JD TWITCH :: OPTIMO ::

JD Twitch Profile
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A profile of JD Twitch (one half of Optimo and a Discopia correspondent) by Niall

JD Twitch aka Keith McIvor, has been growing steadily in reputation for a while now, mainly for his DJing skills, as one half of Optimo (Espacio), the now legendary Glasgow Sunday night party at the Sub Club he hosts with JG Wilkes, and also for his remixing/re-editing talents. But he is also quite handy with a pen and paper, as his epic history of 99 Records in this issue of Discopia proves. Though he is quite renowned on the Scottish scene, we thought it was about time his own story was told, for the benefit of our readers who may not have heard of him, his nights, or his music.
Thankfully he had no qualms with an in depth interview. And even more thankfully for us, he can talk the legs off a donkey! Which in some people can be an annoying trait, but not here, when the patter is as top quality as this. An easy going guy with little pretensions, he readily admits that his first record he bought was either a Top of the Pops compilation, or worse still, Shawaddywaddy, but it wasn’t long before he stumbled on something that really grabbed his interest:
“I bought another shockingly dodgy compilation called Action Replay. But it had “Supernature” by Cerrone and it had “Hanging on the Telephone” by Blondie and I became obsessed with “Hanging on the Telephone”. I just became obsessed with Blondie: it was my first obsession, and I was, what, 11 or 12, I guess it was the beginnings of adolescent lust and Debbie Harry. And then I got to see Blondie in 1980. My best friend at school, his dad ran a nightclub and he managed to get us tickets to see the Eat to the Beat tour. It was amazing. My first gig, it was mind blowing!”
But as the 80’s progressed, so his tastes widened…
“I was really into lots of industrial European electronic music, like really really into it. I went to Belgium on a pilgrimage ‘cos that’s where so much of this electronic music came from, just to see all these bands. I spent a couple of weeks there. When the first house records came out, (even then I was obsessed with buying records and that) I would go into 23rd Precinct, cos they would sell a whole lot of imports, and electronic stuff. And as the first house records started to come in, and I got the feeling that “this sounds kind of slightly similar to that music but the drums are a bit better”. But I didn’t really get into it. But then the first Detroit techno came out, and I was like, well, you know, this is really the same music but it’s more dancefloor orientated. I mean I’d been into reggae which I guess was dancefloor music as well, but when the first techno stuff came out in like ‘86, ‘87 I just fell hook line and sinker for it.”
Through his love of EBM and industrial Twitch got into DJing, more by accident than design, even though the dance boom of the late 80’s had yet to hit.
“I DJed in Edinburgh for some guys who used to run this club called the Backroom, and they would play the Fall and a lot of this industrial electronic music, and I guess what would have been called Goth music. They had been doing it for like 2 or 3 years, and they had been really bored doing the warm up of the night, and I would go religiously, and they asked me and my friend whether we would like to do the first two hours of the night. I’d never DJed in my life, but, I just kind of jumped at the opportunity. But they had started (in legendary Edinburgh gay club Fire Island) a Thursday night called Block which would be the first - this would be 86, beginning of 87 - playing house music, and I would go back through. It was the only place you could hear house music anywhere. And then in 88 when acid house came along a few more clubs opened up. There was the Sub Club in Glasgow, the Sub Club on a Saturday night became an acid house night. But when house and techno first came out and those kind of records started filtering through, you really couldn’t hear it anywhere.”
How did the acid explosion of 1988 affect Glasgow?
“I think it kind of introduced a lot of people to it, but also it was still kind of bad because it was still really elitist. I remember we used to try and go to the Sub Club and it would be hit or miss if we could get in. It was really like what-you-were-wearing attitude and “regulars only”, which seemed to me to be the antithesis of what acid house was meant to be. It was actually a couple of years later the real explosion happened in Glasgow, like probably 1990. There was a club called Tin Pan Alley on Mitchell Lane and when it opened it did a night called UFO which was a big night on two floors, the club would take a thousand people, it was a lot easier to get in there. That’s when I think the whole dance rave thing kicked off through here. And from then on in there were clubs everywhere playing that kind of music. But even up to that point most other clubs were so stuck in the kind of like Soul II Soul/funk revival thing, and clubs in Glasgow were all about what you were wearing.
I was DJing at the Backroom, but in the loosest possible sense. The first night I DJed there I thought the pitch control was the volume on the decks. So we would do this club and basically it was full of the creatures of the night it was all mainly Goths and Punks would go. We were kind of a bit like that, but we were sporting bandanas and acid house gear and taking ecstasy. We were just sick of that kind of vibe, so from one week to the next we would change the Backroom, which was really dark, this kind of cavern in Edinburgh, and we had Day-Glo everywhere and UV and we totally changed the soundtrack to playing acid house music. So the first week it was packed ‘cos all these Goths had come thinking it was the same club they had been going to for the last three years, hated it, the next week there was ten people there, and the next week the management kicked us out! I thought that was the end of my career DJing. But somewhere I got a bit of a kick out of it. So I decided to take a year out from Uni and start my own night . I started a night in Glasgow at this place 46 West George St., which is now a hole I the ground. And I did that for about three months, and it was kind of quite popular to begin with and it tailed off and tailed off. I was like “Well this is DEFINATELY it, I’m gonna go back to Uni and finish my degree”. And then some friends of mine in Edinburgh used to put loads of bands, and they had this concept where they would have a band every week and they would try and build a club around it. It was called UFO (coincidentally!) and we did that for nine months. It was at the time of indie dance, like the Happy Mondays and Primal Scream, which I hated, but the only way you could get people to dance was you could play like a Primal Scream records, THEN you could play a Belgian rave record, but then you had to play a Happy Mondays record then you could play an acid house record. So we did that for about nine months and basically the club got invaded. Edinburgh had a real problem with football casuals at this point and the Hibs football casuals decided that this was their club and they intimidated the most people from going. And then the last night we did it, there was this band from Manchester called the Paris Angles playing and for some reason lots of Hearts supporters wanted to see this band, and somehow it turned into a full scale riot. The band kind of incited it; the Hibs supporters jumped on stage, beat the living daylights out of the band, and the Hearts supporters tried to defend them. It was just like from some western bar room brawl! We were hiding under the decks with like chairs and furniture flying everywhere, and like 50 police came down and surrounded the club and took everyone away in coaches and basically arrested the whole club! And we were like, well that’s the end of that we’re not doing that again… But we actually really enjoyed it, so we decided we’d start a new night but we’d make it members only initially, so we could control who gets in, and we changed the name and it was called Pure. And instantly, it was just perfect perfect timing. It kind of co-incided with when the first big rave records were coming out when the rave explosion happened. Also when, I guess, ecstasy was readily available. From week one it was just a totally different crowd of what became known as ravers, and it was just immensely popular from the get-go. We thought, this will last a few months, it’s great fun to do, but it took over my whole life! I was in my honours year at Uni, and it was two weeks to get my dissertation in and I hadn’t done it, so I just never went back. I’ll just go with this for as long as I can. We ended up doing that club for ten years.”
