Booka Shade
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Booka Shade

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“We recorded a lot of analogue stuff and all the acoustic instruments so the whole album will have a little bit more of, well not an acoustic feel, but of a live feel so to speak. It’s still very electronic and quite dancey but I think sonically it will have a little bit more depth because of all of these instruments and because of the noise that they make. It’s straight from the laptop and everything ran through machines which add noise so we’re quite happy with it. That’s why it takes so long nowadays for us make albums because we like to live with the songs for quite a while and then we think alright, if they don’t bore us now after almost two years then okay’.”

Kammermeier says many of the synthesisers on their forthcoming fifth album were played by hand which is where the ‘live feel’ comes into play. “I hope that you will hear – and that’s always the difficult thing now – on the fifth album, how do you progress and find something new for yourself and not repeat yourself but still give the audience or the listener the feel that he/she listens to Booka Shade? Of course, there are surprises but not complete surprises. I have a good feeling.”

The lads have collaborated with vocalist Fritz Helder from Toronto group Azari & III and German DJ and producer Fritz Kalkbrenner. “For a minute we thought we should call the album ‘Fritz’, Kammermeier jokes. “We have a couple of other things like Andy Cato from Groove Armada; there are little things here and there. It all feels a little bit more musical.”

Having recently released two exclusive tracks (Honeyslave and Tomorrow Belongs To Us) for the All Gone Ibiza compilation alongside Pete Tong, Kammermeier says he and Merziger are still deciding on whether either of the tracks will make an appearance on their fifth album. “We don’t know yet,” he says. “At first we thought not and now we have had so much good feedback, initially it wasn’t part of the idea because we wanted to do something completely new but now that we’ve got all this positive feedback and because we have to still finish the track-listing, probably one of the songs will make it on there.”

Regardless of whether the tracks make it onto the record, being involved with the compilation was a privilege and honour for the duo and bought them a rare opportunity to work with Steve Aoki, something they’d both wanted to do for a while. “We felt very privileged because Pete Tong is a great name in Europe and he has been a great supporter of Booka Shade but also of the Get Physical label when we first started it so to be invited to do the compilation was a great honour,” he says.

“Steve Aoki came along, who always wanted to do a single with us because he’s a great man, he likes the music that we do. We already met last year on a five week tour of the U.S and he always talked to us and said ‘I want to do a single with you guys’ and we never knew how to do it with him really, we couldn’t really imagine how these worlds should come together but then there were these two songs on the Pete Tong compilation and we said ‘this could be a good idea, why don’t we mix universes up and just do this’ and many people were quite surprised by this when they heard about this collaboration. But that’s great for us, we always like to surprise people and do things a little bit differently.”

It is these little surprises and challenges which keep the duo happy and, having handed over their A&R responsibilities to DJ T and M.A.N.D.Y for their Get Physical label which they started back in 2002, they’re feeling even more happy about life. “The thing that we loved most about the record label was when we first started it and we could produce the music for the label, we basically did the first 13-14 records for the label itself which was DJ T or Booka Shade or M.A.N.D.Y… the more successful the label became and the more the individual characters did their own stuff and everybody was on tour, the more distracted everything became and it just got to the point where we said ‘this isn’t really why we started the label’, there’s so much politics involved and so much business.

“We are musicians and producers basically so we care most about the music and not so much about the A&R stuff. Working at a record label was never my dream; my dream was always to stand on the stage and present my own music and be very proud of it.”

BY ANNABEL MACLEAN

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