dice shows via his compositions that it can be very well planned. Listen to his music, imagine the cinematic accompaniments, and you’ll understand how something carefully constructed can begin with a flight of fancy, or a roll of the dice.
View flyer]]> info@hifly.dk Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:00:00 +0200 Culture Box: SAMULI KEMPPI (Mote-Evolver/Ostgut Ton/FI) DASHA RUSH (Full Panda/Sonic Groove/DE) BULK residents: ASMUS ODSAT + MADS REHL + UNDR P + FORM PHASES visuals by: SILO Cocktail Box: KASPER MAROTT Samuli Kemppi is one of the key figures of finnish techno scene. Hard working producer and dj who is always breaking boundaries and delivering fresh mixture of times past and days yet to come. His influences range from Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode to Sahko Records and recent Sleeparchive releases. His sound is described as icy cold techno style, a controlled exercise in minimal techno devastation, bass-heavy jacker grooves with shivering hihats and floating athomspheres… (boomkat) Samuli is releasing his music since 2002 under different pseudonymes. 2008 and 2009 have been very successful years for him, with phantastic releases on Ostgut Ton, Prologue and Time To Express. There`s a lot of great stuff in the pipeline - Keep your eyes on Samuli, he's coming on strong!
View flyer]]> info@hifly.dk Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:00:00 +0200 Culture Box: SCUBA (SCB/Hotflush Recordings/UK) ULF ERIKSSON (Kontra-Musik/SE) Cocktail Box: SOUNDS OF PALMA & ENA (DK) Paul Rose aka. Scuba has been an influential figure in bass music for the past five years or so, both through his own productions and his record label, Hotflush. In the two years since his last album, Triangulation, his sound has expanded considerably. As SCB he's produced a series of 4/4 records and played house and techno sets in clubs. Earlier this year he released the euphoric anthem "Adrenalin" as Scuba, the name he'd previously reserved for more dubstep-inspired productions. This was a "conscious decision," he says: "I didn't want [SCB] to become a dumping ground for my house stuff." He is ready to release his third LP, Personality. According to Rose, Personality continues on this tack while mostly sticking to non-4/4 rhythms.
View flyer]]> info@hifly.dk Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:00:00 +0200 Culture Box: TEVA (Off/Suara/Alive/UK) TIM ANDRESEN (What Happens/Elevation) DENIS HORVAT (Monique Musique/Upon You) Cocktail Box: METTE S (Deso Records) RASMUS JUUL (Gartenhaus) DJURAAS & JACOBSEN (Black Knights) KOBEN HAGEN Denmark's leading monthly house night What Happens is back with a set of headliners fit to grace any venue and if last month's sellout party with Nic Fanciulli is anything to go by, this one will be quite special. Teva is a classically trained producer, DJ and studio engineer, but that’s not enough to make you care all that much about him, is it? Maybe some words about the labels he is signed to will help... He's working closely with Tom Budden's Alive Recordings. He has collaborated with Andre Crom and released on OFF Recordings. Add to that strong releases on Suara, Variante Music and Reset Robot's Roomba Music as well as releases on our own What Happens label. He climbs high in the Beatport charts and is getting support from the likes of Reboot, Sasha, M.A.N.D.Y, Solomun and everyone in between. It's just fair to say he is one of the most talented breakthrough producers around and other producers and DJs often call for his services as a studio engineer. He even worked in the famous Ushuaia studios during summer 2011 but also missed many a flight home from Ibiza because of his devotion to partying. That pretty much sums it all up. He is supported by Tim Andresen. The main man of What Happens continues to stay at the forefront of Scandinavian clubbing and his hunger for the music feed his unparalleled dedication to the scene. Teva and Tim will be joined by Denis Horvat who is one of Denmark's finest DJ talents who already made a name for himself as a producer with releases on Upon You, Monique Musique and Kling Klong to name a few. The official preparty is on from 9pm at the Cocktail Box with Miller Floor Control winner Mette S from Deso Records, Gartenhaus head honcho Rasmus Juul, the Black Knights Djuraas & Jacobsen and Korben Hagen rounding off a scarily strong lineup not to be missed.