And it was through Pure, that “Keith McIvor”, humble student raver by day, became known across the land as the mysterious, shadowy figure named “Twitch”…
“We were known as “Twitch” and “Brainstorm”, and the reason we had the silly names cos when we were first doing it, it was again in that rave era. DJs had daft names; you had Grooverider, or whatever. We just thought it would be quite funny to have a silly name. Also we were signing on, and we didn’t want our names emblazoned all over the place. So we just had to think up names really quickly, on the spur of the moment, so I came up with Twitch, he came up with Brainstorm, obviously never thinking that 15 years down the line I’d still be stuck with it! That I’d be walking up Great Western road and people would go “Alright Twitch maaan!! How’s it goin?” and you’re kind of cringing with embarrassment! I even go into my local sandwich shop and the 60 year old woman goes “Hi Twitch!”.
A legendary club among Scottish ravers in its own right, Pure moved from being primarily rave orientated, to symbolizing a new kind of harder edged techno style.
“When we first started we would be booking the rave acts of the day like A Homeboy a Hippy and a Funky Dred, the Ragga Twins, Shut Up and Dance but pretty soon we started to realise that there wasn’t that much mileage in it. We were the first people to bring Ritchie Hawtin to the UK, first people to bring Green Velvet, Jeff Mills, and I guess from that point on the club became more or less known as a techno club. Which it wasn’t. I mean we’d play lots of Strictly Rhythm house, lots of NY house, all sorts of stuff. As the years went on… I think the club was amazing up 'til around 1996, 1997 but by that point techno had become so defined that we were really stuck in this ghetto musically. The people that were coming just wanted to hear this banging pounding tech music which we hated but we couldn’t go anywhere else because that is what they wanted to hear. We were too scared to stop it because this is what we did for a living and we didn’t know what to do next. I wish we’d been brave and gone “That’s it” but we kept doing it for exactly ten years. We stopped it on it’s tenth birthday whereas we should have stopped it a lot sooner. My musical tastes had totally gone away from that kind of music, I was just going through the motions of doing it. But then the opportunity came to do a Sunday night in Glasgow, no pressure, no expectations, it didn’t matter if no-one went, Sub Club was just happy to take a few pounds on the Bar. And I’d had this concept brewing in my head of what it should be for quite a while and just went with it.”
That concept being, of course, “Optimo (Espacio)” Though initially seen as a niche-market type affair, the night has developed over the years to being one of the most renowned clubs, not just in the UK, but in the world, with Twitch and his musical partner JG Wilkes (Johnny to his Mum) performing sets all over the planet, and mix CD releases such as Kill the DJ Vol 2 on Tigersushi and Psyche Out on Eskimo receiving massive acclaim. But even a mighty oak was once an acorn, and Optimo had no expectations when it was born.
“[In the beginning] most of the people that came, we knew. I had lots of friends who still liked to go out clubbing but had become disillusioned ‘cos everything was pretty dull, and it was something that they’d all been looking for as well. In fact I knew almost 2 thirds of the people there. There’d be maybe 60, 70 people there every week, but everyone who was there was phenomenally into it. And we were totally happy, we were breaking even more or less, the club was happy. I never really thought it had any long term prospects and the Sub Club would always tell us “You know one day this is going to be massive” and we’d be like “Yeah right, you know, whatever”, and it went along like that for about a year and a half. On a bank holiday there’d maybe be a couple of hundred people there, but it was never really really busy. Then, it literally, from one week to the next, went ballistic. There’d be 90 people there one week, then the next week there’d be 300 people and we thought that’s a bit weird, there must be something on, and the next week 400 and the week after the same, and it’s more or less been like that ever since. We couldn’t really figure out why it was, I mean usually I can understand if a club would slowly and slowly grow, but it was literally from one week to the next it went crazy. I really don’t know, it’s a mystery!”
And then disaster struck!. Late in 1999 a fire in the building above forced the Sub Club to close it’s doors (albeit not forever)…
“Yeah! And that was just about the point where the club had started to become really popular. We were like Fuck that’s it it’s over. So we moved really briefly to the 13th Note but it really didn’t work in there we were just there for like 4 weeks and then we moved to Planet Peach, which was actually really great, that was some of the days that were the best the club has ever had. And then the Sub Club decided they wanted to Move to Mas and we had to go along with that, but I didn’t really like it in there. But thankfully then, eventually, the Sub Club re-opened after 3 years.”
How did you team up with Johnny Wilkes?
“I’d kinda just seen him about for years at club events in Glasgow, but didn’t really know him. But then he was doing the art school on a Saturday nights with this guy Hamish. This was about 1996, and we were trying to do more Pure events in Glasgow ‘cos I was living here and I was sick of going through, so I kind of approached them about doing some sort of collaboration. I think we did a couple of Friday nights; their night was called Knucklehead, and it was “Pure meets Knucklehead”. It wasn’t that great, but I just hit it off with Johnny. When I started Optimo I just knew I needed someone else. I didn’t really wanna do the whole night myself so I asked Johnny if he’d like to get involved. Also he’d been to Art School, he could help with the design. I just got on with him and I knew he a similar attitude to liking different types of music.”
One of the factors that sets Optimo apart from other clubs is it’s refusal to book guest DJs, and instead a reliance on live acts and bands. Some of these shows have become legendary in their own right, and indeed Optimo is probably the best place to see a live band in Scotland at the moment. But again, it was not a planned decision…
“When we first started we would book a handful of DJs and we would tell them before we booked them, look you’ve got the opportunity, you can play anything you like, you can really dig into your record collections. And they didn’t, except we had Ashley Beadle play and he was phenomenal, he literally took the concept on and ran with it. But after a couple more total failures we were like we’re just not going to book DJs anymore. I was only gonna go and see bands, that was all I did for going out, and I thought as that’s what we’re into we’ll just make the club around booking bands. Originally it was just local bands cos that was all we could afford. And then after that, through Jill Mingo, quite a few things happened because she represented, for example Peaches, she represented Chicks on Speed, and she would tell them, there’s this great club in Glasgow, it’s not that busy, you won’t get much money but you’ll have a really good gig and these acts were in their infancy, so they weren’t charging lots of money. So she really helped us out to start with getting some of the bands, and as it progressed we would just approach bands we liked and invite them. Now it’s at the stage where everyday I literally get 5 or 6 emails from bands who want to play, but it’s very rare I’ll put a band on who have asked, usually we still invite whoever it is that we book, or we’ll know that they’re going to be touring around that time and ask if we can do the Glasgow show.”
