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Part 2

I've always wondered: How is it possible for DJs to memorise so many tracks? How do you store tracks in your mind – traditionally as grooves + melodies + harmonies or as colours, energy levels, shapes?

First of all, I only play music that connects to my soul, which makes it much easier to remember. It's more easy to remember something which is part of you.

My brain seems to categories all the music into preferably rhythmic patterns which I can quickly memories in detail very easy like a picture. Micro patterns like one bar of a track but also macro patterns like the whole dramaturgic structure of a track, like: is it a song structure or a more toolish usable track structure. I also memorise the energy level and the mood colours. From there I try to find connections and exciting contrasts between the tracks and its harmonies. If I found an exciting combination I am sweet spotting back and forth between the tracks using the EQs or Filters and losing myself in creating a new 3rd track out of the 2.

I am doing this during my sets in real time, no preconceptions. Full risk is highly important to me to keep the quality high and human. It is real time experimentation and improvisation based on experience and pure curiosity.

Using your very latest DJ set as an example, what does your approach look like, from selecting the material and preparing for and opening a set? What were some of the transitions that really worked looking back?

My last set was for the Forbidden Dance Records radio show on D59D radio.

Richard Zepezauer (RZ-1) · Forbidden Dance Radioshow 15.02.2022


Actually this one is a good example for my love to experiment in the moment with the basic elements in music like contrasts and genres, tension and release, harmony and disharmony, dry and wet, construct and deconstruct, upliftingly happy and melancholic, organic and artificial, warm and cold, archaic and futuristic, traditional and avantgardistic. I had big fun to find the sweet spots between those extremes. All this might sound pretty headstrong, but I don't think very much during a set. I try to feel the path that opens up during the selections I make.

That last mix was done with vinyl only and one of the transitions which worked surprisingly well was Brazil drummer legend Dom Um Romao - Ponteio with a very dry Thomas Melchior track coming after it, from beautifully produced new album on Perlon. It's a good example for a dry / wet contrast.

How does the decision making process work during a gig with regards to wanting to play certain records, the next transition and where you want the set to go? How far do you tend to plan ahead during a set?

The cognitive details are complicated to describe. But basicially when one track is playing I am going through my tracks and try to imagine what the playing track would need to create a surprising 3rd track going during the transition to the new one. Then I look into the crates if I have something like this in my box.

One of the main categories I have to decide is if I go on with a certain vibe or energy or if I break it up and or even contrast it. Planning a set ahead is the natural death of my creativity. So I don't do it.

As a DJ, you can compose a set of many short tracks or play them out in full, get involved with mixing or keep the tunes as the producer intended them, create fluent seagues or tension. Tell me about your personal preferences in this regard, please.

Most of the time my mixing style is strongly working with the original tracks and I work with the originally intended structure of a track. Its original structure is often the reason for selecting it, but during the mostly long transition I squeeze the fusion of the 2 tracks into the direction I have the most fun with.I am totally in the moment then and I make it my own.

I rarely work with cuts or short music quotes like HipHop DJs do. My mixing is like writing my own story with sentences made by other artists. I create my art with the art of others.

It's an art form to make it your own and create something really new which opens up new ways of expression. It's actually where DJ ing as an art form begins. AI can not do that.

Pieces can sound entirely different as part of a DJ set compared to playing them on their own. How do you explain this? Which tracks from your collection don't seem like much outside of a DJ set but are incredible effective and versatile on a gig?

It's a natural thing that music shines through its context too. A boring track, put in the right context can get highly exciting and vice versa.

It's like in physics, matter is defined by relations between the particles and not by the particles itself. It´s the context that matters. Funny.

In terms of the overall architecture of a DJ set, how do you work with energy levels, peaks and troughs and the experience of time?

This is the part where the venue and environment exert a big impact on decisions about the architecture of a set.

Small rooms allow for different energy levels than bigger rooms. That's one of the reasons why big stages can never carry the same energy as a smaller club room. There are differences, not automatically in quality, but the difference can not be ignored. And there is a difference if you play for the Berlin Academy of Arts in an experimental Opera Project or in a hedonistic envirorment like a Gay Night Club.

As a DJ you have to work with that and include it in the decisions you make for the set.

Online DJ mixes, created in the studio as a solitary event, have become ubiquitous. From your experience with the format, what changes when it comes to the way you DJ – and to the experience as a whole - when you subtract the audience?

With online DJ mixes I tend to use the freedom of a not-present audience to be even more abstract and more experimental, I am purely playing for my own satisfaction then. In my own Radioshow on the Tiflis based Mutant Radio I am forcing these borders of the known and try to imagine the unkown.

With an audience my goal is also to create a spiritual “together experience” so one of the thoughts is not to loose the connection to the audience and not to force them into my thing. It´s important to convince them.

Advances in AI-supported DJing look set to transform the trade. For the future, where do you see the role of humans in DJ ing versus that of technology?

Well, there is no substitute for artistic work of a human. AI wont ever be able to copy it. So those who are interested in human art culture never ever will be satisfied with algorithms who are making seemingly artistic decisions. Those who focus on being entertained might be happy with a AI-designed set. It really depends on what you are interested in.

AI can provide its own quality and can open new interesting doors, but it never will be an expression of a soul.

Let's imagine you lost all your music for one night and all there is left at the venue is a crate of records containing a random selection of music. How would you approach this set?

I would announce an interesting journey and would start sweating in a good way.


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