Dummy Mix 121 // Rem Koolhaus
One of New York’s hotter club nights is run by a set of promoters called TURRBOTAX®. With a previous artists list that includes Four Tet, Laurel Halo and Robert Hood, we were eager to get a transmission from the group ahead of their blow-out tomorrow night, which you can find out about here. And one of the main guys behind the operation, the fantastically named DJ Rem Koolhaus, turned in a mix of futuristic house that sounds like tomorrow, and tomorrow tonight, and the day after tomorrow’s morning. Read some nice words from a great DJ, then stream the mix below.
How did you get into DJing?
I think it came from my life long love of making mix tapes. When i was a kid and too young to go to concerts i used to take my favorite albums and dub crowd noises over it with a double tape deck, which of course is a super productive use of time. When I was in high school I got really into making sound collage-esque mixes with a turntable, sampler, CD player and minidisc. I think I finally figured out that beat matching and playing for parties is really fun at some point in college.
Can you tell us something about the mix?
I wanted to do a short mix that represented the range of music we feature at our party which is generally mix of NY garage, Detroit techno, house, UK garage, what everyone calls “bass music”, and anything else that fits. This proved to be much harder than I thought because we have 5 resident DJ’s including myself (Contakt, C-Sick, Space Jam and Mayster) and they all have their own special take on what we do. But I recorded this at my house on two 1200’s, a Xone22 mixer and Serato.
Can you describe the ideas behind your night?
For sure. We started TURRBOTAX® in the summer of 2009, because we weren’t hearing the music out that we where really excited about. Which was when “UK Funky” really hit in the wake of dubstep, and producers and DJs like Brackles, Ben UFO, Bok Bok, Roska, Shortstuff, FaltyDL all starting coming into their own creating and playing a much more fun and “up” music. There where of course great parties going on here, but nothing that focused on that new strain of music coming out of the UK. Since then we’ve evolved to include more diverse line ups including a lot of our favorites from the US like Rob Hood, Terrence Parker, and one of this month’s guests, Anthony “Shake” Shakir. At the time we started TURBOTAX®, a lot of the parties in NYC had an overly serious, or sometimes has a creepy “Lower East Side Bad Boy” type of thing going on. We wanted to start a something that reflected both our roots in sweaty basement parties and the (then) recent stylistic shift happening in dance music underground, to make TURRBOTAX® a club that was strictly about the music and the vibe. We don’t allow photography, we have no MC and there is no cellphone service in the club so there are no distractions, its just you and the zone.
How is New York dance music at the moment?
We have great community here, and it’s grown to be much wider than it was 3 years ago when we started. I remember it was like pulling teeth to get people who weren’t necessarily a part of “The Dance Music Scene” to spend a night dancing at a party where all the music being played was electronic music. Brooklyn (mainly talking about Williamsburg here) has come a long way from being a place that if there is no live indie rock band then there is no interest. I think people are feeling a little more free these days and that’s a wonderful thing.
What is exciting you about music at the moment?
I like that people aren’t as afraid to get too weird or too deep anymore. :]
01. The African Dream “Makin’ A Living”
02. Move D “Sur Un Bateau (avec Eric)”
03. The System “You’re In My System” (Atmospheric Vocal and Dub)
04. Arttu “Get Up Off It (ft. Jerry The Cat)”
05. Max K. “Loosing Your Cool”
06. The Untouchables “Dance to the Rhythm”
07. Lighter Thief “Like Dat”
08. R.I.P. Productions “The Players” – ice cream records
09. Soul Fusion “Bass Tone”
10. Brackles “I Can’t Wait”
11. Rhythim Is Rhythim “Drama”
