touring wheels

this months hot links
lofi stereo (new website by kubus media)
stir15 & lofi stereo on myspace
motorcitysoul on myspace
faithfanzine (top notch uk house mag & forum)

aug 28th, 2008
i returned to berlin and moscow in august and had two amazing nights in these two cities. sascha's wardrobe (@picknick) in berlin was a great open air event deep in the heart of berlin with some raindrops giving it the real open air flavour. i was playing back2back all night long with super dj stoopid and it was one of the best sets we ever did. the night started at 23:00 and went on until 10:00 in the morning which also marks the longest back2back i've ever did (11hrs!). the music focused on house and techno however we ended up in a kind of 70s / 80s disco and rock flashback including tunes like "lovely day" by bill withers or "the passenger" by the stooges. "it must be love" by madness and stoopids "dolce vita" turned out to be one of the songs of the night - surprisingly I have to admit.

july 27th, 2008
lazy me, I completely forgot to announce my last-minute-gig in berlin for the upcoming weekend. august the 2nd will see the return of stoopid and myself to berlin's picknick club. worth to check out as it will be a nice open air event enjoying the high days of summer!

july 15th, 2008
in a good tradition there are almost no updates on the page during the mad summer months. shame on me as they were such good nights happening the last weeks. club yello in belfast with their urban torque night, cocoon ibiza with luciano and ricardo were just a few of them worth to mention. coming up next is the marathon weekend starting with the fourth anniversary of cocoonclub frankfurt, followed by my residency at club "zimmer" in mannheim and closed back in frankfurt with the o2 danceflash along pig&dan and the almighty housecat felix... tequilla!

the most important news is of course the upcoming arrival of the motorcitysoul album "technique" on will saul's simple label. the first single change you features amazing vocals by californian brother in mind ovasoul7 (remember i cling?) and comes with an unbelievable remix by uk housechamp shur-i-kan. touch down of the 12" will be around september 2008 followed by the album in october. stay tuned to hear/read more.

and, there is more than playing tunes in life... football! my lovely eintracht frankfurt finished season on position 9 and it would have been a lot better if we wouldn't lost four out of the last six games (argl!). and btw, manchester... what the hell was that? teves being the unfairest player on the pitch and christiano ronaldo doing playground tricks instead of proper penalty-biz? sorry to say that, but i am afraid the wrong team won the c/l this year (sic!). whatever, who cares anyway? ;)

coming up next is the birthday celebration of my old friend and labelmate nelson machado. born in portugal and raised in the frankfurt area he is one of the true house pioneers in frankfurt up to date. with his strictly pumping deephouse based on a strong chicago influence he always stood out of what other djs played and still does. his birthday parties are known to be kind of extreme which will get me into trouble as I have to be in the stadium the next day to see the last game of eintracht frankfurt. well, at least no afterhour for me then!

i remember our conversation with the guys from spirit catcher the other night in hungary when they said that these strange dates do very often turn out to be the better ones in the end. well, of course on one hand because expectations are low but very often they are simply the better ones. people do really appreciate that you come a long way to play in their city and for many promoters and resident-djs the guest is not "just another foreign dj" like you have them in every bigger city around the world almost every night. they really booked one because they like that special music and very often the music they are playing is far better than the sound of many big-city-residents. all this was the case for our promoter and host-dj vidis in lithuania who played two stunning sets. make sure you check his myspace page out as he just released a burner tune for gilles peterson and is about to release an amazing video of his last track on youtube, too.

the parties were very nice, with amazing people, good soundsystems, special projections and flyers. our driver "andrius" was very nice, too, driving us safely from one place to another. last but not least all the flight-hustle was exceptional smooth, no long waiting, enough space in the planes and no delays... heathrow can u hear me ;)
so looking back to all this I have to say: shame on me and my first thoughts, i would do this anytime again. shouts to vidis and everybody we met in lithuania.

before we left, vidis and andrius took us to a very mystical place that could be translated with "the hills of crosses". a hill outside of the city siauliai where people put crosses up for hundreds of years. unfortunately the soviets removed these crosses a couple of times but back in 1993, after the end of the soviet occupation the people of siauliai started to put the crosses back up again. so, we are "only" looking at the work of the last 25 years but it already looks very impressive, almost scary (no wonder the soviets were frightend by religion and removed the crosses) and I cannot imagine how this area would look like if it would be untouched. i have to say: a memorable trip with some very unexpected turns. looking forward to the next jump over the baltic sea.

