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Everything started when I was 8 years old and heard the “Construction Time Again” album from Depeche Mode. With Nitzer Ebb, the early Front 242 and the Klinik stuff, I totally immersed myself in electronic music. In the middle/late 90’s, after the first encounter with Plastikman, the Studio 1 sessions and the Maurizio tracks, it was clear to me that techno/minimal would be the next logical step.

Then you switched over to Techno. What came first, production or DJing?

I have been producing electronic music since I was 16 and Djing since I was 13 years old. I can’t really say when my music style changed to what’s considered to be techno music. My former music project (editor’s note: an industrial band) ended in 2000 and was followed by a two-years break. After that I started DJing with techno music and from 2003 also began producing.

So tell us a little bit about your mix.

I wanted to do a mix with some of my favorite records and tried to mix some older with some new ones. The mix reflects what I always try to achieve by mixing records: to tell a story and to build up an atmosphere full of power. That’s my understanding of deepness.

Your DJ/live sets became a bit calmer in the last few months. What happened?

Ahaha – I know, I’m getting older. But seriously: On one hand I guess I have become a little more open-minded in terms of music, on the other hand my music is a way to express my personality. And the more experience I have, the closer I get to the point where I can really see my personality reflected in my music.

What’s your favourite kind of party to DJ? Do you have any favourite locations?

Some of my favourite nights are our regular Motoguzzi Record label nights at the Club Zukunft in Zurich. We invite our favourite artists and it’s always a real pleasure to play with likeminded people like Function, Marcel Fengler, Ben Klock, Marcel Dettmann or Peter van Hoesen. Other favourite locations, where I’ve had the chance to play (to mention only a few): Cityfox Zurich, Bar25 Berlin, Cabaret Club Zurich, Private Party Milano, Ritter Butzke Berlin and my residency Hive Club Zurich.

What’s coming up from you in 2010? Any new projects?

Yes – I’ve started a new collaboration with Mastra from Berne. It’s a very productive collaboration and we match perfectly. The results of our work have a big range from pure dub tracks to deep minimal techno. We’ll do our first live act together at the Future is now Festival in Zurich in April.

Can we expect any new releases from you soon?

Yes – a Wandler remix from Big Zis will be released at the end of March on Nation Music and as soon as Motoguzzi records has found a new distributor, a new Wandler EP will be released. Additionally I’m looking for some other vinyl labels to release on. There are a few Swiss labels which are interested in my tracks but I don’t have any confirmation yet.

wandler on facebook | www.myspace.com/wandler | www.myspace.com/motoguzzirecords

For her most recent album “Und jetz …” (”And now …) BIG ZIS worked with Marton di Katz and Valentino Tomasi (both members of Kalabrese’s famous “Rumpelorchester”), who laid the musical foundations for most of the songs. For the impulsive electro on the track “Suure Räge” (“Acid Rain”) however, BIG ZIS collaborated with the techno producer MICHAL HO (Tuningspork) at the studio.

While rap becomes more and more pimped out, house loopier and minimal narrow-minded, BIG ZIS hooks up with a top-class troupe to get it her own way.

“Suure Räge” got remixed by several well-known producers: ROBAG WRUHME (Freude am Tanzen) and CANSON (GS Zürich) are to be found on volume 1 and the soul brothers LEXX (aka Kawabata / Drumpoet) and KALABRESE (Stattmusik) successfully combat boredom on volume 2.

BIG ZIS and the Nation Music Crew seem to enjoy the trip into electronic music to the fullest. On volume 3 they one more time deliver high-class remixes of  AGNÈS (STHLM, Geneva), WANDLER (Motoguzzi, Zurich) und M.A. (GS, Zurich).

Big Zis – “Suure Räge” Remixes Vol. 3 – Nation Music (incl. AGNÈS, WANDLER & M.A. RMX)

In September 09 Pikaya participated in a fantastic GS LIVE night. GS LIVE is an experimental party series at Club Zukunft in Zurich. The concept entails all artists performing and improvising live – a challenging task, not only for the musicians but also for their audience on the dance floor.

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Hello Daniel – tell us a little bit about this GS Live Night at Club Zukunft.

It’s a great idea to create a club night featuring live acts only. I’m sure that is is exciting for the audience to listen to music that hasn’t yet been released or maybe even never will be, music that can’t be found in every dj case and can’t be ordered online for no money. We are really looking forward to play at the Zukunft. Crew, PA, club size and atmosphere are simply perfect and the line-up is always well chosen and carefully compiled. We easily get into a conversation with the other participating acts and like to seize the opportunity to discus about technics and get inspired by each other.
The great collaborative release (editor’s note: Gregorythme / Pikaya – UmmO / Amsterdam – GS06) that has come out of it tops the whole thing off and bundles the different approaches.

