lucky4catalyst

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THE FUTURE

If asked to think about other possible uses for my work and ideas within the music industry that are not directly your solo music career, a lot of things come to mind. Moving out of my house at a young age and building my way through the artistic/professional landscape I have created for myself has given me the belief that I am a resourceful young lad. I tend to overthink my options and what I could be doing. But the truth is I have a degree in Fine Art and History of Art (some would call this a useless degree), and my CV contains only examples of work in fine art and nightlife, or writing pertaining to nightlife. From promoting to bartending, making and performing music to writing about making and performing music. It seems clear to me that what I’m doing is where my interests are in the arts and more specifically music. I think that there are ways I could extend my skill set and find new avenues in the music industry, however, I don’t think that’s what I want to do just yet. 

I am very keen to keep pushing forward with what I am doing and bringing this to a more professional standard, regardless of income. I find value in my work because believe that I am adding and helping to propel to the culture. That is all I ever really wanted to do. I find satisfaction in the fact that my input will help the continuation of the scene and music, and that will have lasting effects on future generations of kids who want to rave. The influence of Rave culture in modern society shouldn’t be overlooked and the inspiration that Rave has ignited has seeped into many aspects of modern culture. I am not claiming to be great, or better than my peers, or to be an inspiration or anything like that. But I truly believe that this music saved my life and gave me purpose, it took me out of a banal and vapid landscape I saw as a child and inspired me to do something other than engage with nihilism. So I will continue to throw parties, raves that open up new public spaces and club nights that will draw new people into the sound and expose them to the DIY culture. I will help my friends release their music, while also releasing my own. I will manage my label and its Sub-label. I will continue to mix and master for artists in the scene. I will continue to work in venues I deem underground and help them run like a well-oiled machine, the way I was trained to do in the commercial clubs I worked in throughout university. I will continue to help friends and newer collectives who want to do the same. I will push to maintain the genres that stay on the fringe of dance music. I will do what I have to and I will work hard. If I need money, I will hustle as I always have. There are already several streams of income, if I need to step outside the rave sphere, I could make music for video games or mix and master for artists outside my realm. But as I write this I have just received a booking for a gig at well-known venue, so for now, I have faith I am doing the right thing. 

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Future Trance United - Face 2 Face (2003)

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THE PUBLIC PRESENTATION 

The live set; I truly began to understand its significance in the scene because of this YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@HFP23/videos. I had seen many live sets, but didn’t fully appreciate what the live set stood for in the Tekno context. It is deeply rooted in the history and forming of the culture. There might be a few reasons for this, firstly the analogue sound and minimal approach to the genre easily translates into a live performance. Also, that artistry is taken very seriously in the scene, and a live set can allow for a better expression of the self than playing other peoples tracks might. I also theorise that one of the main reasons for the significance of the live set is that at a Teknival or Rave that might extend anywhere from 3-14 days, DJs might run out of Vinyls after awhile, the live set allows for improvisation, experimentation and continued/prolonged sound generation. But perhaps the importance of the live set hides in its ephemerality, the live set can only be experienced in that moment. That’s something very unaccessible and almost intangible to those who haven’t been present at the happening. This stands against commodification and the commercial DJ concept of ‘crowd pleasers.” This seems to resonate well with the anarchist and anti-commercial ethos of the culture.

See there’s plenty of ways to play music, plenty of approaches you can take, all just as respectable as the other if you respect the craft. However there is this reoccurring sentiment that Digital DJing doesn’t require the same skill set or knowledge the a live set of mine vinyl might require. I don’t agree but can see why some people feel that way, given the amount of DJs who don’t do much behind the CDJs and have a basic selection of music. Its for this reason that I choose the live medium to play my tunes at almost all costs. I also feel a strong sense of autonomy over my music when I play live. However, I still choose to use a DAW and play with Ableton. I feel completely using hardware would be fun but that I am able to deliver more at this current point in time. 

Now back to the event, I prepared my live set a few hours before arriving at the venue. I usually only prepare for a gig if its an important, if not I just open my Ableton project and see what’s good to play for the specific crowd. Here are a couple screenshots of the live set to give you an idea.

Ultimately the performance was a lot of fun, it's always great to play for your mates in an intimate setting instead of a large group of strangers. Both are fun, but I felt more comfortable and also, that they would understand the music. Anyway, here are some videos of the experience. 