Another element of the club that has always set it apart from others is Twitch and Wilkes’ openness to using new equipment to diversify the mix...
“When I first started doing Optimo I had bought this thing called a Groovesampler, which was just a Roland sampling box with a really basic sequencer on it. And I just came up with these things and thought “this is great” and I’d make all these things just for playing in the club and it became quite a big part of the club in the early days, like things that were coming form that were a lot of the original anthems form the club and also I had been mixing with decks for so long it just gotta bit boring. There’s gotta be something more, something that’s gonna keep me interested. If I’m being more interested, hopefully that will project into the crowd. And then when I finally got a laptop there was this software called Ableton Live and I was using that to try and make music, but then I realized that although it’s not designed for DJing at all that actually I could do things on this for DJing that would be impossible to do on a set of decks. And I would love doing it so much, and I still do it every week, I would spend hours and hours putting new things into that, it’s a really great way to re-edit songs, to re-work songs to take chunks of songs. Also the way it works you can mix it in like it’s a third turntable, and I think that, particularly for what I do, it’s become a huge part of what I do and a lot of people go “You’re desecrating the art of Djing by using a laptop” which is ridiculous. You’ve got to embrace technology, and I always say this, even though it’s a cliché, when Bob Dylan first used an electric guitar and people shouted Judas, but you can’t fight the future you should embrace it. If it makes what you do more interesting… and sure there’ll be a handful of guys watching at the side of the DJ booth going “Oh that’s really boring to watch”, but watching DJs is pretty boring anyway, unless they’re like some scratch master or something!”
And how do you think the club has changed since it’s inception?
“It’s perception amongst people who don’t go has changed. I’m always hearing from people who don’t go how it’s full of people with mullets and sunglasses and this and that. I’m always hearing that it’s a this type of club or a that type of club. I still think it’s true to what we meant it to be, we will still play whatever we like but I think because it has become so popular, in some ways it’s diluted the vision slightly. I love everything I will play at the club but if I was totally being true to myself it would be a lot more way out than it is, but it’s really hard when you are confronted with so many people. So in some ways it’s popularity has been a negative thing. Also it can be unpleasant in there with so many people, just from the space and the heat. And then there was definitely a point when people were coming because they thought it was the place to be, which I just think is the dumbest thing ever, why would you want to go somewhere because it’s the cool place? I just don’t understand that mentality. You also get the people who come to the club for a long time and they go, “Oh it’s not as good as it used to be” but its actually because they’ve got their golden age memories which is a certain point in the past, and then they’ve gone for too many weeks and they’re kind of burnt out. But in some ways it’s as good if not better than what it used to be. The whole profile thing is weird, it’s had so much publicity, which at first we were really reluctant to do, but then because we had a mix CD out we kind of had to do all these interviews, which has taken it’s profile to another level. But I really believe we are still as passionate and true to what we want to be as possible, it’s just hard when it’s so popular. On Bank Holidays it’s crazy, you’ve got like 1500 people trying to get in. And we keep thinking the backlash is around the corner, it’s gonna die. I think Johnny and I are both born pessimists when it comes to that, but it just seems to keep continuing. But it won’t go on forever, I won’t wanna do it forever. Like I said when we did that club Pure, we just did it for too long we should have stopped it. I think we will know when that point is. I still love doing it, the point being when I think I am just going through the motions, I’m not enjoying it, then we will stop it. But I hope that will still be when it is on a high, not when there two people there or something!”
Have you seen Optimo’s influence on other clubs?
“I don’t really think it is Optimo’s influence, it just over the last few years it’s just been a sea change in general in a lot of people’s idea about what a club could be or should be, and I think that a lot of the younger people, nowadays, are into more than one type of music. That kind of tribalism is gone where you were like a house freak, a techno freak. There is still people like that, but I think on the whole people listen to more stuff and their more interested in hearing different music in a club.”
Where else do you like to play, on a global scale?
“I really like playing in Ireland, I think Irish and the Scottish people have a really quite similar temperament, and they’re the most crazed people you will ever play with, and they drink too much, and they take too much of everything. Ireland’s sometimes scary, actually, sometimes it’s like can you calm down a little bit. I really like playing Germany, there’s a club we play in Berlin called Ostgut which is like this massive, massive gay club and they have two rooms. Downstairs is just like, I never went to Trade, but it’s what I imagine trade must have been like, it’s just like absolute debauchery! Then they have this room upstairs called the Panorama Bar, and it doesn’t get going ‘til about kinda lunchtime (after the night before), but again the people are so into it and they’re so into music in general, its not about being totally wasted and dancing to anything. There’s a club in Frankfurt we really like playing. There’s something about German people, they have this image of being stern and dour but they’re not, they’re quite joyful. But basically I like going anywhere that gives us a chance to go somewhere else.”
Keen punters may also have noticed Twitches name in another context: when cult label ZE was relented recently, Keith was commissioned to do the first new release, a reworking of “Contort Yourself” (an Optimo anthem) by James White & the Blacks/the Contortions. How did that come about?
“There was nothing on the internet about Ze so I decided I’d start a Ze website. I only really got as far as one page and it just happened by coincidence, there was just this general resurgence of interest in Ze Records. And one of the guys from Ze, Michel Esteban, who is the e in Ze decided that he was going to relaunch his old label and re-issue all his old stuff, so one of his ideas was he wanted to get a compilation of people covering their favourite Ze records. And I guess he must have been looking on Google to see what there was on Ze and came across my page and just got in touch, and we corresponded quite a lot. I had lots of stuff I wanted to ask him about the label. He found out I dabbled in making music and asked me if I would like to have a go at something and I did I had a go at that track, and it’s all reprogrammed rather than resampling the original, it was like a tiny little James Chance sample in the middle or something and I got Mike [Lancaster] to do the bassline for it. I sent it over to him and he liked it and mentioned that he was going to put it out as a 12”, and that was the first new Ze records release in 20 years! Which as a Ze trainspotter nerd was like heaven on earth!! Ha ha.”
So how did you discover/get into 99 Records?
