Kühlhouse quickly established itself as a serious venue for house parties in Bremerhaven and appealed to ‘new’ people in particular. Not just scene-goers like me. That was refreshing because it meant the expectations were different.

It was also nice that it took place with a certain regularity, especially in a city like Bremerhaven, which didn’t really have a scene and where nightlife was generally a bit difficult. The Alte Bürger was struggling, having previously been the go-to place for nightlife in the city. There were a few discos that appealed to a different clientele, but they also had their problems. The Kühlhouse stood out. It was small, intimate, played good music, and people met there for a good time in a relaxed way.

At least that’s how I remember it. You tend to remember the good things!

There were plenty of good things going on. I organised a party with Matthias, who rented the halls to the left and right of the Kühlhouse. There was a guest list of 110 people, we took practically no admission fees that evening, but the bar was proverbially drunk dry. It was a lovely evening, Tas & Phunk were there too.

Later, I often DJed there alongside Kolja Bäcker, who was a resident DJ at Rosigen Zeiten in Bremen. After that, Dimi & Loco from my DNMK roster, if you can call it that, did a lot there, and I was occasionally involved. My time as a DJ, especially in Bremerhaven, was very much influenced by Kühlhouse.

Years later, I met Marc at the Alte Bürger Festival. I had been living in Hamburg for a long time and didn’t visit Bremerhaven that often any more, but I immediately asked him about the Kühlhouse. ‘Sold the joint, couldn’t be arsed any more.’

It broke my heart a little, but I understood.
Not only have people like me been moving away from Bremerhaven in increasing numbers, but perhaps the momentum for such things has simply run out at some point.

I think it was in 2018 or 2019 when I wanted to see what was still going on at Kühlhouse, so I looked it up online. I was feeling a little sentimental and curious. I wanted to see what was happening in my old home town.

The URL kuehlhouse.com was not linked to any website because someone failed to renew the registration.

Almost reflexively, I registered the URL and almost immediately had the idea of making an homage mix. With records from that era or records that I particularly liked at the time.

Side note: With my history in the techno scene and not being tied to just one genre, I was always the DJ who didn’t quite fit in 100% at Kühlhouse. I adapted at times, but I also, let’s say, tested the boundaries. Around 2008, I was really into bloghouse, which was influenced by French Touch. Great music, but not always suitable for Kühlhouse.

So, the idea was to make an homage mix with a selection of records. It took me this long because I’ve always found it very difficult to record mixes at home. My mixes were always worse than my sets, partly because at some point I needed the trigger of seeing people’s reactions to my music.

Because I ended up selecting over 60 records for this mix, it was impossible to record it at home with my bias against home recording. When dj.studio came out a while ago, I knew immediately how I could finally record this set outside my comfort zone, and I’m glad that piece of software exists. Without it, the idea would have died!

Long story short, here is my homage mix, which at least reminds me of a good time at the Kühlhouse. Maybe you too?

I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed making it.

SoundCloud Player

Loading this content transmits data to SoundCloud.

Load content Always allow SoundCloud Privacy policy

Direct link: kuehlhouse.com

This video deserves a special mention because Armand played what’s probably the most British house set ever at New Year’s Eve 2023/2024 in London. The tracks all date from the 00s and 10s. A good half of them produced by the man himself, and pretty much all of them still in heavy rotation on BBC Radio 1. Know your crowd!

So it’s no wonder the kids sing along loudly to almost everything and are having the time of their lives. The comment “Kids dancing on tracks made before they were born… The power of good music!” sums it up perfectly.

This post is part of my All Things British page.

I enjoy them, hopefully you will too!

The playlist is updated irregularly and new sets or concerts will be added from time to time. Worth popping back in every now and then.

YouTube Video

Loading this content transmits data to YouTube.

Load content Always allow YouTube Privacy policy

—
Direct link YouTube
Direct link Invidious (privacy-friendly YouTube proxy)

I can’t remember why my friend had the 2000s and then moved on to the 3000s after selling them to me. The Technics 1210s were the gold standard and the club default back then, just as Pioneer is today.

Personally, I always preferred the handling. I often said at the time that the Vestax was more forgiving and you didn’t have to be quite as precise. The Technics were a bit too sensitive for me, so I often turned the platter a bit too far.