View flyer]]> info@hifly.dk Sat, 18 Feb 2012 23:00:00 +0200 Culture Box: JAMES BLAKE (Atlas Recordings/UK) OPIATE (Hobby Ind./DK) 2000F (Kraken/Ohoi!/DK) Cocktail Box: FINN OF TOMLAND (SE) Culture Box and Heineken presents a rare DJ set by crossover artist James Blake! Presale tickets aravailable from January 9th www.billetlugen.dk/musik/22280/james-blake
View flyer]]> info@hifly.dk Fri, 24 Feb 2012 23:00:00 +0200 Culture Box: SASCHA FUNKE (Kompakt/BPitch Ctrl./DE) PHONOKEMI (Highgrade) MANDRUP & AVO Cocktail Box: GULDAGER & MAX HEINZ A kind of techno that sways between the polarity of emotional overload and concrete rationale – hence immediacy, which is what Sascha Funke is all about.
View flyer]]> info@hifly.dk Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:00:00 +0200 SHONKY (Crosstown Rebels/Real Tone/FR) TIM ANDRESEN (What Happens/DK) In music, one hit record is lucky. Two? That’s talent. And the talent everyone is talking about at the moment is fresh faced Frenchman Shonky. But with over 50,000 tracks in the Beatport database, how does a modern electronic music artist distinguish himself ? For Parisian techno and house producer, DJ and remixer, Shonky the answer is simple. He took his profound passion for making music and created a signature sound, delivered a few solid EPs, topped the charts, landed a nice place with a “few” big labels, moved to Berlin, & spun in the hottest euro Tech clubs and... Voila! Indeed His natural aptitude for producing was immediately evident with releases like Let Me Ask U, his remix of Mlle Caro & Franck Garcia’s Far Away.. Back in 2007 every underground club was echoing to the sounds of Olympia – a slab of panoramic techno that seemed to have been custom-engineered at the bottom of the sea; Or dancing to his massive remix of Danton Eeprom’s All I Can Say, and he was piling up serious air miles with his increasingly hectic DJ schedule. In 2008, Shonky took another bold leap forward by releasing his first full-length album Time Zero. More than a haphazard assortment of tracks, Time Zero is blended together with a common theme: getting your groove on at a party and the art of celebrating life. Incredibly, music was a second-choice career for the 30-year-old. “I studied mathematics and statistics for five years. I was supposed to get a job in a bank,” he grins. But as a dedicated clubber since his teens the lure of electronic music and culture proved too strong. Shonky bought a pair of decks though he admits he had no idea what to do with them at first. He picked up many of his tips at Dan Ghenacia’s infamous Batofar after-parties, where he struck up a friendship with Dan, Dyed, and the rest of the Freak n’ Chic crew. Immersing himself in the rave scene in Paris, Shonky’s musical roots were then found at the “Batofar club”. More so, it was the deep house, soul and funk infused sounds hailing from the mid-90s West Coast house scene (namely San Francisco and San Diego) and the historical Chicago house movement that left an everlasting impression on his future. Inspired by pioneering deep house figures such as Gemini and Kerri Chandler, Shonky has dubbed his own innovative style of mixing, writing and producing. Shonky’s was to be one of the hottest young stars of 2008 and simply a star in 2009 with still big releases, on Freak n’Chic and Contexterrior his home labels. Shonky’s hit tracks “Carnage” & “Coco Feel and Love Shonk,” unmistakably portray this development and expansion within his production, marking a musical crossroads in his passage towards a new sound –one that revealed sonically groovier house dimensions infused with stronger vocal representation. At this time, Critics and fans alike celebrated the new direction with admiration and enthusiasm. The result was a lighter feeling, less minimal with the same hypnotic overtones.. “He’s a natural talent,” raves Ghenacia. “I know when he does something it’s going to be perfect.” And 2010 shows no sign of slowing down, as Shonky delivered the summer Bomb Cluborama (FNC051) and Les shonkettes, contexterrior’s autumnal anthem. We may never know what Shonky’s moniker means, but we certainly know the sound... and Among those clamoring for his services, are clubs like.. DC10, Space, Zoo project in Ibiza; Goa Madrid, Mac arena Beach Barcelona; Techno parade, Rex Club, Paris; mulletover and Fabric London, Bar27 Amsterdam, Berliner clubs Panoramabar, Der visionnaer & Watergate, Pollerwiesen Düsseldorf, Harry Klein München; Arma 17 Moscow; Kazantip Festival; Australian Ambar; La huaka Peru; Playa Del Carmen’s festival in Mexico & Hollywood’s famous Avalon Club to name but a few!