“Again from hearing techno DJs, particularly the Detroit ones. I had heard Carl Craig play three times, and three times he had played “Optimo”, and the first time I didn’t know what it was and the third time I was like “What IS this record?”. I didn’t know it was an old record I thought it was a new one, and he told me what it was. Then I heard Derrick May and he played “Moody” [by ESG], and he played “Optimo” [by Liquid Liquid], and I was “What’s that “Moody” record?”. I knew the bassline cos there’s an old house track by Funky Green Dogs on Murk records called “Reach for Me” that used the same bassline, and I thought this ESG record he was playing was something that had sampled the former, I had no idea. So I just went on a mission that I just had to find these two records. My sister lived in new York at this period, and I would go over a couple of times a year to visit her. And I just scoured loads of shops in the village and found about three Liquid Liquid EPs and a couple of ESG records, but I also, while I was scouring, noticed some other things on the same label and bought them, and thought well they’re great as well and just went on a mission to try and find as much as I could. But there was no information, I didn’t have access to the Internet back then. I didn’t know what was released or when, and it was only when I managed to get on the Internet that I pieced together what had been released on the label and I managed to track them down.
For the article, a lot of it was just garnered from speaking to different people. When Liquid Liquid came over I particularly hit it off with Sal Principato, the vocalist. I kind of stayed in touch with him, he’s been back in Glasgow a couple of times, we’ve spent quite a lot of time together and I’ve met up with him a few times in New York and just like interrogating him about 99 records. He can talk for hours, he just has loads of interesting stuff to say. But before when we had ESG over we asked them quite a lot of stuff about it.”
And speaking of labels, how is your own label, OSCarr, faring?
“At the moment it’s not, we hooked up with Tigersushi in Paris. When they asked us to do the Kill the DJ CD they also suggested would we like them to run OSCarr as a sub-label, because basically we were only managing to get a couple of records out a year and basically we didn’t have enough time, and they put it to us that if we did this arrangement with them I would A&R the label and they would do all the office work they didn’t particularly like doing. But we’ve been with them for 18 months and in that time we’ve had 3 records come out. So we decided that we would re-launch the label ourselves, which is what we’re trying to do at the moment. The idea is that once we’ve finalized distribution, 6 7” singles will come out with a two week gap between them, which will hopefully let people know, I mean most people don’t even know we have a label it’s on a really low profile, hopefully that will help boost it’s profile. But we’ve got two artist albums we wanna do, and then when all that comes out we’ll just kind of see where we are and take it form there. We don’t really have any long term plans for anything we do, we’re just gonna see how it goes!”

EMPEROR MACHINE

The Emperor Machine Q&A
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Questions by Niall (discopia)
The Emperor Machine is Andy Meecham, one half of the notorious Chicken Lips, who have been rocking discotheques under that name since the start of the decade, and before that had hits as Bizarre Inc. With an album out on DC Recrdings, I sent Andy some questions to find out what exactly sets Emperor Machine apart from his better known act. Readers, please note: no cats were hurt during the making of this interview.

Who or what is the Emperor Machine?
The Emperor Machine is a creature spawned from a desirous and dirty relationship between an EMS VCS3 and a Roland System 100... yeah I know it’s cribbed straight from myspace but I think it just sums it up.
You work under a few different monikers: what sets EM apart from the others?
The machine comes from my brain and my influences alone. It’s the first time I had the opportunity to be creative in the way that I want to. I have worked on a few solo projects before like Sir Drew but it’s the first time I’ve come across a label like DC that actually supports the weird shit that my brain likes to churn out.
Your album is out now: how did the LP come about?
The LP is basically a collection of the 12” series with some unreleased tracks and bonus bits. It’s not the second Emperor Machine Album, it’s just a compilation of the 12”s. I have already started work on the next album. Originally the idea was to re-release all the 12”s as a box set but then we decided to compile the tracks on an album, but CD only. We decided that there was no point in releasing them again on vinyl as they are already all on vinyl. Besides I wanted to hear how they sounded as a story.
Who is your favourite historical Emperor?
Ming the Merciless
What are your main musical influences as an artist in general?
Can, Adrian Wagner, Hawkwind, George Clinton, A Certain Ratio, John Fox, David Bowie, Kraftwerk – again check out myspace – it has the full list.
And your main influences for the Emperor Machine sound?
Can, Adrian Wagner, Hawkwind, Early Early Human League. My inspiration for the Emperor Machine comes from anything and everything. If you listen carefully you can hear my daughter’s heartbeat on one of the tracks. Sometimes I can get inspiration from a good night out, from something I read, from a piece of equipment, from a film… I tend to get an idea in my head which turns into a story. I then put music to the story. Like a soundtrack I suppose.
What’s your favourite bit of music kit, that you possibly couldn’t live without?
I go through stages of favourite equipment. At the moment I couldn’t and wouldn’t want to be without my EMS VCS3 purely because it was used all the way through the Vertical Tones series - as well as the Roland System 100. I think I may have abused it a bit now. Might be time to put it away for a while.
I am an alien just arrived on Planet Earth. Describe the Emperor Machine to me in ways I might understand…
Pringsla Chaaa ve din bur frindlsey ne ba quantak. Rough translation – like nothing you have heard on this god lovin earth.
How did you get hooked up with those crazy DC Recordings muthaz?
DC first signed Big 200, the dark side of Chicken Lips when Kingsize, now Adrift, didn’t want to pick it up because it was a bit too dark for them. Around this time I decided to do a track solely using a Roland SH3A. I played it to James at DC and he loved what I had done and was really into the noises I was making. He provokes me and encourages me and almost dares me to go further each time. He plays a really big part in the Emperor Machine sound.
Are you touring or doing any shows as Emperor Machine? If not any plans to?
I get asked this question so many times! Its really encouraging that I get asked this so much but also really frustrating. I’m in discussions with DC at the moment about getting a live band together. When I go on the road I want it to be a proper traditional rock lineup. Watch this space, I can’t wait.
What are the other Lips up to?
Dean and I are in the studio working on the next Big 200 album.
And when can we expect new Chicken Lips material?
Early next year hopefully. We hope to have finished Big 200 by later this year and to get something from CL out early next year.
Or even any new material under even more cryptic and obscure aliases by yourself?
Ah, a new Zeefungk 12” is nearly finished.
Britney’s breasts or Kylie’s arse?
Kylie’s arse and Britney’s breasts.
What does the future hold for the Emperor Machine?
Emperor Machine ‘Vertical Tones & Horizontal Noise’ album out now. Emperor Machine ‘Vertical Tones & Horizontal Noise parts 5 & 6’ singles released January 2007 The second Emperor Machine album is slowly being created. At the moment it is just a file on the MAC called EM LP 2.

