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Home , Mixmag, Richie Hawtin, Spastik, When I Get Old

THE FUTURE ISSUE DANCE MUSIC HAS CONTENTS 48 INVENTIONS THAT COULD CHANGE ALWAYS BEEN DRIVEN EVERYTHING 51 THE WAR ON BLOGS BY THE FUTURE BUT NOW TECHNOLOGY IS 52 VIRTUAL CLUBBING 54 WILL MUSIC CHANGING CLUBLAND BE FREE? 56 GREEN CLUBBING FASTER THAN EVER, 58 OLDER/YOUNGER CLUBBING 60 FUTURE FADS CAN YOU KEEP UP? 62 FUTURE FASHION PROPHET RICHIE HAWTIN 64 JAMIE JONES 68 SOCIAL NETWORKING INTRODUCES OUR 70 THE FUTURE IS RETRO FUTURE ISSUE – 72 EIGHT NEW WAYS OF HAVING FUN IN A CLUB YOUR GUIDE TO THE NEXT LEVEL OF RAVE 74 Words Gavin Herlihy Photography www.coneyljay.com THE PLANET’S MOST FUTURISTIC CLUBS

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Hawtin’s fascination with new technologies and ways of thinking about club music has earned him a “I DON’T WANT TO GET reputation as dance music’s authority on the future, not to mention work as OLD. I WANT TO FEEL a consultant for pioneering companies like Beatport and Allen & Heath. He YOUNG AND CONNECTED can thank his lifestyle as a globe- trotting DJ for granting him a unique TO THE PULSE OF LIFE. I perspective on the world. In the past two weeks he’s been to LA, New York, GET BORED VERY EASILY” Windsor in Canada, back to Germany and on to , Tokyo, then Mount Fuji, on to Saporo and back to Tokyo, before flying to . He’s been in this SMALL SLICE OF the future lies in the constant flux of time-zones and jet lag palm of Richie Hawtin’s hand. “This will for almost 17 years. “I distinctly be to dance music what guitars were to remember a conversation I had with rock ’n’ roll,” he says triumphantly, his Jeff Mills a few years back about being Aeyes blazing with excitement as he futurists,” he says. “Not only because offers up a sleek black gadget for we tried to make futuristic music, but closer inspection. This hand-held because we were living 20 years device, he explains, is basically the iPod ahead of the mass population. of the turntable world, squeezing all Travel doesn’t mean anything to us; the capabilities of a set of decks and a skipping over to Tokyo and back to mixer into a device not much larger New York in twenty-four hours is part than a remote control. He discovered of our routine.” the Pacemaker, made by Swedish Today, firing off a volley of texts from company Tonium, with his father and his smartphone at the end of the Ibiza fellow geek outside Barcelona’s Soñar season, Richie Hawtin is as alive as he’s festival in June of this year. “I saw a ever been. A blonde mop of hair huge growd gathered around a girl makes him look far younger than his DJing with this small black device,” he 37 years. In three days’ time he’ll host says. “It was a huge moment.” his Minus party at futuristic superclub It is moments and discoveries like Amnesia. It’s one of the most hotly this that make Richie Hawtin’s life anticipated dates on the techno complete. Ever since he heard the calendar and a taster for what’s to alien sounds of Jeff Mills’ prototype come in — perfect electronic music show on Detroit radio timing, then, to pick the brains of one as a teenager in the 1980s, techno’s of dance music’s fastest imaginations reigning innovator has been captivated on the future of club culture. by the future. Since his early days DJing as a teenager with a makeshift So why do you keep coming back delay effect at Detroit club Shelter, to the future? Richie has strived to push the Because I don’t want to get old. I want boundaries of electronic music. His to feel young and connected to the ‘Dex, Fx & 909’ tours of the early 1990s pulse of life. To me, life is an ever- (captured on one of the first Mixmag changing, evolving world of travelling, covermount CDs) advanced the idea of meeting new people and searching for what a DJ could do beyond just mixing something new or exciting or better. one record into another. Records like Plus I get bored very easily. his groundbreaking ‘’ What’s next for clubs? spearheaded mutant strains of techno I’ve been reading a lot about ‘tele- that have come full circle to influence presence’ – £500,000 communication today’s thriving techno scene. From systems designed for the world of his new home of Berlin his Minus corporate America. You sit around half is unwaveringly dedicated of a circular desk looking at screens to discovering new ways of creating showing a group of people on the other dance music, and his ‘DE 9 Transitions’ side of the world sitting around a CD rewired the way DJs approach mix similar-looking, other half of a circular CDs (instead of a sequence of tracks desk. Imagine that in a club. To have Richie spliced his favourite records two rooms, one Womb in Tokyo and the into individual slivers and reassembled other Womb in London, and a dividing them as one whole new piece of music wall that would be a mirror image of the using revolutionary DJ/production other city. Or imagine if you build a new software Ableton Live). club and the interior surfaces of that

