What made you decide to play Reworks festival in Thessaloniki? I’ve been to Athens and Thessaloniki before, and I love the crowd and the scene and the festival sounded like a very interesting venue to play. So my manager arranged it, we negotiated, and here we are.
What was the vibe in Athens? The thing that struck me the most last time I was in Athens and Thessaloniki was how many billboards there were, advertising live bouzoukia clubs and singers. Of course each country has its own scene, its own music and the people enjoy their own local singers, I just hope I saw a larger scene when it came to dance music.
Recently you made a film called Berlin Calling which was about a music producer like yourself, staring yourself. Was that film about the city itself? Well, I wanted to do a film about that scene, the dance scene, the people and about this guy who was a music producer, living now, in that city. Usually we see American films about musicians who are dead, or who are set in the past. I wanted to do a film that is set in the present, where anyone who wants to make music can do it with a laptop, whether he is American, British, or German.
So is Berling Calling a film about the techno scene or a film about you? It’s a portrait. A portrait of our time. It’s a feature film. The themes of techno and drugs are only some of the elements that complete the puzzle. It is mostly a universal story than techno and club life. The main character, the music producer, could also have made a different kind of music. He has the problems of many artists: genius – madness, not understanding things, not watching out for himself, and then falling flat on his nose. It’s a story that keeps happening all the time to lots of people.
So why Berlin? First of all I wanted the story to be about and be set in a German city. Berlin always had a very strong scene, it helped dance music to evolve, to flourish, whether it was the crowd, the venues or the artists. Each city has its strong points, and I think Berlin is an ideal city to tell the story. Its really strange talking about the project again, since the movie has been out for awhile and it’s already been released on dvd this month.
So what did you expect from the audience at the Reworks Festival in Thessaloniki? I expected a lot of dancing, but mainly I expected something pure.