DANIEL WANG _discotheque acoustics

Discotheque Acoustics
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by Daniel Wang
DISCOPIA: Hello, Daniel. Nice to have you at the radio station on the Discopia Show today. Actually, you are asking yourself questions about a very specific topic this time, right?
DANIEL WANG: That's right, Niall. I hope you don't mind me wearing a "Niall" costume and pretending to be a handsome chubby Irishman at the control desk here, ha ha! I've promised you to write this article for almost a year now, but I didn't want to be too academic about it. This is just a nice way to have a chat about a very important topic in an informal way and organize the article accordingly...

Daniel chats to his little bear friend
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So, the topic is acoustic spaces. In nightclubs mostly, but also in your average music studio and home listening environment...
Well, I've been playing and hearing records in many, many different places all over the world for the past 6 or 7 years, and it's remarkable how good or how bad the music can sound in these places -- mostly it sounds far less than ideal. It astounds me that most people who are involved in music or nightlife (in Europe, at least) seem not to care about the single most important thing in the entire experience: the sonic environment itself. A endless list of warehouses, train stations, and bunkers have been converted into nightclubs because they're spacious and "look cool", without any regard for how they SOUND. "This used to be a ...," someone always says, "And now it's a nightclub. Isn't that cool?" No, it's not cool! But I don't believe in just standing around and criticizing, so I hope as many people as possible read this little article and do something to improve the acoustic spaces where they go to listen and enjoy music.
Let's not get too technical yet. In a practical sense, what basic principles should we know in order to improve our acoustic space? Can you sum it all up in a few sentences, please?
Absolutely. If you don't want to bother reading the whole article, then just take the following three short paragraphs to heart: 1. Hard, flat, dense surfaces (like cement and brick walls) are bad. They bounce the sound waves around the room like a flurry of billiard balls, which means you just hear a sonic mess. And that means most clubs nowadays with untreated interior spaces. 2. Parallel surfaces are bad, and that means the way most normal buildings are constructed -- it's like an endless hall of mirrors, sonically speaking. You're just hearing echo. And parabolic and curved ceilings are very, very bad. Remember, as a child, using a magnifying glass on a sunny day to light a matchstick? A parabolic ceiling does the same thing to the sound. One corner of the club sounds empty, while another corner is ear-piercing.
Obviously, the reverse corollaries are true as well. 1. Soft, insulated, irregular surfaces are good. A club doesn't have to look like the interior of Barbarella's space ship (covered with plush golden fur!) to sound good, but that is an ideal to aim for. Lower-density materials with some degree of pliability (specifically, a wooden dance floor) are always better than cement, brick, or God forbid, ceramic tile. Wood is not only better for your ears, it is easier on the feet, too. And if you can manage to dance on it, carpeting is probably the best option of all. (I won't mention linoleum or other synthetic types of floors here, because although they can be quite absorbent, i don't think anyone expects to walk or dance on such a surface, unless it's a kitchen.) 2. Parallel surfaces should be avoided, flat surfaces should be treated. To be realistic, two parallel walls are forgiveable; but four untreated parallel walls are significantly worse. And if you add a low, hard, flat ceiling and a hard, flat dancefloor, then you have an acoustic disaster. 3. Speakers should be placed with consideration of the acoustic space. Often, you see people setting up speakers in certain way, so that they LOOK symmetrical or fit neatly into the corners of the room. This is just plain wrong. They need to SOUND good, not LOOK good as room decorations. (Corners amplify, and often needlessly exaggerate the bass. Move those speakers away from the corners, please!)
The quality of the sound system in a club is just one factor out of several, and it's always a bit annoying to hear how people talk about how much money this system or that system cost, as if that alone should impress us. An expensive setup without attention to acoustics is a bit like people who spend 500 quid on Gucci loafers and a Vuitton handbag, while acting rudely in public and never brushing their teeth -- the price tag alone of what you own doesn't make you attractive. If club owners would spend a small portion of their budget on styrofoam, wood blocks, bass traps, and a good acoustic interior in general, they would be getting many times the return on their investment. In brief: an average-quality sound system in a good environment can sound quite wonderful; whereas even the finest sound system on earth, in a bad environment, will sound like shit.
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OK, now we can elaborate on this topic a bit. First, why is it so important to diffuse and absorb the sound? You are aware that most classical concert halls, like medieval churches, aim to have a considerable amount of natural acoustic reverb coming from the interior architecture. Isn't this different from what you're telling us about reducing the echo?
Ah yes! That has been the beauty of certain genres of European classical music over the past 250 years or so -- the use of such reverb to make the choruses and symphonies so much more powerful. But did you ever go to the Limelight in New York, which used to be a real church? The sound was horrible. Modern recorded music designed for radio and nightclubs is quite different from live classical music. The bass and drums need to be relatively dry and crisp to communicate, while ideally, the vocals and other elements are enriched by a certain amount of reverb as part of the recording. I am well aware that a lot of modern "techno" sounds deliberately dry because it anticipates such bad acoustic environments; but such music is also harmonically impoverished. It can't indulge in finer details and musical creativity in the upper range, not only because the people who make it don't care, but also because one can't even count on those things being heard. Isn't it better to hope for a good acoustic space, and aim to make the richest, liveliest music possible, rather than dumb-down one's harmonic content, because one anticipates it being played in a shitty acoustic environment? This is where club owners, DJ's and producers have to recognize that their roles are deeply interconnected.
Dry, minimal, under-produced techno may be a response to bad acoustics in nightclubs, but that doesn't make it good music in itself. Whatever reverb it takes on is incidental and not posssible to adjust, and it almost always ends up boomy. If the record is well-produced, hearing it in a good space should only make it sound better, whether it's techno or not. Minimal music is hardly a new idea: it reaches far back, from Satie's piano music in the 1890's to Miles Davis in the 1950's. Minimal music in any form should be an aesthetic choice, not an excuse for perpetuating bad listening spaces.
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So, back to home improvements. Should I just go buy some carpet remnants and styrofoam and hang it on my walls? Is it that simple?
That's a good idea, but if you're doing this for professional purposes, you should take the whole frequency spectrum into account. Some of the following numbers may surprise you. For example, plain carpet on a concrete wall is great at absorbing frequencies from 1500 Hz to 4000 Hz (upper violins and high hats), but has almost no effect on the bass frequencies around 80-120 Hz. Carpet with some latex rubber backing works much better! Also, an ordinary glass window (not thick) can actually absorb some bass, but it will reflect the high frequencies. Thick, heavy plate glass, on the other hand, acts more like brick or concrete: it reflects everything. 100% absorption doesn't have to be the goal. That would be like a dead-silent laboratory in a spaceship, or a mattress-covered room in a psychiatric hospital. A good acoustic enviroment will have good absorption, but it can still "breathe" and give some reverb back. When people build professional studios for recording and monitoring, they actually slant the ceiling and build non-parallel walls to refract the sound and avoid "standing waves" (soundwaves bouncing back 180 degrees and doubling up on themselves). When you choose a room in your apartment to work and listen in, it's good to think of how to imitate these conditions, even if you can't duplicate them perfectly.
