Please introduce yourself… Who are you, where are you and what are you?
My name is Finn Johannsen. I live in Berlin. I am a DJ, writer, co- run the label Macro Recordings and I am a booker for the Berlin clubs Paloma and Monarch.
What does your music sound like? Can you draw what you think it sounds like for us (an image from the old internet is acceptable)?
I get bored quite easily, so I have no defined sound as such. But imagine an image of happy, nocturnal chaos. Take this example from a gig in Paris some years ago:
Where was the mix recorded?
In my studio/home office.
What would be the ideal setting to listen to the mix?
Late at night, heading somewhere. Or early in the morning, returning from somewhere.
What should we be wearing?
Whatever makes you feel good.
What would be your dream setting to record a mix: Location/system/format?
I love any setting that leads to a recorded set in which you can hear the people scream on the floor. But I also like to record a mix at home. In any case my way of playing records differs quite a lot between a live or studio context.
Which track in the mix is your current favourite?
All of them.
What’s your favourite recorded mix of all time?
Klaus Stockhausen live at Front Club, Hamburg, March 11th 1987.
If you could go back to back with any DJ from throughout history, who would it be and why?
It would be some great club in the 70s, where new ideas and great people fell into place. I am so old that I was out clubbing in all the following decades, but I was too young for that.
What was your first DJ set up at home and what is it now?
2x Technics SL-1200 MKII and an Ecler Smac first mixer. Mixer finally died last year and I replaced it with an Ecler Nuo. No, I am not an audiophile.
What’s more important, the track you start on or the track you end on?
Both are equally important.
What were the first and last records you bought?
First: Blondie – Heart Of Glass. Last: Al Kent – Loving You
If this mix was an edible thing, what would it taste like?
Fish & Chips at North Sea, Bloomsbury, London. Eaten in good company.
If it was an animal what would it be?
A night owl.
One record in your collection that is impossible to mix into anything?
None. All you have to do is to find another record that fits.
Upcoming in the world of…
Spending some beautiful time with my loved ones and good friends. And spending some beautiful nights wherever my professional activities will lead me.
Anything else we need to discuss?
What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.
Finn: Mostly spending as much time as possible with my wife and daughter, family and friends. I have been constantly DJing and working on a lot of other things for years and years and I used this unexpected time off to take a break, but I am also catching up with all the books and films I gathered for some occasion, and other interests I had to neglect due to too little time or too many distractions. Else I have not played a club gig since March. As I am a seasoned DJ I sometimes wondered how it would feel to retire at some point, and I guess I know now, and I realized that I am not yet ready for it. I still buy as much music as I can still afford, and I do radio shows and podcasts with it, and I try to be up to date with what is still happening. Generally I try to act as responsible as I can in this situation and make the best of it.
Pete: My girlfriend moved in and we used the unexpected time off to settle down. I am also still working at Hard Wax once a week, and I practice my daily Yoga routines. As far as DJing is concerned, I played a few open air gigs that met the necessary regulations. But only until the beginning of November.
How has lockdown been for you both?
Pete: I could never really develop some kind of lockdown routine. It just felt just too absurd to spend most of your life indoors, in your own space. Like not being able to meet friends where and when you want, to visit a restaurant, cultural activities, and so on. But we try to adapt to it, and make the best of what we can still do.
Finn: A lot of what I have been doing for decades fell apart within a very short time, and that was quite frightening. But Macro, the label I run with Stefan Goldmann, did not stop, and most importantly I did not have much time to brood over the situation as Paloma, the club I have been doing the booking for in the past few years, shut down in March and pretty much instantly went into crisis management mode. We organized a successful crowdfunding campaign, a series of exhibitions, a quarantine podcast, fashion items and set up a label, and we are constantly thinking about other ideas to keep the club going and support our network. So thankfully I was quite busy, and I still am. Hopefully this will keep up until things swing back into action, and I kind of ignore the possibility that they might not.
Which artist and/or labels have caught your eye recently?
Finn: I was quite happy with the way UK Garage came back, there is a lot of interesting fresh new stuff on labels like Instinct, Dr. Banana, Vitamin D, and many others. On a disco tip I think Javi Frias, Snips, Very Polish-Cut Outs and the Sound Metaphors camp are doing mighty fine edits, and in terms of house music I think labels like Must Be On Wax, Blaq Numbers, Random Mind State, or Distant Horizons are well worth checking out. As a quite loyal soul I still cling to artists like Jeff Mills, Nature Boy, Kai Alcé, Dave Lee, Hanna, Boo Williams, Pépé Bradock and friends like Dynamo Dreesen, SVN, SW., Fett Burger, Lowtec and the whole Workshop posse, they all keep on delivering. But, as many others, I spend more time with music at home now, and there I am mostly listening to old soul music and new hip hop, and according mentions would definitely blow up this frame.