The PDXs are not only more robust in terms of handling, but also in terms of durability. Mine are now a good 20 years old and give very few problems. But what bothered me for a long time was that there were no covers for them.

Well, there were some, but they weren’t included and they were hideous. So I was chuffed when Decksaver stepped in last year and added Vestax PDX 2000 covers to their range.

That solved one problem. The next was the target light, which plugs into the front of the turntable via RCA. Of course, these get lost on club nights and although I never really needed them, I missed having the light.

Last year I found a supplier in the UK who had built very robust replacement target lights. Coincidentally, you can spot one of them on the Decksaver website on the PDX 2000 pictured there. Apparently, this person no longer makes them or sells them on eBay. Which is a shame, as the quality is superb.

However, someone in Poland has taken over the mantle and is making simpler target lights for the Vestax and other turntables. So that might help you out too.

With the two new accessories, I took the opportunity to finally give the players a proper clean after what felt like decades. I reckon there was still some club dirt in there.

This post is part of my tutorials.

The goal was simple: capture Laurent Garnier’s career in a documentary. They were looking for backers, and even though I’m not the biggest Laurent Garnier fan, I found it fascinating to be part of it. Just like with Lucas Levitan or Thimbleweed Park.

Laurent Garnier was one of the pioneers from France in the early 90s, when techno and house were blowing up. To me, he’s defined by tracks like Feelin’ Good and of course The Man With The Red Face. But also by the panel I attended with him at ADE 2016.

As far as I could remember, some of the footage was already in the can, with a few selected “Off The Records” events still to come in early 2020. One of them fell on my birthday. With the benefit of hindsight – knowing what the following years had in store – I should have gone. But I didn’t.

The pandemic naturally delayed the production as well. As tends to happen with crowdfunding campaigns, communication and the shipping of perks slowed down a bit. But given the circumstances, understanding was more than warranted. In the end, the team was determined to see the project through properly, and I did receive the digital downloads and the Blu-ray.

After a while, the documentary made it onto Arte and was freely available to everyone. Unfortunately, it’s no longer on Arte. It can still be found on Vimeo On Demand and Apple TV.

—
Photo: Featuristic Film via Kickstarter campaign page

This post is part of my Kickstarter page.

In 2022, the BBC migrated its radio stations from Shoutcast to HLS. In the process, the old streams were replaced by a continuous announcement vaguely indicating this.

The usual services such as TuneIn, SonosRadio or myTuner were initially unable to offer all or any of the new BBC streams.

A relatively simple solution is to set up the appropriate HLS URL as a manual radio station in Sonos (or the web radio player of your choice).

The current URLs are maintained by bpsib in this Gist on GitHub. For listening outside the UK, you need to replace /uk/ with /nonuk/ in the URL. The Gist already includes ready-made non-UK variants.

With the right URL, you can manually add the station in the Sonos app via TuneIn. On desktop, go to Manage – Add Radio Station. On your phone, go to Browse – TuneIn – My Radio Stations, tap the three dots in the top right corner, then select Add New Radio Station.

This post is part of my All Things British page and my tutorials.

To mark the 10th anniversary, A-Trak shared some background on the release of the track and especially on the making of the video. I love how A-Trak has been sharing behind-the-scenes stories over the past few months. That reminded me of how I once cut an edit from the video’s audio track and the original song, combining elements from the video that weren’t in the original. The scratch solo, the talkbox and the “Here I aaaaaam” from the fake Barbra are brilliant!

The video, complete with fresh backstory captions, dropped yesterday to celebrate the anniversary.

YouTube Video

Loading this content transmits data to YouTube.

Load content Always allow YouTube Privacy policy

More Duck Sauce over at Fool’s Gold Records and on the Duck Sauce YouTube channel.

By chance I listened to the compilation again and somehow came across the Soundcloud profile of Fingerman, who had mixed tracks from it. Nearly 3 hours at an average of 118 BPM, from funk to soul, all quite house-heavy. Pleasant to listen to, not intrusive, but the head nods similarly to Atjazz.

The set is available for download at Juno if you fancy mixing it yourself. Have fun!

—
Preview image borrowed from Fingerman’s Soundcloud profile.

YouTube Video

Loading this content transmits data to YouTube.

Load content Always allow YouTube Privacy policy

(via testspiel.de)

—
Preview image courtesy of the Kaleidoscope Orchestra YouTube profile.

Hallo Montag at Suol