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More discussion about making your own listening space. What is a "floating floor"?
I have to acknowledge DJ Richard Hardcastle here (no relation to Paul Hardcastle!) and his two lovely friends, Tom and Sue, who all live in Sheffield, UK. I had been in recording studios in New York with such floors, but a few years ago, Tom and Sue showed me the listening room which they had built themselves in the basement of their own home, and there I really got to see that the theory works! They would go downstairs on weekends, shut the insulated door, and play all their favorite records: old rave tracks, soul classics... and their young son would be asleep upstairs, not hearing a thing. Amazing.
First, let's make a clear distinction. Acoustic insulation is what happens INSIDE the listening space. If I cover my bedroom walls, or even the walls of the DJ booth, with materials like foam and carpet, I might get better acoustics, but my neighbors could still be hearing some vibration from my walls. You need not-so-dense materials with irregular surfaces to reduce the reflections INSIDE your listening space, but you need dense materials (think of a cement bomb shelter) to isolate the sound from the world OUTSIDE. A floating floor means building a second layer over the original existing floor, and separating this new floor from what's underneath with plywood, carpet, shockmounts, etc. You can do this with the walls and ceilings too! The result: a room within a room. The INSIDE room is perfectly isolated, and you can play music as loud as you want. But close the double-layered door, and people standing right outside the room will hear practically NOTHING. It's the exactly same principle as a thermos bottle!
There is a right way to do this, and various audio engineering handbooks can show you which materials to use. (I am referring to a standard American textbook, "Modern Recording Techniques" by Hubert & Runstein, Chapter 3: Studio Acoustics and Design. But there are other books which offer similar information.) If you're a music buff with a free-standing house or a big shed, and time and money to spare, try building such a listening room for yourself. You may never want to step outside to an acoustically inferior environment ever again!
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You're talking about recording studios and intimate, smaller spaces. Isn't it much more relevant to talk about acoustics in big clubs where people come together -- legends like the Paradise Garage or Sound Factory?
Oh, of course! A powerful system and a huge room are not antithema to good acoustics. They should work hand in hand. In fact, a mass of human bodies is one of the BEST sound absorption materials possible! Its absorption co-efficent is around 0.55, with unglazed brick being 0.03, a poor material all around, and 1.00 being perfect absorption. Very few materials exceed human bodies in absorption, except large wooden pews in a church, or other sorts of large, uneven furniture which you wouldn't find on a dancefloor; see the chart below. Well, human bodies can cover a dance floor, but they can't cover the walls. So it's not acceptable to me when DJ's and club owners say: "The sound is not so good right now, but it's OK when the dance floor starts to fill up." That dancefloor would fill up earlier, and stay fuller, if the sound were good from the start of the evening. And you know how some dancefloors suddenly become empty at a certain time, and then NO ONE stays around for the last hour (which is often the best part of a DJ set)? Blame it on the acoustics. When the dancefloor empties in such clubs, then the sound becomes shit again. No wonder people just want to go home. It's not a random occurrence!
Some longer /deeper wavelengths in the bass range are not even audible in smaller spaces, are they?
Ah yes, this is related to the previous question. You know, some deep bass frequencies can easily have a wavelength of 2 or 3 meters -- that's like a very long, invisible snake flying through the air. So actually, you're not even really hearing such tones when you're in some "intimate listening space". You're hearing the overtones -- for example, any bass frequency of 60 Hz which is not a pure sine wave will also contain overtones at 120, 180, 240 Herz, etc. Deep bass tones are indeed "heard" by the whole body, probably in a different, more primal way. That's a good argument for going out to clubs with big spaces (and creating good sound in them) and not just sitting at home in a tiny but acoustically perfect living room.
For technical reference, I will cite here from the Huber & Runstein book. Next time you go to a club, observe how the sound interacts with the space. These are some of the "absorption co-efficients" of various building materials. It's simple: thick, hard, dense materials are the worst sound absorbers. But notice the difference in what each one does to low and high frequencies.
Material type , at: 125 - 250 - 500 - 1000 - 2000 - 4000 Herz. Concrete: 0.01 - 0.01 - 0.015 - 0.02 - 0.02 - 0.02 Unglazed brick: 0.03 - 0.03 - 0.03 - 0.04 - 0.05 - 0.07
Heavy carpet on concrete: 0.02 - 0.06 - 0.14 - 0.37 - 0.60 - 0.65 Carpet with 40-oz. rubber backing: 0.08 - 0.27 - 0.39 - 0.34 - 0.48 - 0.63
Ordinary glass window: 0.35 - 0.25 - 0.18 - 0.12 - 0.07 - 0.04 Plywood, 3/8 inch: 0.28 - 0.22 - 0.17 -0.09 - 0.10 - 0.11 Human bodies in upholstered seating (like in a concert hall) : 0.44 - 0.54 - 0.60 - 0.62 - 0.58 - 0.50 Heavy wooden pews (in a church) : 0.57 - 0.61 - 0.75 - 0.86 - 0.91 - 0.86
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Hmm, I don't see balloons listed in that chart. Any comment on David Mancuso and his Loft parties?
Something Mancuso said to me once did impress me. He said that the Loft tradition of covering the ceiling with balloons was his semi-secret way of making the acoustics better. I think this really needs to be tested, but it seems like a ceiling with lots of round rubbery surfaces would sound better than a flat, hard ceiling. (Although, then again, the balloon skins are thin and possibly create sympathetic vibrations -- maybe they act like a coral reef of miniature bass units?) As purely personal opinion, I think that his insistence on such things as the Klipsch speakers, a certain brand of mixer, and "not mixing the songs" are of dubious value and make "good sound" into a cultish, mystical thing rather than a doable, learnable practice. I'll choose a Urei or a Rane mixer over a Pioneer, of course, but good sound doesn't have to depend on certain brands or props. A "Loft party" with Klipsch speakers in a boomy, rented warehouse space with lots of Loft revivalists is not the same Loft as Mancuso's was in 1976, and doesn't sound anything like it either. But, if you have adequate knowledge and materials, you can improve the sound in any space, even with an old Numark mixer, some generic-brand speakers, and a good equalizer.