Pete: I still dig what old friends are doing, like Sleeparchive, Shed, or Surgeon. I also enjoyed current releases by Ploy, the Zenker Brothers or Leibniz. The recent albums by Autechre and Actress also really blew me away.
With clubs closed, this period has been difficult for DJs. What do you make of the government’s response?
Finn: Well, this period has been difficult for almost anybody. In hindsight a lot of decisions how to handle the pandemic were obviously too late and probably too hesitant. The virus hit hard because practically only few goverments were at least a bit ready and well equipped to handle such a situation, and more often than not they were simply overwhelmed with the quick rise of infections and how it affected the whole system. Some countries were run by incompetent politicians that had no real clue how to answer it, and still have not. The fact that there were so many populists in charge sure did not help either, and that hey had so many supporters that believed them. Rather expectedly the cultural sector was the first to go down, and will probably be the last to come up again. But we are also aware that Germany was not affected as badly as so many other countries. There were fundings and help programs early on, where in a lot of other countries people in creative professions were just left in the cold. But we understand if people in said professions get frustrated with how financial help is distributed, or when they get official advice to work in other fields or to apply for unemployment benefits, because what they have been doing for all their lives is just way down on the priority list. And on top of it there is the threat that many institutions and locations will just vanish, and nobody knows how they ever will be replaced, if at all. It is important to keep all this alive, but it is also important that the ones demanding support step out of their bubble and ask themselves if what they want to keep doing is a potential threat to many others right now. The virus is just very contagious, there is no cure as of yet, and reason and patience are key.
Where and when did you record this mix?
Finn: The mix was recorded live at Paloma on the evening of October 16th this year, using our usual setup of two turntables, a TR-909 drum machine, and a delay unit.
Can you talk about some of the artists that you’ve included?
Pete: A Power House night is a perfect opportunity to play music by artists I have really internalized over the years. With the selection for this set I wanted too express my love for Detroit music, as I often do. But in the process of preparing a Power House set I also often discover certain artists all over again. This time that was the case with Eddie Flashin’ Fowlkes.
Finn: In the past we often dedicated Power House nights to certain topics, but this time I just wanted to play some records that I had not used yet. In my case it turned out to be mostly pumping US 90s house, just because I was in the mood for it. The sound of these records is quite representative for what I play when I opt for that direction, and the overall sound was also more vital than the individual artists. But of course you can hear some people that often pop up in the Power House canon, like Masters at Work, Tony Rodriguez, Eddie Perez, the Melillo brothers, Jason Nevins, Scott Kinchen or Eddie Maduro. Shout out to the La Mona family in France for providing a rather obviously fitting intro track, and Hans Nieswandt, who gave the fledgling Paloma imprint a glorious unreleased track from the 90s that is just working hard. As for the outro, you have to keep in mind that Power House nights at Paloma usually go on for eight hours, and the last bit is often reserved for early morning bliss and odd ones out, and here we condensed it a bit. The Blaze acapella is blowing a kiss to our beloved crowd, we indeed were wishing you were there, and the last record is a kind of relief ending, and I cannot tell more about it than that it is a Japanese record I found in a cheapo bin and I loved it ever since.
What made this mix so memorable?
Finn: Playing music together again, and doing it where it all began, and like we always do. Of course we missed our dancers, but it felt good to realize that our dynamics can be activated in any context.
Pete: I wallowed in the memories quite a bit. Our nights together offered so many, and it all came back. Finn is a friend, and a selector capable contantly coming up with musical surprises. We swing each other up. And it felt great being able to use our setup of the delay unit, and mixing my live 909 beats with Finn’s acapellas. That combined makes it even more fun, and I think you can hear that.
There was this moment in the 90s when the sound of house music changed, with lasting consequences. I would say it began in 1993. Of course technical progress in terms of production techniques and equipment played a role, but it was also very important that the music itself became more popular, and attracted bigger crowds, which led to bigger clubs, and a house sound that pumped crowds and clubs of that size sufficiently. In the following years the superclubs emerged with corresponding budgets, and they needed DJs that played accessible enough to please and unite as many people as possible. This created a divide between denonimators, as simultaneously a lot of DJs and producers defined quality in a different way, and played different styles, to smaller crowds, in smaller clubs. There were DJs and artists that lived in both worlds, or crossed over, and both worlds had different levels of credibility, and success. But increasingly the circuits frowned upon each other, and disrespect was mutual. The big room house music examined here was produced at a time when it had a really bad reputation, being accused of being commercial, devoid of original ideas, or milking once original ideas for far too long. Indeed the sound templates for the music in this playlist had been established years before, and it seemed as if they were only developed further if really necessary. Some of the big room artists were once renowned for different music, and many were quick to maintain that at some point they were selling out and adapting to lesser creative requirements to do so. And some smaller room artists were maybe just envious and could not produce a tune that sold as well, and just claimed they did no want to. And of course for a lot of people it does not matter what size the room has, they just go for music based on their individual preferences, and find that in different contexts. But meanwhile in the early 00s, big room house had its apex of booming beats, dramatic breakdowns and disco samples, and here are some prime examples of the sound.