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room are made from projections or high resolution displays, so that it can be a black club or it can be anywhere or anything. It could start to become a pseudo-holodeck, like in Star Trek. The technology is already there. ’s LED light pyramid is an example of an object built out of a high resolution display whose images can be manipulated to move with the music. The world is changing incredibly fast. Is it a good or a bad thing? I have this overwhelming optimism that technology will save the day. My friends are from all over the world. “I GET DISORIENTATED Older people, especially parents, can’t understand how I can have friends like WHEN I’M IN ONE that – but physical presence doesn’t make connections between people PLACE FOR TOO LONG. any more. It solidifies a connection, but you don’t need it to maintain that I GET A STRANGE, OFF- connection. Social networking technology allows me to feel that I’m BALANCE FEELING” connected to my friends when I’m not physically present. Now, the scariest thing for me is that when I get old I won’t be able to travel so much and maintain these connections that I’ve made by travelling physically. But I’m optimistic that there’ll be a new way of connecting when I get to that point in my life. And I hope another advance will come when I really need it: a set of bionic ears! How has technology changed your life as a DJ since you began playing? A DJ’s life has changed more than that of any other performer. We’re touring all the time and this lifestyle has only become possible in the last 15 years because of advancements in technology. When I first started playing, we did everything by fax. Travelling was a very lonely experience. Now in airports I have Bluetooth connectivity with my computer so that even when I’m in a taxi I’m ichatting to my mum, dad or brother or sending a file or an email. No matter where I travel, I’m still connected to my world. It must be weird constantly moving between time zones. Do you ever wake up disorientated, not knowing where you are? I get disorientated when I’m in one place for too long. If I’m home for two weeks I get this strange, off-balance feeling that everything should change. Thanks to low-cost airlines the ravers must be catching up! Definitely. You’re now experiencing what we’ve been doing for 15 years. The advent of low-cost airlines, the creation of the EU and the Euro – all these things have made clubland explode again. Quite often these days I’ll do a series of gigs in different countries and see the same people at each one. Now it’s cheaper to go to Berlin for a night without a hotel than it is to travel nationally and drink beer all night. And thanks to social networking there’s more connectivity between people. They’re more open to different ideas, and that’s opening up new