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Can you talk about your personal experiences from so much traveling and DJ'ing?
It would be great to do an international rating chart, but we can only do it informally here. The good clubs should be praised, and the bad ones should be condemned. I think many other DJ's will agree with my comments here!
London is homebase for the European DJ scene, and of all the spaces, most of my friends agree that Plastic People is a gem. Bravo to Ade, the owner and sound man. Notice how the factors match up: the wooden floor, low dampened ceiling, lack of hard parallel walls, and the attention to volume and proper EQ'ing. A few years ago, I visited The End in east London, and the main room sounded wonderful -- wooden floor, all that. But then I had to DJ in the side room, and I remember, there was no isolation -- the entire time, you could hear the music from the main floor spilling over. I haven't been there for over 3 years, so this critique may now be totally irrelevant. Fabric has booked me often, and the staff and the selection of DJ's are truly nice, especially for a megaclub! Room 1 can sound great, but when I DJ in Room 3, I sometimes have the urge to take a chunk of my fee out to buy some rubber foam for the ceilings. They are made of unglazed brick, and vaulted! (Biting the hand that feeds me? I wonder if Judy is reading this - I only mean the best, my dear...) And one always wonders: why is the sound so tinny in 93 Feet? Curved walls, perhaps? (At Rangus Tangus in Stockholm, in about 2001, I had to play theremin and vinyl under a PARABOLIC TILED CEILING! Uh, hello? What was the promoter thinking?) Horse Meat Disco, a gay Sunday tea-dance at the South Central pub in Vauxhall, was voted Best Night Out in Attitude magazine last year, beating mega-events like DPTM and G-A-Y at the Astoria. Has anyone ever considered that, aside from the loyal crowd, HMD actually sounds better than most gay clubs? The sound system is NOT powerful, but the walls are made of wood with two sides open (no echo!), and the space is always full enough to totally absorb excess sound. The result: very good acoustics. Bravo James Hillard and team!
I do live in Berlin afterall, and yes, it is frequently a nightmare for those of us here who care about good sound and soulful music. The vast majority of clubs (Weekend at Alexanderplatz, Maria am Ostbahnhof, Pfefferberg especially...) seem to not give a care about acoustics. A small basement dive called Kinzo, also near Alexanderplatz, can sound OK sometimes, if patrons have filled its tiled dancefloor. Its ceilings are relatively low. But Watergate, that stunning cement and glass structure on the Spree river, was (until last year?) a perfect example of this rule of thumb: "slick modern architecture = bad acoustic space". I heard that they installed a new system, but I wonder if the sound has actually changed. The techno Leviathan here is, of course, Berghain. The sound system on the main floor cost a small fortune, although the huge untreated cement walls really don't enhance the sound at all. The glass windows on one side of the main floor might help a bit, but not when the music is too loud, which is often. Panorama Bar upstairs sounds better -- irregular full-wall seating blocks and and thin glass windows on one side definitely make the acoustics superior to what lies below.
Ah yes -- if only there were any credible musical events there, then this would truly deserve a mention. The basement of Cafe Moskau, on the old East German boulevard here called Karl Marx Allee, offers amazing sound. It was the disco for the elite of the Communist Party back in the 60's and 70's, and it is covered in red velvet and carpet, with a small, wedding party-like wooden dance floor. Sadly, it is only used on Sunday nights by the tanning salon- and spiky gel-hairdo gay crowd to listen to wretched commercial house music. And the WMF ("vay-em-eff") summer location in 2005 was a miracle -- those boys had covered the walls of their HUGE space with styrofoam and wood panels and painted it all olive green, so it didn't even look like acoustic padding! I heard someone play Garage classics there, and there was a warmth and naturalness to the sound which I haven't felt since in Berlin. Wouldn't it be nice if these boys shared their knowledge with the other Berlin clubs?
The funny thing, however, is that several smaller clubs in other German cities sound far better than anything in the capital! Of course there's the classic Robert Johnson in Frankfurt, home of Playhouse Records, with its wooden floors and foam panels on the low ceilings. But here was a surprise discovery: Hotel Shanghai in Essen, which is in northwestern Deutschland, near Dortmund. I had a gig there with about just 30 people on the very narrow dancefloor. Even though there were only 2 main speakers, it was as if the owners had read an engineer's manual and then decided to disguise their acoustic improvements as "artsy decorations". There were huge surfaces of the wall covered in irregular cubes and blobs cut from styrofoam, just like a pro recording studio, but painted over with gold color. Ordinary guests wouldn't even suspect that this was done for the sound, but to the initiated, it was obvious. A work of love. Gerd Janson and I played Laid Back's "Walking in the Sunshine" at the end of the night and it was like heaven. (Two weeks after that, mid-March 2006, I was at the Rose Garden in Helsinki, and the sound was again so lovely, it renewed my faith in all the Casablanca disco classics...)
For a city so into superficial appearances, Paris has an amazing number of clubs which actually sound really good. Bravo to the handsome lesbians who run Le Pulp (wooden floors and low ceilings again), to Nouveau Casino (the ceiling is covered with special irregular geometric metal surfaces with small holes, like those used to break up frequences inside a microwave oven -- very deliberate and truly unusual!), to Paris Paris (cramped, but actually the sound is not bad thanks to all the furniture) and even to the super chi-chi La Scala, right next to the Louvre. Although La Scala boasts a glossy metal dancefloor, the interior space is actually irregular, with two levels, balconies, and carpeting, so the sound ends up diffused rather than reflected. Fantastic sound, even when the club is relatively empty.
I heard that there's a new club in New York City called Love -- an amazing sound system, with a young and well-off owner who got into house music in the early 1990's, but I haven't heard it yet. For a law-abiding party, it seems that the music-lovers have often been at APT in the Meat District, which can sound amazingly crisp and clear. But there is no dancefloor, and when the music is loud, there's a feeling of "no escape" from this tiny box. But for every club done well in the capitals of pop culture, I've had to experience disappointments. I can't and won't recall them all, but somehow, Culture Club in Ghent stood out as a villain. Maybe because I arrived there late in the night and, with such nice promoters for this particular party, expected something better. The club was sleek, with white walls, a slightly fashionable crowd, and constantly changing lighting scheme. These white walls were hard flat cement, freshly painted. Great for posing, but by now, you should get the point. There was just no way to improve the sound under such conditions. And I've never played in any club in Spain (Mondo in Madrid, a grand ballroom in Barcelona) with truly good sound. Too much emphasis on posing, again? There ought to be SOME good club there...
