Missing the Club, a Covid-19 ProjectSelected writings, articles, interviews & photography 2017-2020
| Type: | boek |
|---|---|
| Auteur(s): | Kong DJ |
| Uitgever: | eigen beheer |
| Plaats van uitgave: | Brussel |
| Datum van uitgave: | 04.2021 |
| Aantal pagina's: | 248 |
| Raadpleegbaar: | in Muziekcentrum Vlaanderen (op afspraak) |
| Genre(s): | Dance & Electronica, Dance & Electronica |
| Taal: | Assamese, Engels |
Info
"One year has gone since my last DJ gig or dance floor action. What started as a mixtape project a few months into the pandemic last year, now turned into a 248 pages book. While recording the third and final chapter of this mixtape trilogy and intrigued by the backgrounds and protagonists of the records, I began researching and got into the idea of a book version, where stories about the mixtape’s tracks are alternated with a selection of favoritearticles and interviews from my archive as a music journalist - printed on paper to safeguard from digital expiration - plus a few brand new texts and essays. The entirety offers a unique and utterly personal perspective on electronic music, club culture and vinyl record collecting.
Built on 20 years of Djing and almost a decade as a music writer and fully conceived in my own world, this book feels like homecoming. After happily having worked for a number of projects and media, it marks a move towards independent authorship and an expression of my leitmotiv as a music curator and storyteller.
My musical universe and record collection are embedded in the rich history of electronic dance music, from the originators to contemporary sounds, from house to new beat, techno, disco, rave or trance and always with a typical Belgian twist inspired by the early heydays of central European rave culture, when I was still a teenager listening to club recordings on my radio transistor during long weekend nights. While exploring the scene, I try to look from various angles, for example by connecting it with contemporary dance and repetitive classical music in one essay or looking at the lonely deejay streaming online during the pandemic in another.
I have always had a strong appetite to chronicle, to meet people and dive into their adventures and dramas, their best and worst moments and to be allowed and trusted to rightfully portray them with my words. This led to meeting Foo Fei Lin, a walking music encyclopedia who worked in a record store before fleeing her native Indonesia and after having spent ten years on the streets and in a refugee center in Brussels, still collects records. This also got me spending time with Dirk Orens, the producer who conquered the house music scene in 1992 with his club anthem ‘White Line’ but today lives interned in a psychiatric hospital, recovering from a fierce psychosis due to excessive drug abuse, paying a high price for his brief fame. Or talking with Toru S., who is a prolific Japanese house music producer and label owner and single handedly connected New York and Tokyo in the early nineties. Or interviewing Marc Hollander and DJ Morpheus about SSR Records, the Crammed Discs sublabel active between 1988 and the early 2000’s which surprisingly had not been documented on the internet before. And so on...
Last but not least, the book is substantially illustrated with black and white photography by Thomas Sweertvaegher for Brusseleir Digger, with zoomed in record sleeves, with a unique and coloured photographic essay of Crevette Records by Sarah Skoric and with my own pictures."
Trefwoorden: muzieksociologie, collecties & archieven