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musical and artistic ways of thinking. a crowd to watch. You’re one of the first DJs to actually MySpace and have do something about global changed how we make friends and warming. When did the threat start plan our social lives. What’s next to hit home? for social networking? DJs are racking up more air miles than I know people working on internet any other musicans. I started looking sites that will one day be to music out at these beautiful sunsets while what YouTube is to video. For our taking off from São Paolo or wherever, scene a really good social network and thinking, ‘This is amazing, but is based upon music could be amazing. my enjoyment of this moment going The next step could also be social to take away this possible moment networks merging with phones and for my son?’ next-generation GPS systems to So how are you making a difference? create a device that can tell you The first idea was offsetting my carbon which of your friends are nearby, footprint. It was easy to calculate how and what people in a club you’re in many miles I was flying and by have similar interests. extension how much CO2 I was putting Will downloading kill music? into the atmosphere. We found a Last year Minus wrote our biggest carbon offsetting company based in royalty cheques ever because of digital Berlin who calculate how much carbon sales. If people can buy stuff digitally you produce by flying or driving, and at a good price they generally will. from whom you can buy an offset. The People don’t want to rip other people money then goes to environmentally off as long as they don’t feel they’re conscious projects around the world. getting ripped off themselves. To do DJs make good livings, and if we can’t this properly you need to be able to put a little bit of that back then track what’s happening with a record perhaps we don’t deserve to live the and bring people into an on-demand lavish lifestyles that some of us enjoy. service. Why own 100 records when But will it really help? you can have anything you want, A colleague of mine argued that it’s whenever you want? There’s a not going to make a difference, so why company called Sound Cloud looking bother? That’s fucking bullshit. The at sharing music on a global scale. But worst thing that could happen is that you could take things even further. OK, maybe it doesn’t make much of a Right now an MP3’s tags can tell you difference. But at least I’ve tried. basic information about a track like its You’ve been the midwife at the birth name or artist. But what if you could of both Final Scratch [software that encode more than that? You could allows you to use your laptop to mix break each track down into its records] and Beatport. What’s next? individual loops and elements, and The Pacemaker is a whole new way for each of these elements and loops kids to become excited about music. “DJS MAKE GOOD LIVINGS. would be encoded with information This is something you put in your about what influenced them or who pocket and when you’re at school in IF WE CAN’T PUT A LITTLE made them. Then you could start to the playground you can pull it out and build a way of tracing how a track start mixing tracks. BIT BACK THEN PERHAPS came to be. It would work like a Does it scare you that a whole genetic code so that in ten years’ time generation of kids are growing up WE DON’T DESERVE THEM” you could trace a track’s family tree, not knowing what vinyl is? looking at where it came from and the For me I’ll always have a fascination are irrelevant for me. How is technology changing the software or machines that created it. with records because I grew up with So is digital technology making art of DJing? So are you saying we should get rid them, but do I need them? Not really. music better? I’m a little bit bored by only being able of ownership of music? Not only do they take up way too Technology is democratising music to manipulate things in a record I’d like to get to a place where I don’t much , they’re technically and allowing more people than ever paradigm. When we started Final even have to carry a computer or a limiting and environmentally to enjoy what we do. I don’t want to Scratch [Richie was one of the first mechanical storage device for music. unfriendly. We’re moving to a point explain to a kid in Ecuador why my investors in the company] we saw it I don’t care if I have some physical where vinyl will be a limited specialised song isn’t available on the internet if as a technology bridge from the object that contains these non market for people who choose to it’s only available on vinyl. I want him analogue to the digital world, and I feel physical assets, I’d like all my music collect records as pieces of art. to hear my song, get into what we’re it’s time to get off the bridge. A further stored somewhere and to be able Many DJs like your close friends Zip doing and maybe that might send him step would be a larger, iPhone-style bring that list down whenever I need and argue that on a new direction in his life. multi-touch screen. And further from it. So imagine if you had this cloud vinyl is far superior... Now that digital music has taken that some kind of wireless hand where all these songs were stored You could choose to sell vinyl to that sound experience close to interaction where you can manipulate and encoded and you could pluck small, non-expanding market, close perfection, can it get any better? different components of sound by them down in real time during a your eyes to what’s happening, let The next step for clubs is to build changing the movement of your performance? But what if you want everyone copy your music and just be immersive sound environments. hands. It’s hard to visualise, but to get deeper and you want to have cynical about it. Or you can choose to Instead of four stacks of speakers imagine something like the screens just the high hats from a track find a way to appease both of those they’ll use, perhaps, 36 micro-speakers they use in [sci-fi film] Minority Report. and map them over the sound from things. The quality of digital is as good to spread the sound around you. This You’re still using your body to interact another song playing. This kind of if not better than vinyl. Music begins opens lots of possibilities. Now music with something digital, but through interactivity is where I want to get to. life as a digital WAV file before it is performance is so loop-based, imagine moving and pinching and grabbing Getting down to the molecular level mastered and turned into vinyl. But as if you could make one side of the you’re able to go deeper into the of songs. That would be amazing. a performer I have to learn new tools room experience something slightly possibilities of how you work it. The new Minus EP ‘Expansion and ways of thinking in order to move different from what people on the Technology can only work for a Contraction’ (including a new

GROOMING: WWW.PAULINETERIELE.COM forward in my art, so these arguments other side are hearing. performer if it’s visually interesting for Plastikman track) is out now

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