Finally, a few comments about clubs in Japan. I know there are myths about the wonders of Japan, and not everyone will get a chance to travel there. But then, the Japanese have also mythologized all the great clubs of the western world, so we need not feel that the grass is greener in the East. I've definitely played a few events there with less-than-ideal sound. But on the whole, people in Japan DO pay great attention to the details, and it especially impressed me when the lighting-man at one party, Masuo, coordinated his color schemes with every tune i played, so that we had blood-red, white flashes, and sudden blackouts matching the mood of the music at every second! One never finds such attention in Berlin.
Anyhow, in Tokyo, whether it's at the big clubs like Ageha, Liquid Room or Velfarre, or in small gems like Loop in Shibuya, I've experienced great sound everywhere. Even at a small club like Mago in the city of Nagoya, the wooden floor, proper isolation and top-quality speakers made an Andreas Vollenweider electric harp disco groove the highlight of the evening. But Precious Hall in Hokkaido (the furthest northern city -- snow festivals all winter) is the stuff of legends. I had heard of Francois K. and Maurice Fulton playing there, but my first and only gig there was in 2005. It is truly a temple of sound created by Satoru-san, the owner, and his staff and permanent clientele. My DJ gig there was un-hyped and only about 50 people turned up. It was cool weather that night, and with so few dancers, the club never got very warm. Satoru-san said that there hasn't been much new blood in the city since the club opened in the early 90's. The club is a converted underground parking-garage in an old office building, so it is spacious, flat, and well-isolated from the world above. Now here's the thing: everything in Precious Hall is covered in wood, much of it hand-cut to fit each particular niche. Not only the dance floor, but also the walls and the 7 huge Klipsch speakers: they're all wood. The DJ booth is built out of cement blocks, but only to support the turntables and equipment. All around the booth, I found only more wooden panels. The sound in the booth was as warm and crystal clear as in almost every corner of the dance floor! SO clear was the sound, in fact, that it was a bit disturbing, since most of us are accustomed to some tension and difference between what the DJ hears and what the dancers hear. I didn't want to touch the EQ, and I had difficulty choosing what to play, because almost everything sounded equally good, even boring, too-obvious old disco classics like First Choice "Doctor Love". As a gig, it was unexciting that night, but as an experience in good acoustics, it was a master lesson.
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Well, since you've seen so much, we heard that you have a fantasy of opening up your own club in Berlin, which would be dedicated to good sound?
Unlike Sven Vath, I don't have a fortune to blow on an egomaniacal techno-palace like the Cocoon Club. Obviously the sound system and decor there cost a fortune, but apparently the club looks tragically empty unless 1500 people are on the dancefloor -- I don't know if that happens very often in Frankfurt! But if I talk a bit about this fantasy of mine, maybe someone will help make it a reality. Part of Berlin's charm lies in its old cobblestone streets, its "Antiquariat" shops full of old books and things. I'd love to do the opposite of these big techno-clubs -- an intimate club on the edge of Berlin Mitte, filled with shelves of these odds and ends which one finds only in Berlin -- deer antlers, East German vases, old books, crockery. Of course, that's a camoflouge. In fact, the walls are covered in styrofoam and carpet, painted or disguised, and the shelves piled high with old books and records serve to break up the flat surfaces and improve the acoustics (they really do). Since it's a fantasy, i'll make it a bit more Japanese: the floor is gently carpeted, and people have to take off their shoes to get in - there's a row of shelves at the entrance for checking in your shoes. This would be a place to hear all kinds of music as it was meant to be heard. Of course people can get up and boogie if they want to. It would be called "die Bibilothek" -- the Library! And maybe then people would stop thinking that Germans only listen to bad techno in industrial warehouses, because I've met many here who enjoy anything BUT that.
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So, to conclude -- a padded room and a perfect sound system are the only solution?
Not necessarily. In the end, we all understand that every DJ has to improvise with the space and the equipment they're given. Surely we've all had more fun in a sweaty, tiny club with a shitty sound system than in some clean, sterile disco palace with a perfect sound system! But we have to clearly distinguish between these two factors: quality of sound system vs. quality of acoustic space. Good sound in any club depends on both, but these are two different things. We've been concentrating on the acoustic space in this article, so let's mention something briefly about the equipment.
Sometimes "bad speakers" can sound exciting, and this is not (ooh ooh, ah ah!) just an illusion: a certain amount of distortion and overheating from the sound system can please the ears, the same way that blues and rock guitar players used their cheap tube amps in the 60's and 70's to create those gritty, crunchy solos. Distortion is at the heart of producing interesting sounds -- any instrument producing only pure, whistle-like sine waves would be extremely boring, and that's why Leon Theremin and Bob Moog used various circuits to distort the waveform in their synthesizers to create a more buzzing, humming, singing tonal quality. If you have a crunchy sound system, then work with it as you see fit. A strident midrange and dirty bass sound can really get people dancing. But acoustic space will always determine what the audience ultimately hears, whether the output from your speakers is distorted or clean. Finally, and obviously, good sound should never get too loud. Ideally, you shouldn't have to wear earplugs to enjoy the music. That's the responsibility of the club's sound engineers as well as the DJ's. And again, the acoustic space is paramount here. Playing music is a profound form of communication. In a good space for such activity, one shouldn't need to shout in order to be heard. And that... is everything ! could possibly dream of saying about good sound in clubs! For the time being.
DISCOPIA: Okay! Thanks for sharing with us, Daniel!
DANIEL WANG: And thank you, Niall! See you in Glasgow again in October 2006!

ADAM GOLDSTONE

Adam Goldstone 1969 - 2006
It is with great sadness that we report the death of one Disco World’s top exponents Mr. Adam Goldstone. Adam, who died on the 29th of August, was a NY based producer and DJ of some reknown, had released hit tracks under the aliases of Superstars of Rock, Tiny Trendies, and received acclaim for his album, “Lower East Side Tales” released under his ownname on Nuphonic in 2001. He died of a congenital heart defect he had borne all his life, but which was made worse after an accident at this year's Burning Man festival. Discopia sends its condolences to Adam’s friends and family, and if any reader want to offer a tribute, you can post at the Adam Goldstone memorial MySpace, which can be found here:
MySpace.com/AdamGoldstone

Back2Future | Plano b

...uma viagem pelo tempo passado e futuro da cultura de clube, feita á luz do presente, por dois dos mais inconformados estetas do cenário nocturno portuense. Responsáveis pela revelação das mais irreverentes e interessantes movimentações artisticas nesta área. Para "tirar a barriga de misérias"...

neste inigualável espaço situado bem no centro histórico da nossa belíssima cidade do Porto.