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May 1st live set

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Classic Goa Trance CD Covers

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Various - In To The Mix (1997)

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Bordell 23

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MAKING THE POSTER

I usually take the same approach when making the Speedgasm posters as well as the cover art for the Fegefeuer label. I start by gathering source material, usually from my sketchbook and camera roll. In this case, I used the two sketches you see below. I chose them because although they both feature a spiral, they contrast each other well. One with finer lines and the other with blockier elements.

The spiral is an homage to the originators of the culture, the Spiral Tribe. The crew that defined the practice, so we owe them a great amount. The symbolism of the spiral presented itself to one of the founders of the Spiral Tribe, Mark Angelo Harrison while he was working at a printing shop. Experimenting with a new industrial laser printer and copier, Mark explored the image of an ammonite fossil with the zoom function. Suddenly the spiral revealed its nature to him and exposed its symbolic reflection of ‘life, evolution and chaos.’ The following day Mark didn’t go to work and committed himself to his new project, the Spiral Tribe. The impact of that decision can’t be quantified but to anyone who has enjoyed a free party, it means a whole lot.

I used my trusted photopea dot com to do the editing, this is a F R E E online version of Photoshop. Firstly, I cropped and fitted the images and then I ‘digitised’ them by playing with the exposure, saturation and colour, and after filling them in/drawing over them. Secondly, I layered the images and tried a number of blending techniques. This is a process I often do to make our graphics, there’s an infinite amount of patterns you can generate by layering images and combining different blending options. I’ll attach some examples below. After I added our logo and tried a new font for the titles, I'm not sure how keen I am on them but I reckon for this purpose it will do just fine. Here are some of the drafts. 

We then went ahead and sent this out to friends and told them to come down to our usual spot. We would normally send this out through our ‘info-line’ which is a group chat we have, a very modern interpretation of the old school info-line. I still love when Rave promoters use a phone number for the info-line but this way is much simpler (and why we were called iPhone Punks). Anyway, for this occasion, we really wanted to keep it small and intimate. A few friends showed up and overall it was a laugh. I figure since not many people have seen this graphic, I will reuse it for the May 1st event. Although I’ll change the titles and we won’t have a theme; probably something like “Speedgasm presents Gasm In The Park” and the date plus a ‘location TBA’ at the bottom. Here is the final result of both.

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Le hangar Languidic (Mars 2001)

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Ronald Van Gelderen - Trance Energy (2006)

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CURATING AND PLANNING THE EVENT

After several failed attempts to document a live performance, I realised that properly documenting a gig isn’t that easy. The first issues I ran into were mainly to do with recording quality, both audio and visual. It's so easy for something to go wrong in the recording, especially when I play b2b with my colleague goldmund.99; the levels are usually unbalanced in the recording due to us using two laptops and only recording audio back into one of those laptops. Another issue was it being too dark or not being allowed to film inside a venue. Beyond that there is a lot to think about when hosting an event or playing my music at someone's event, I seem to forget to snap enough pictures.

Dark Video from Frankfurt for reference:

At any rate, my initial plan was to film the May 1st party I'm throwing with my collective, as this will be an open air, I assumed it would be easier to document. However, realising how much work I will be taking on during the day to make sure the event runs smoothly, and I don’t think I’ll have the capacity to properly document the whole process of setting up and executing the event, while also having to think about my set. 

So alternatively I decided to prepare an impromptu invite only event to showcase the music, for the purpose of documenting it for this blog. So I curated a lineup and reached out to my people. Let me tell you a little more about this process. Firstly, I got the keys for the venue, a little warehouse/industrial spot in Neukölln where we usually host our raves. Then I came up with the theme: “Nightmare Stomp”, for the poster and party decor. Now here’s the juicy bit.

The line up: 

Opening our little get-together was the very talented Monsieur Philippe. Playing an experimental bass live set that finely treads the line of Hardcore music. One of the best producers to ever do it, you’ll see. 

Following on from this, goldmund.99 layed down some flawless Hard Trance and Tekno beats infused with Latin, Hip-Hop and even Folk music influences. Goldie has the god given gift of Trance inducing dance-floors at high tempos. His music is in your face but never too much, never too cringe, always just perfectly playful enough. 

Next was my turn, as you’ll hear, I played a mix of Psy and Hard Trance, later moving into the Tribe and Tekno beats I love so dearly. 