april 24th, 2008
just a quick one as I am looking forward to my next gigs in lituania and berlin - all in all three gigs in four days. lithuania actually will be a little tour deep down the countryside so it will be quite exciting to see how this will come out. websites, flyers and pictures look promising. after playing two gigs there wednesday and thursday i will finally play the übercool picknick club in berlin. shouts to sascha and stoopid who invited me for playing at their "wardrobe" night.

on the production side our freerange joint "mango" is out finally. this tune came a long way as it was more or less one of the very first motorcitysoul tunes matthias and i produced together a couple of years ago. we completely forgot about it to be honest. about 1,5 years after we did this rough demo (that we played sometimes and gave it to a couple djs when they asked us) jimpster heart it in mallorca at cafe garito where nacho velasco played it. well, to cut a long story short - he asked us what will happen with it and we agreed to release it on freerange. so we edited and mixed it again and jimpman himself and milton jackson put their hands on, too and the result is a stunning package of mixes that suit almost every part of the night. nice one guys.

I stumbled over this one the other day, well, more over one of the comments... of course, it's a job in terms of getting up, driving/travelling to the venue and getting paid for playing music. with career steps, ups&downs, bootlickers, and so on. I guess nobody will doubt this no matter if there is passion or not (and i have to admit some djs seem not to be very impassionate about their job). and when I say "job" it shouldn't necessarily mean a profession one does not like. the idea of a job to me is doing something you like, you feel satisfied with. at least at a certain point in your life and of course this can mean that out of all the jobs we have done, there were a couple we did not feel fine with (which is obviously one of the reasons why people change their jobs).

and even so, if you finally found this one job that suits you, may it be teaching kids, tatooing bellies and asses or planting trees and roses which, sometimes, can be much nicer than tatooing bellies and asses... even then you will have moments when you dislike your job. playing out to a crowd of badly dressed brokers and investment bankers (who did find their favourite jobs, too) or being trapped on the last neo-trance night on planet earth can be a pain in the ass, even if djing is the best job in the universe. well, except of being a photographer for playboy magazine.

I don't argue that some jobs are mainly there to make money and these jobs (that I've done a dozen or two myself) are not satisfying at all - except of the money they bring. however, nobody will doubt that this does not count for the whole dj-thing which is basically the reason why so many people want to be djs. and of course, I don't blame the "dj-job" just because we have to do things that other people have to do, too such as catching trains et al - I see this can be easily misunderstood. however, honestly - it seems to be a miracle how we do catch our trains and planes sometimes. uuuuhh, this is such a hard job "sometimes we even have to talk to people we do not like and sit in a car for 200 miles with people that do not even talk anymore". shouts to jimpster and emma and thanx for this nice discussion we had the other day about this. i know you girls love it to see us suffering from our hard hard "jobs"!

mar 4th, 2008
vienna and brussels have been heavy. pompadour at sass in vienna turned out to be a really nice club and event. really decent music by the resident djs and a stylish but slight oldskool vibe in the club. the pre-hour in a friends 420m2 appartment gave the night a special flavour, what a location! shouts to mario and christian.

i thought vienna was cool but brussels was even better. after a stormy flight back to frankfurt and a massive delay i was lucky to catch my flight to belgium in time - shouts to pascal feos and frank lorber who were waiting at the same gate in frankfurt. frank of amê was sitting next to me in the plane as he was playing in antwerp that night. touched down in brussels we checked out some other places and met my man jef/k who played in gent the same night. seems like belgium is really big with house-djs at the moment. fuse was wicked, great crowd and fantastic music by my two hosts geoffroy and salvatore. fat oldskool vibes meets new tech-house goodies. exactly my cup of tea! respect to brussels, keep up the good job guys! and thanx for the nice treatment... i will defintely stay longer next time and fly back monday ;)

by the way: make sure to check out mugwumps (geoffroy) new release on ewan pearsons & sasses misericord label. one of my absolute favourites at the moment!