Victor
Simonelli – Ease Into The Dance (Stellar, 2000)
Victor
Simonelli has many great moments in his back catalogue, and in my
opinion this on par with his most cherished productions. For me the
combination of the bodiless vocal sample and the pumping yet and
elegant deep groove is as immersive as Love Inc.’s “Life’s A
Gas”. I’m serious.
Lenny
Fontana & DJ Shorty – Chocolate Sensation (Original Force Mix)
(FFRR, 2000)
Johnny
Hammond’s early disco staple “Los Conquistadores Chocolates”
was sampled countless times, but not as sweeping as on this belter.
Extra props for the extended filter break which then erupts into
Loleatta Holloway on the top of her lungs. This track pushes all the
right buttons, and works although you can predict any move, only that
every move sounds even more striking than the one before. If you have
never been on a dancefloor exploding to this, you really missed out.
Groove
Assassins – Everything I Knew (Black Vinyl, 2000)
If
some of the orchestral disco maestros would have still been active in
the 90s their music could have sounded like this. Even if this is
just a reconstructed original from their heyday, with a heavily
beefed up groove. Nick Moss and Will Hague understood the craft of
their forebearers on this track, and they made it their own.
Rhythm
Section Feat. Donald O – Do You Know (Main Mix) (MAW Records, 2000)
Every
disco DJ should bring at least one Chic Organization production to
their party, and every disco loving house producer should sample at
least one as well. Henry Maldonado went for “My Forbidden Lover”
and then he turned it into a glorious garage opus, co-written and
performed by the great Donald O. This should have been much bigger
than it actually was, but it is never too late.
David
Bendeth – Feel The Real (Jazz-N-Groove Ultra Classic Mix) (Audio
Deluxe, 2000)
“Feel
The Real”was indeed an ultra classic, albeit on the jazz
funk/disco circuit of the 80s. By the time this was released
Jazz-N-Groove had perfected their slick but heavy groove template so
impressively that they basically could have applied it to any tune
they were given and come up trumps. Judging by their vast output,
some say they did just that.
LoveRush
– Luv 2 See Ya (Joey Negro‘s Vocal Mix) (Azuli, 2000)
Joey
Negro always knew how euphoria works, and here he aimed straight to
the highest level of it. There is some sweet innocence about the
tune, but the pumping groove underneath and several breakdown dramas
tell you to work it. Hard.
Copyright
Presents One Track Mind – Where Would You Be? (Main Mix) (Soulfuric
Trax, 2000)
The
way D-Train’s “Music” is filtered up and down here is very
reminiscent of the finer moments of the French House phenomenon, but
the groove somehow is not. It is just too pushy and impatient, and
the vocal samples get a more generous treatment, verging on harmony.
All good decisions.
Johnny
D & Nicky P – Wild Kingdom (4th Floor Records, 2001)
Of
course big room productions could work well with deeper sounds, and
Johnny D and Nicky P aka Johnick knew how to achieve severe
dancefloor hypnotism anyway. As always when they are in charge, the
music has this strangely psychedelic notion, and „Wild Kingdom“
is another of their real gems to get lost in.
Sunshine
Anderson – Heard It All Before (E-Smoove House Filter Mix)
(Atlantic, 2001)
E-Smoove
was mostly not as smoove in the 00s as he had been before (but who in
this field actually was), but if you remix a sleek R&B hit, you
cannot fire on all cylinders. Still this has the right amount of
infectious funk and it does not divert any attention from the song.
If you think of the proximity to garage vocal harmonies there were,
rather surprisingly, not that many great remixes that managed to
aptly transfer R&B to a house context, but this one gave a lot of
the right clues.
Kraze
– The Party 2001 (Love City Club Remix 2) (Groovilicious, 2001)
It
reads so unimaginative, taking Todd Terry’s “Can You Party”
and the acapella from Kraze’s “The Party”, two early house
productions that were completely overused at that point, and turn
them into a fierce banger that pretends New York City’s big room
haven Sound Factory never closed. And actually the way the track
works all that is really not that inventive. But as it steamrolls you
on that floor, you will not care one bit.