View flyer]]> info@hifly.dk Fri, 02 Mar 2012 23:00:00 +0200 Culture Box: Sound of Berghain NICK HÖPPNER (Ostgut Ton/Berghain/DE) BORIS (Ostgut Ton/Berghain/DE) Cocktail Box: The Flying Disco Circus MESTER JAKOBSEN TOM COLLINS Sound of Berghain and Sound of Panorama Bar are monthly Ostgut Ton label nights at Culture Box, showcasing the finest Berghain techno and Panorama Bar house DJs. Currently residing in his home of choice and calling, Berlin, Nick Höppner skillfully balances, explores and contributes to a dramatically wide range of musical professions, proving him to be one of the backbones of today's house and techno underground. Be it through his monthly residencies at the inimitable Berghain/Panoramabar and Watergate clubs, his solo releases for Ostgut Ton, his expansive DJ touring, his acclaimed co-production and live performances alongside Lee Jones as MyMy, or indeed his creative involvement and management of the Ostgut label since its inception, Nick stands out as a unique, long-serving and truly dedicated figure in today's electronic music world. As a producer and DJ, Höppner displays all the characteristics of a life-long music lover. Sensitive to the history, emotions, stories and situations that derive from this music, for Nick the scope and eclecticism available within the 4/4 rhythm allows him great freedom to express his tastes and musical instincts. Throughout his two solo 12''s on Ostgut Ton, we find lush, uplifting house ('Violet'), deeply melodic techno dub sessions, spooky percussive workouts ('Makeover') and lashings of richly produced musical statements. As a remixer too, Nick's passion for storytelling comes through with great enthusiasm, as his interpretations of Richard Davis on Was Not Was, Ed Davenport on Liebe*Detail or David Durango on Meerestief have all recently shown. To immerse one's self within Nick's typically extended DJ sets rewards similar multi-faceted discoveries. Always telling a tale, weaving an exciting path across his chosen musical spectrum - whether its a tough, raw and energetic house-party set, a dramatic big-room techno adventure, or anything in between - Nick's mature, confident approach and depth of character sets him apart from his contemporaries behind the decks. Attracting attention since their first release in 2005 on the rock that is Playhouse records, to their beautiful debut album 'Songs For the Gentle', via showcases on Circus Company, Aus and Cocoon, to recent bombs like 'Everybody's Talkin' (Playhouse) or 'Southbound' on Ostgut Ton, the gentleman duo of MyMy have brought their uncany vision of dance music to the worlds most important stages with their energetic Live shows. Working together with long-time compadre Lee Jones, Nick's invaluable studio touch, and love for addictive, rump-shaking grooves has helped fuel the pair's musical endeavours to great public success. Together the duo have held their monthly 'MyMy & Friends' residency at Berlin's Watergate club for over 3 years, and have completed a plethora of stand-out remixes for labels such as Get Physical, Liebe*Detail, Four:Twenty, B-Pitch Control and many more besides. In the summer of 2010 Lee and Nick have decided to close the MyMy chapter and focus on their respective solo activities. His open minded love and knowledge of music, along with a professional background working with labels like the delightful Morr Music, his own fledgling 'Just' imprint with partner Lee Jones, or as editor for the important Groove magazine, that led to his current position as manager for Berghain/Panoramabar's in-house label, Ostgut Ton. Since the label's birth in 2005 Nick has played a defining role in its growing success, spreading the club's musical message through the productions of its residents, and selflessly working to push the platform forward, nurturing its growth. DJ Boris is kind of a charismatic, multifunctional weapon in the Berlin club life. His musical roots reach back to the mid 80s, when he lived in New York for four years where he absorbed the unique spirit of the seminal club Paradise Garage weekend after weekend. From the Club’s mentor Larry Levan Boris learned to believe in his musical intuition as well as a broad musical spectrum, which nowadays ranges from Disco, Hi-NRG, Post-Punk and (Kraut-) Rock to House and Techno, all of which Boris loves to throw into one set. „Music was most important for Levan. He was uncompromising and he knew how to convey it. That’s what I’m trying to achieve, too, when I’m djing.“ Many years later, Boris became a resident at Panorama Bar’s first incarnation in Berlin, where he was able to build a loyal following by playing long sets lasting until noon. „The crowd is always a lot more receptive for music at the end than at the beginning. That’s when I rather have the opportunity to present unusual stuff and that’s when I’m able to let my feelings run freely.“ After the old OstGut/Panorama Bar closed, Boris played in almost every club in Berlin, but when the follow up club Berghain opened its doors in 2004, he quickly focused on playing out here again. From 2005 till 2010 he had another musical platform, as he was taking care of the label Careless Records as an A&R. As a DJ, he is not exactly keen on refining a certain genre, but rather to push music with a certain twist.
View flyer]]> info@hifly.dk Sat, 03 Mar 2012 23:00:00 +0200