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.

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Direct link: kuehlhouse.com

I mean, I have similar images from my early days as a DJ, just not with Beyoncé looking incredulous, but with other, rather unknown people.

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Yes, it’s nonsense, I know. Compared to him, I was probably a bit lazier. I put less effort into getting new records and gigs. That’s how I’d sum it up after reading the book…

Mark Ronson wasn’t really on my radar. Sure, Amy Winehouse, Bruno Mars… I was aware of all that. Not my kind of music. But I also found the memoirs of Carl Cox and Harold Heath very interesting, if only because of my proximity to the subject. So picking up this book wasn’t a stretch.

Of the lot, I actually think Mark Ronson’s is the best. I like his writing, some of the scenes are incredibly quirky and entertaining (no spoilers: Robin Williams), and the music scene the book covers mirrors a time when I was tuned into much of what he describes.

Long story short: please get the book, it’s good!

The official playlist for the book is available on Spotify, with a copy also available on Deezer.

This post is part of my reading page.

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.

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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.

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Photo: Featuristic Film via Kickstarter campaign page

This post is part of my Kickstarter page.

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.

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

Boom is a slightly overblown equaliser app that really does improve the sound coming out of your Mac, taking the agony out of the thin default sound. Once installed, Boom will tell you that the preset that has been automatically selected is probably the best setting for your particular device. You can also try a few genre-specific settings, but the default setting is usually the best.

However, those five controls above the presets are too tempting (see image above), and you can actually make good use of one or two of them. Fidelity in particular squeezes out the last 5% of depth and balance.

The system tray icon shows some of the settings in a small window, but after the initial installation and a quick look, you can safely ignore them. It really is that simple!

A definite buy, but before you spend money on the app, use the trial version to make sure everything written here holds true. Head over to Boom 3D at the Global Delight Store.

Addendum: Now also available for PC.

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For those who are interested, this is the wallpaper.

Jeff Özdemir’s real name is Adem Mahmutoglu and, like so many others, he is a Berliner by choice. His life is mainly shaped by music and for at least one of his music projects he sometimes uses the name Jeff Özdemir. Before moving to Berlin, he lived for a long time in Bremerhaven and, to a certain extent, in his former record shop, the 33 rpm store. I bought my first records there about 22 years ago, records that weren’t just for playing at home. They were mainly needed during the time when I was trying my hand at DJing, mostly for parties.

I realise now that Adem’s pre-selection helped shape my musical tastes. At the time, I was certainly convinced that it was just my brilliant understanding of music that kept the record box so well sorted. Obviously, the work of selecting records was a very different one back then and I was correspondingly dependent on the record shop. There was no Beatport, no Shazam. A lot of time might pass before I knew the name of a record I had heard somewhere, and then getting hold of it was the real problem. In the days of dubplates and white labels, it took forever for one of these records to come out, if it came out at all.

In the later transition period from vinyl to digital, I had some heated discussions with Adem about how good the internet was going to be for musicians (my opinion) and the dangers of the internet through illegal downloads (his opinion). This often happened over a cup of tea, so a visit to his shop was not only an invitation to look for records, but also often used for extensive conversations. I miss the environment that his record shop gave me back then. But every now and then I visit Adem in Berlin and reminisce for a while.

Adem felt like one of the last people to leave Bremerhaven. But he was also one of those who always wanted more than the city could give. Many creative people left early, looking for what was missing. Adem seems to have found it in Berlin. He runs his record shop there in much the same way as he did in Bremerhaven. However, the events and releases he organises are now more frequent and extensive. One of these releases is Jeff Özdemir and Friends, which, with its first edition, is also a recapitulation of times past. Tracks like Der Typ ist Fett dabei by Edwyn Tokyo were re-released on the compilation in 2015. But I still remember Adem and Frank playing it for me in the shop.

In the almost 30 years that Adem has been active, he has built up a network from which the compilations now benefit. Some of the bands on the first edition are from his time in Bremerhaven. Other tracks show how Adem has developed in the meantime. In my opinion, Allein mit dem Dualismus stands for this particularly well.

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The second edition, released in 2017, follows the same path, but is also much fresher, with new collaborations. Adem was unnecessarily modest and wished me a lot of fun with the bad investment, even questioning the third edition. But I think that the self-proclaimed Bill Gates of the Bontempi organ continues to offer an interesting spectrum that shies away from being confined to a single genre, and the supposed focus on him as Jeff Özdemir does no harm either. On the contrary, it is through him that interesting musicians and music I am not always familiar with come within my reach.

Jeff Özdemir and Friends Vol. 1 (2015) and Vol. 2 (2017) are available for preview and purchase on Bandcamp (Vol. 1) and Bandcamp (Vol. 2). I also recommend a visit to his 33 rpm store at Wrangelstraße 95 in Berlin, where you can buy them too. Or directly from the Karaoke Kalk label.

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Further reading (all in German):
Jeff Özdemir & Friends at Phonanza FM
Voll am Start, der Mann at the taz
Über den Plattenrand hinaus at Renk Magazin
Hat man da Töne? at Zeit Online (free, but unfortunately requires login)

And an interview I did with Adem in 2008 for the short-lived magazine bookup:

September 13 marked the sixth anniversary of Mehdi’s death and regardless of that, I had actually dug out Signatune by chance shortly before to hear this extraordinary and incredibly energetic track again. This track seems a little lost, almost pointless, in the Lucky Boy album, as it starts practically with the hook* and, with a running time of just over a minute, is over pretty quickly too. It follows the style of the album to the extreme and not only serves the French, rather techno-leaning house, but with its short, DJ-tool-like tracks also reflects Mehdi’s hip-hop past.

The entire Ed Banger squad around Busy P flooded Instagram with posts in remembrance of Mehdi this year, and rightly so. Many other musicians, including A-Trak, did the same, and it was A-Trak who paid a wonderful tribute to Mehdi with his minimix in 2011. When Signatune appears in this mix (at minute 2:40), I get almost painful goosebumps, and that’s not the only reason why this track is firmly in my top 3 all-time favourites.

Thomas Bangalter’s edit was used for the official Signatune video, equally brilliant:

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Featured image credit: Michael Grech via flickr, CC-licensed
* Hook or hookline: the most distinctive, character-defining feature of a song (if anyone asks).