House music without boundaries is the official line used in the notes for Walker Barnard's latest EP on Serialism. A bass player for funk-rock band Mobius Trip , he then went on to produce the track 1972 alongside Saul Williams for Big Dada Recordings in 1988 before producing records for Mos Def and more from NY's boom-bap era. From there, he explored strains of instrumental house as he proved a mainstay on NYC's club scene in the late nineties, sporting a visually inspiring live electronica and bass show. Always looking for new methods of stretching and distorting the house music template, Mr Barnard uses his penchant for break beats and funk laced toplines to forge his current sounds. Check his excluisve mix as he discusses funk, Berlin's saturation, DJ mishaps and more...
Your last EP had a real slow and low funk vibe to it - do you listen to a lot of funk music outside of house? Or do you think the 2 genres are quite closely linked? The title track Sweatshop Spaceship has that vibe, which was entirely due to the funk roots that Jaime and I share. The other two tracks on the EP express something more distilled.
There are a few touchstone songs that I come back to over the years, but for the most part my relationship with funk music comes from my experience of playing bass. Funk in a way was my entry into playing music. It was always the bass line and it's relationship to rhythm and melody that got me, the foundation of the musical house. Genre wise, for me funk is part of the same dance music lineage and conversation as house music. And as a form it was part of the musical/cultural soup that gave birth to disco and then house. I imagine that as long as there have been humans doing their thing on the planet we have had popular forms of dance music like funk. People dance, always have, always will.
The Berlin scene - although still bordering on underground - is literally full of producers and DJs. Ho tough is it these days to be noticed amongst all the many producers/Djs in the city? There are so many layers of the Berlin scene, and a lot of of it is very much underground in the sense that it's not overly motivated by money. For the most part it's just people doing what they do because they love it and want to sustain and grow from there.
But it is also a small town in a way, and over time people's stories start to intertwine. And yes, Berlin is chock full of DJs and producers, with more coming everyday it seems. I actually think this creates an incredibly evolutionary context to create music in. I have so many peers here that inspire me to keep doing the hard work of being in a room alone for hours making and refining music. When I first came here I spent a lot of time listening, hanging out, and soaking in the fabric of the city and all the musical threads. Over time I met people who I related to on a deep level and got with musically. Conversations started, relationships grew, and now I look back after five years and feel like a part of this place and it's story. It's really how a DJ or producer finds themselves here that distinguishes them over time in Berlin.
Out of the clubs you play on a regular basis, which always proves to be your favourite? Without a doubt over the last year it has been Club Der Visionaere. The place is so many things at different times. A dojo, a cruise ship, a temple, a living room. Some times full of people you don't know, and then other times you find yourself surrounded by the deepest of friends. One of the clubs in the world that through merely existing has crafted aspects of the music and culture. When I play there I feel like I'm taking part in a musical conversation that has been handed off from one DJ to the next for over the years. Something about playing in that booth just feels so right.
Give us a funny story about a time hen you DJ'd that wasn't so great...Ha.. So many to choose from. It's not so funny, but this one came to mind the other night. It was the first gig I played in Berlin during the summer of '08 . My partner Catherine (who is also a DJ and Producer, and goes by Sylvie Fôret) and I first came to Berlin five years ago this last summer.
Our friend Mikael Stavoestrand had gotten us the gig. It was at a three day swedish mid summer festival on an abandoned red army base on the eastern outskirts of Berlin. We ended up going on the Friday night of the festival when Mikael played, and then hooked up later that night with Patrik Skoog (Agaric) and Ben Parris. At some point late that night Mikael decided to get back to Berlin and make his gig the next day at Bar 25. We were still in the swirl of the moment, and so our little crew rolled through the night and day. And finally after many adventures we arrived to find the room empty. We go up to the DJ booth and there is this german guy playing before us.. Red Robin, hmm, ok.. Somehow I had a good feeling about him. So we set up and played, and in the end it was just our little crew in the room getting down. After playing we stayed at the festival for another day and crawled back to Berlin and sleep. I recalled all this just the other night when I played a live set on the Globus floor at Tresor with Agaric (Patrik Skoog) and then stopped in at Watergate to catch my friends Thugfucker playing a morning set on the water floor. Red Robin also had dropped by on his way to the airport and Rio De Janeiro. I thought of all the years and experiences with Patrik and Robin in between, many of which took place at Bar 25. So many stories, and in the end sometimes how good a night is plays out over the course of many years.
What's the focus or flavour of your exclusive mix for Pulse? I always find my self between genres, looking for that moment of suspension. It's the synthesis that gets me going. This mix is a snapshot of my process over the last month. Some tracks are from friends, others are recent tracks I've been playing, and two are unreleased gems. On the deeper side of the house conversation, but with some train track and sweet chaos. For the long nights, and days that stretch in to the diagonal.
Give us your predictions for 2013 and here you think the dance music world shall be heading over the next 12 months...
The mainstreaming of dance music will continue, with the obvious watering down that comes with so many new people entering in to the conversation without any previous context. There will be ugly commercial expressions of this, and then surprisingly pure spontaneous and beautiful ones as well. Dance music has become a global culture and language. The people that have been in it for years just have to deal with it. It's evolution. The musical form, instruments, and culture are maturing. It took quite a while for the electric guitar and rock and roll to shape society if you look back at the story. The business of music has changed and will continue to do so. Micro economies built around clouds of personal choice will evolve. The people that are well positioned after years inside the experience will have the opportunity to shape the emerging culture and music. I see the party/dancers/dance floor, and the music/dj/producer as two sides of the same coin. Both have to be cultivated to prosper. We have been doing this dance music thing in one form or another from the beginning of being human, and I suspect that it was one of the engines of our evolution. And so I imagine we will carry on.
If there's one thing you could change about electronic music in 2013, what would it be? I would like to see and hear more people taking chances and really playing music.
Finally, what do you have coming up in the future in terms of mixes and releases? January and February are all about finishing two of my own Eps, and also two collaborations, one with Cesare Marchese, and another with Mikey Tello (Pillowtalk), and Alland Byallo. I have a new live set in the works, and a live band project, both of which I will play out in the spring and summer. And sometime very soon I'm going to go through all the days and days of recordings from this last year at C.D.V. and find some of the gems to share.
Tracklisting
1- Jay Haze & ESB - Founded in You
2- Seetheroad - Starpatch
3- Solid Gold Playaz - Next Faze Of The Game
4- Mass Digital - 2 Heart 2 Souls
5- DJ Le Roi - All Cats Are Grey
6- Taron Trekka - Metro Nature
7- Felipe Venegas & Hanfry Martinez
8- Cesar Marveille & Ryan Crosson - Again & Again feat. Greg Paulus
9- Hanfry Martinez - Disco 90
10- Technasia - Michigan Ride
11- Cab Drivers - Elwico
12-East End Dubs - Love Is Always
13- Fries & Bridges - Undermoves
14- Taron Trekka - Pasterkopp
15- Freaks - Dance & Disorder (Mark Farina's Chip Dub)
16- Victor Eich - Downtown
17- Vlad Malinovskiy - Kick Ya
18- Rhadow - Hype! (Re-UP Remix)
19- Taron Trekka - Metro Nature
20- Chris Carrier - Bongo Thunder
21- Seetheroad - Starpatch (reprise)
22- Fries & Bridges - Headspin
23- Agaric & Mikael Stavöstrand - Everytime
24- Seetheroad - The Business