UBP
Feat. Bobby Pruitt – We Are One (Jazz-N-Groove Hands Up Vocal)
(Soulfuric Recordings, 2001)
I
love how this mean little melody never lets up, totally regardless of
the fact that there is a funky booming bassline, a quite shouty soul
singer, a female choir, and several breakdowns, the whole big room
house gospel spectrum. This is a big show, but one detail steals it.
Genius.
DJ
Oji – We Lift Our Hands In The Sanctuary (Anniversary Vocal)
(Sancsoul Records, 2001)
The
original was one of the churchiest of the churchy house anthems, a
whole nocturnal service for those who need the club as a shelter and
a place for relief and rejoicing. 95 North remix it into a way more
urgent groove, but do not sacrifice any of the worship and righteous
spirit. Hands were lifted and love was alive, again.
The
original was a jazzy funked up groover that was hugely popular, but
Frankie Feliciano boldly opted for a complete rework, keeping the
keen message intact but underlying it with unsettling and swirling
sounds and beats that reference Pépé Bradock‘s „Deep Burnt“
and a lot of earlyTodd Terry productions.
Los
Jugaderos – What You Doing To This Girl? (Norman Jay’s Good Times
Re-Edit) (Junior Boy’s Own, 2003)
In
1996 Ashley Beedle and Phil Asher turned a marvellous 1979 disco gem
by Dazzle into a blinding and tripping house excursion. Seven years
later the original rare groove don Norman Jay gave it a remix, and
when I read about that then I was expecting it to sound truer to the
Dazzle original and Jay’s own legacy. But to my surprise his version
was way punchier, and to my joy he highlighted all the best bits even
more. Pure disco house bliss.
Hardsoul
Feat. Ron Carroll – Back Together (Classic Main Mix) (Soulfuric
Recordings, 2003)
Nothing
better than to conclude a fine time at the big room house club with a
big room soulful vocal house hymn. Even better when that tune is ever
so slightly less big roomy than what happened before, but still
easily keeps up the intensity and punch, just because it is a
wonderful piece of music that knows and serves its context. From here
you may start all over again or leave it behind, but both happily.
My first invitation to Geneva, when Nemo Ripoll, who later went to Berlin and founded Sound Metaphors, was still living there. He could only speak French then, and I liked him instantly.
Pépé Bradock – Imbroglios
Joe – Slope
Strategy – Return From The Stars (Pev’s Jerky Remix)
System 360 – Machines
Charles Cohen – Dance Of The Spiritcatchers Version 2-200series Plus 808
Luomo – Tessio Pépé Bradock – Life Photek – Mine To Give The Parallax Corporation – Anti Social Tendencies Recloose – Can’t Take It (Carl Craig Remix) Moodymann – Analog:Live Foremost Poets – Moon Raker (Phase II) Seal – The Latest Craze DJ Deep & Jovonn – Back In The Dark Blaze – Funky People The Closer – Sound Is The Device Stan Francisco – Lover 2 Lover Deep Sensation – Can’t Give You Up Victor Simonelli – Ease Into The Dance Daft Punk – One More Time Derrick L. Carter – 10 Jasper Street Company – Music Rhythm Section Featuring Donald O – Do You Know D.J Spen – Tedd’s Beat Goes On DJ Romain & Matt Keys – Jesse’s Speech Johnny D & Nicky P – Like Morning Agent X – In The Morning Kerri Chandler – I Found You Cooly’s Hot Box – What A Surprise Deep Theory Featuring Haley – Do It Mutiny UK – Bliss LoSoul – Sunbeams And The Rain Nick Holder – Show Me Love Scuba – Heavenly Saint Etienne – How We Used To Live
Romanthony – Hold On DJ Spinna – Ladbroke Groove Metro Area – Atmosphrique Tiny Trendies – The Sky Is Not Crying Freaks – 2 Please U Gemini – We Are The Future Andrés – Reality Armand Van Helden Feat. Roland Clark – Flowerz Nick Holder – Summer Daze Derrick L. Carter – Dreaming Again Isolée – Beau Mot Plage Dino + Terry – Moon Dub Sound Stream – Good Soul Norma Jean Bell – Friday Nite Ghost – Bodyguard Eddie “Flashin” Fowlkes – Oh Lord Blumfeld – Status Quo Vadis LoSoul – Brother In Love Octave One – Burujha Nick Holder – Fill Your Dreams Moodymann – Shades Of Jae Terry Callier – I Don’t Want To See Myself (Without You) Masters At Work Feat. India – To Be In Love Kimara Lovelace – When Can Our Love Begin Rick Wade – Show-U-Love Mutabaruka – Dis Poem ’99 Pépé Bradock & The Grand Brûlé’s Choir – Deep Burnt Kerri Chandler – Digital Love Affair Herbert Meets Them Rednail Kidz – I Think Of You Jamico Feat. Jackie Cohen – This Luv Is Real
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