Now with the lineup ready and confirmed, my equipment on my back and the key in hand. I got my ass to the venue as quick as possible and got to setting up the decoration. The theme was a nightmare, so I used sheets which we use to protect the sound system, and nets we had as decor for previous events. However unlike previous events, instead of hanging them overhead and creating patterns using the projectors and the shadows, we suspended the nets and sheets like hanging ghosts and had 3 projectors illuminating them. We also had some LED tube lights to make sure the footage would be clear. We kept the chill-out zone to one side of the performance area, and the dance floor was positioned quite far from the back, although the whole space was open. 

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INITIAL PUBLIC TESTING

While in the process of figuring out what public presentation I would document for the purpose of this blog, there were a few opportunities for documentation that fell through for one reason or another. However, they did offer me the opportunity to test my material publicly. So I'll take this occasion to direct those experiences a little bit. 

Firstly, there was the Speedgasm Rave I hosted for my birthday in February, it could have been an occasion to document but not all the sonic material was ready and there was so much to organise that I forgot to record my set and the only documentation I did was this photo.

And here's the poster I made for that event:

The UBT (not going to use their full name) rave was a strange but fun gig, it was at a spot I'm used to playing at and my set time was around 7 or 8am. I showed up an hour before after a nice sleep and the promoter as well as most of the ravers around the venue were trashed. The vibes and music were very macho although the energy was high and overall the crowd was friendly. I was a bit out of place on this lineup, it was mostly this new school Hard Techno with a lot of rave stabs and that’s just not the music I make, I reckon the promoter booked me off of a recommendation and hadn’t actually listened to my music. But I went for my coldest and hardest material while still throwing in some playful moments during my one-hour live set. The floor was pretty empty when I started and I filled it back up with happy dancers, It was so loud the pipes in the ceiling were vibrating, which was really fun. Halfway through the DJ who was playing after me came into the booth and started trying to vibe/dance/ with me, it was a bit uncomfortable but he meant well. Afterwards, I hung around for a few moments waiting for a good moment to speak to the promoter about the very low fee I asked for. He didn’t pay up, and I didn’t fight for it I just left with my heavy bag full of gear vowing to be more selective with my gigs. Later I found out the recording was botched.

(I can only put one video here so I'll upload some videos in another post)

The next gig was accepted before I vowed to be more selective about where I play, and it was for a very good cause. A friend of mine asked me and my music partner to play at a charity event he was helping to organise for a Ukrainian animal shelter. It was super wholesome and a great experience, but maybe our music was out of place for that occasion. We still played our best and it seemed as though people were enjoying it a lot, but it wasn’t the right time nor occasion for our style of dance music. 10/10 experience though!

The gig after that was the Equinox rave, it was at a really nice indoor spot out in the forest in Brandenburg. Me and Goldmund.99 were meant to play around 4am but the lineup was delayed and our set was pushed back to 9am. It was a really fun gig with a crowd that was super receptive to the psychedelic sounds which was fun. The decor was great and there was loads of interesting stuff in the surrounding area. Here is a photo I really like from that morning :)

A few of us from the Speedgasm crew were invited to play down in Frankfurt, this was pretty exciting at first and we were all super hyped, but the experience didn’t really live up to our expectations. I had fully planned to document this gig but the vibes were off, I never experienced a crowd like that, and their taste was for Eurodance and Pop remix, so once again this was a bad curation in terms of the lineup. The monitoring was awful and I sadly didn’t take any pleasure from this experience. 

The next two events myself and the Speedgasm crew are throwing which at the time of writing are still in the planning. There’s May 1st which will be an open air in the park, and May 25th which I'm currently finalising the line-up for, this will be a more Psytrance-based rave at our usual location. In the end, I think we will throw an impromptu event for the purpose of documenting a performance.

EDIT: May 1st was a banger! I took a van with a few others to reserve our spot in the park nice and early. The spot got blown very early by the Ordnungsamt, it was a bit messy as I was the only one there (everyone else went to sleep a bit more) with the material when they came. Within an hour a few more of the crew showed up and we had the van packed, en route to our new and much better location. It all went down sweetly, and when the cops came under the bridge to break up another party, we turned our music down and they somehow missed us. Here are some photos/videos.

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Devils highway free party march 2022