feb 22nd, 2008
last friday saw the motorcitysoul debut at cubic club salamanca. a great night with a great crowd and lovely hosts/bar-staff. we have been nicely treated and our host-djs showed a very good taste of music. thanx guys! coming up next is "cmyk" in vienna by mario hug followed by my fuse debut in brussels. the week after (march 8th/9th) I will return to london playing t-bar and retox again.

besides all the gigs we have also new goodies out there to check out on vinyl/mp3. have a listen to our motorcitysoul remix of jussi pekkas "stream horse" on the brand new "laka" label. there will be more coming up such as our mango 12" for freerange and our tsuba 12". and yes, finally it's out, the c-rock remix of nacho marcos "feeling good".

besides producing and djing, there is of course more in life... so, let's talk about really important things: football. beloved eintracht frankfurt is currently a bit "pausing" and only made 2 points out of the last three matches which is definetly not enough. the best team here playing for the last ten years (roughly) and it seems they do not any better than last season. well, let's wait and see, shame i will miss the next home-game against leverkusen.

if you would like to read some more detailed impressions from my gigs you should check out my diary-section. find my bahrain-diary entry here as well as the infamous afterwork party experience (in german).

charts & stuff

		motorcitysoul charts (06/2008): 01 Solomun & Stimming: Eiszauber (Motorcitysoul Remix) // Dyinamic 02 Laid feat. Kev La: Mercy (Shure-I-Kan Remix) // Physical Grafitti 03 Scott Grooves: Dark Blu // Natural Midi 04 Mike Dunn presents The MD X Spress: Congregation EP // 4th Floor 05 Stimming: Kleine Nachtmusik // Buzzin Fly 06 Ajello: Over The Sky Ep (Reverso 68 Remix) // Deep Freeze 07 Marlon D: Japanese Prayer Dub // Strictly Rhythm 08 Stimming & Einmusik: Madleine // Dyinamic 09 Jim Rivers: Mirage // Simple 10 Lars Behrenroth: Ice On The Sun (Version Remix) // Freerange

		going deeper @ cocoonclub *going deeper* c-rock's monthly clubnight at cocoonclub's micro-floor (every friday). *going deeper* features a broad selection of housemusic, disco, classics and contemporary techno and house productions with guests like chez damier, charles webster, markus enochson, king britt, jef/k, vincenzo and many more. visit: www.cocoonclub.net

		COMING SOON marcello giordani "galaxia / motorcitysoul remix" (mule) OUT NOW: nacho marco "feeling good / c-rock remix (loudeast, es) tiger stripes "beach buggy / motorcitysoul remix" (urban torque) motorcitysoul "phantasy / daniel stefanik mix" (tsuba, uk) motorcitysoul "mango / jimpster & milton jackson remix" (freerange, uk) jussi pekka "stream horse / motorcitysoul remix" (laka) motorcitysoul "space kætzle / jerome sydenham remix" (aus, uk) ...AND WHAT CAME OUT BEFORE "OUT NOW": matt flores "nice day / motorcitysoul remix" (farside) james priestly & dan berkson "chariots / mcs remix" (simple, uk) evil hinko "ratzefummel / motorcitysoul remix" (gedankensport) mix-cd "back up" (infracom) blaze "how deep is your love / motorcitysoul rmx" (infracom) motorcitysoul "kazan [exit cube]" (aus, uk) david k "incoming / motorcitysoul remix" (tsuba) brett johnson "cuckoo " / motorcitysoul remix" (freerange) motorcitysoul "aura" >>> incl. jimpster remix (stir15) fuckaponydelic "switch the lights / motorcitysoul remix" (cocoon) dani casarano "el zapo hablo / motorcitysoul remix" (connaisseur) motorcitysoul "housemusic / state of mind" (lofi stereo) motorcitysoul feat. onejiru "mbali" (stir15) dj ino "981 north / motorcitysoul remix" (house cafe music) check the soundfiles in the productions section. find the complete c-rock discography hosted by the nice guys from discogs.

		mailorder check the latest c-rock, motorcitysoul, dubstar, stir15 and lofi stereo releases at mbeat recordstore. visit: www.mbeat.de