What are your musical influences?

Electronic elements in all different styles of music have always fascinated me since the time when I first came in touch with computers in 1992. My motivation was to find out how to make these sounds. Trough the Demoscene around Amiga and the C64, I started to create music with tracker programs. 4 mono tracks and 8 bit – that basically forces you to explore the boundaries. These boundaries and experimenting are my motivation still today to make electronic music. With this consciousness the mass of today’s possibilities is seen in another light. I like to go back to these former times mentally and am happy about the new open technical landscape, the almost endless space to sample and bout the precision you can achieve with the current technologies.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

If i need a little reset, I often listen to jazz, funk or classical music. Other important references are still Depeche Mode, Yello, Kraftwerk, Stockhausen, John Cage and rather unpopular stuff from the sixties or seventies. From 1995 on, house started to become very important to me.

And what about Franky?

Franky’s inspiration comes more from the dj side. In the mid-nineties he started to combine jazz with hiphop, funk, dub, electronica and indie. Our tastes are often quite similar in terms of these musical genres. We have been inspiring one another since 2000. Franky inspires me with music I would never have come across and I inspire him with technical ideas at the computer and the synthesizers. I am the one that consumes less music and he is the one who is less into technics. But from time to time this weighting shifts and swaps and produces interesting results. Pikaya has been working with this interrelation from the beginning and there is no end in sight!

Any news for 2010? What can we expect from Pikaya?

There are definitely more releases about to come in 2010. The next album wont be released on Cadenza in its original form as planned originally due to the release schedule. It would have been put on hold for to long otherwise. We therefore decided to split it into different releases. In March comes an EP on Meander Music, which will contain three of the more danceable tracks. The less club-orientated tracks will probably come out as digital bonus tracks, maybe also on other labels in combination with new material.
Besides this, there is still a remix project for Catenaccio Records, the labels of Benjamin Fehr aka FFWD, in the drawer.
And last but not least we will totally change our live set. We will play regularly during summer at Club der Visionäre in Berlin. We are also planning some jam sessions with Franky as DJ and me at the keyboard with guests like Frieder Klaris (HDT), DeWalta (Meander) und Ion Ludwig (Quagmire). So get ready for some nice Berlin summer nights!

www.gs-zurich.net | www.zukunft.cl | www.myspace.com/pikaya | Gregorythme / Pikaya – UmmO / Amsterdam – GS06

Music with its seven notes, coming back to its first one at the octave: simple, limitless and ad infinitum. This is the next clever coup from Zurich.

„Ave Leo“ is an homage to life. The three guys from Pompelmoessap lay it on thick and dally over a tenderly melting melody, skillfully play with shakers, drum cuts and low deep down effects. Evoking a conjuring atmosphere that gets under your skin. The groove is right. The sun rises, early in the morning at the club.

On the B-side you will find a collectible, an everlasting trip of melancholic club couch music with Bob Dylan’s cultural message from the 70ies. Ion Ludwig looks at „Spiritual Devil“ as a kind of „protest“ against all those 2D digitally recycled techhouse sounds, which are released every day en masse. Here plays timeless music for connoisseurs who want to feel and think while listening. Smoke some weed before listening. Peace.

After the successful label kick-off, Hive Audio 002 is waiting to give 2010 a perfect start.

This time the label founders themselves deliver a track called “Jungle Fever”. It is a weird, percussive and trippy number, holding lots of surprises for guaranteed dancefloor madness. Animal Trainer are Hive Club resident DJ´s of the first hour and their “Raketen” parties enjoy great reputation far beyond the swiss border.

Lexy is also a regular guest to these parties, therefore it was obvious to have the first Animal Trainer output on Hive Audio remixed by this jack-of-all-trades from Berlin. Lexy first draws the essence out of the track and turns it into a real peaktime monster without losing the basic idea, he builds all the samples, sounds and subtleties to a groove rocket that will most certainly force all hands to move so we can see them.

CITYFOX moves on and winds up its first label year with a pretty crazy EP by Zurich’s hottest new talent ANDRI. Dive into his funky, weird, psychedelic world while listening to the seven tracks. They all feature ANDRI’s unique groove, sound and vocal signature. And still, each one of them has its own character: Be it the straight forwardness in THE CHANGE, the cool groove of FEEL IN LOVE WITH UUU, the catchy funky vox in HOUSERS REVENGE or the hit machine TSCHEGE.

Three exclusive digital tracks come along in addition to the vinyl release – simply because ANDRI’s output is too big and too good to keep it back from you. With the madness of EDDING 2000, the extraterrestrial SPACERS CASE and the techno bomb MY JAZZ these three tracks could form a complete record themselves.

The 2 beatport exclusive digital tracks (digital 02 + 03) are not included in the player.

andri – the change ep – cityfox005 by teclectic