:::::Russia::::::::

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Russia , January 2006

Partyhopping in Stavropol and Moskow, real (!) snow and only some wodka, english!

Djing can be quite boring if your JOB is to play the same records in the same disco for the same people every weekend. Then its only a JOB, maybe one with music but uninspiring and not creative. But if you are lucky and DJing is art for you, then you might have the chance to meet inspiring new people on the partyplanet and have adventurous times in far away clubs.

Stavropol is located in the south of russia, which is quite more relaxed than the north (at least for my experience). The winter is not as beasty , wet and chilly like it is in the north. And the summer is short, but its hot and fun for everybody. Stavropol is not too far away from the Krim wher the famous Kazantip festival takes places once a year, which is just like Ibiza for eastern Europeans. To get to Stavropol you need some good trust in god or whatever, but let me tell you going from Moscow we had to take the shabbiest plane on the shabbiest of the Moscow airports and dont expect a plane which is younger than you and dont even think about nicely decorated whisky lounges with cigar smoking. But its fun and it wouldnt be an adventure without, just as the food from 70s style plastic boxes looks weired but its good. You also learn to respect the russians for their who cares attitude on such trips. Who cares about professional defrost on the aircrafts wings, when it just flys without. And who cares to clear 20 cm of fresh snow from the airfield, when you can just land on it ? We did care but not for long...it seems that it just works without. Well, without, thats the word, because when we landed we did not need to take the hazzle to wait for a bus to get to the airport building. We just walked, and the luggage did not come from a chic airport device, but from a trolly. Everybody gathered around, showing their tags to an old lady who was contolling the work of two strong men, who litterally threw everything into the crowd in the direction of the people who were screaming loudest for their goods. Thank god my records were not checked...but, again, it works.

But this is only one part of the face of russia. The other part is much more chic and this part can be found in the clubs. The impresa in Stavropol, where I played that night is a rich persons venue, just made for the fun of owning a decent niteclub. The atmoshere is just alike, its like a mixture of diferent cultures. There is a restuarnt which is like a spanish marketplace, illuminated with hundreds of little lamps. Next to it there is a thailounge, for a different hangout flavour. And right behind the thaiplace you find an oriental lounge which reminds me much to the tents people use in the deserts. Very cosy with lots of fresh fruit, wodka, waterpipes and nice little russian dumplings and fingerfood. After drinking and eating for awhile the crowd in the wodka lounge goes to the dancefloor, where the public is dancing already. The crowd is a very funky mixture of normal people, fashion people, ravers (who give me little written notes in german...!!!) and freaks. The mood is perfect, they dance and smile at each other and I have the feeling that a bunch of individials becomes one on this dancefloor. The russian resident DJ plays a solid mix of new and old techhouse flavours and he is really nice. But the funniest thing is is name which is the russian word for hog (DJ Kaban). But trust me, he does not DJ like a hog. The clubs PA System is much to big for such a tiny place it could well fit into a place three times as big, but the sound is exellent. It seems to be good for a club when its not only about making or washing money. Not only that I havent seen such good and new technique in clubs for months but also the design toilets are unbelievable clean even at 6 am. ( Dont think that these clubbers dont know whats going on...its just not as obvious, as it is in toilets in Berlin!) After playing a 5 hours DJ set, the crowd is now splitting into the wodkadrinkinking part who disapears and the musiclovers who stay and dance. At some point I give the turntables to my russian collegue DJ supa Z who plays some advanced and groovy distorted beats. Very nice, and though Iam f***up from my long DJ set I have to dance to his music. Later, he tells me, that he does not have a lot of money to invest in vinyl but he buys fresh stuff on the internet and listens to all the tunes on juno before buying. The sound he gets is much fresher than a lot of the tunes i can hear in Berlin lately. Also he is very nice, not like a lot of resident DJs who try to show off how much better they can handle their crowd. These two are so relaxed and nice that we have long conversation about music, and its a shame to leave so fast going back to moscow again.

Back in Moscow, I play the MIO Club the next night. The MIO was voted one of the best clubs on the planet by the DJ Mag recently. Normally its a DJ Cafe, not quite spectecular, but very international and very nice. Next to the cafe/resturant where you can eat all night there is a club, which has windows and doors to the cafe, so that once the tables are gone from the dancefloor its a decent, proper partyplace. Round midnite we start a little party and the place gets more and more crowded. Also the atmosphere starts to become a good saturday night. The DJ booth is tiny but again the technic is perfect. A final scratch system is preinstalled, the mixer is the latest allen and heath xone 92 plus above two CDJ 1000 and -if this wasnt enough- a good monitoring system and a videosystem with plenty of monitors in line all over the place. My two hours set is a lot of fun and the distorted bass synths get deeper and deeper. At some point I think we lost control where top and bottom is , but thats the magic of a saturday night. People start to jump and the livevideo by Trigger from switzerland gives the crowd max. groove. The audible gets visible and we laugh, watching peoples faces turn with the flowers on the screen. Its insane inside this place and its hot so we forget the temperature outside which is minus 20 that night. The DJ playing after me is Michail, whom we met two days before. He is such a musicfreak and it was so much fun to hang out with him and Raya. He plays CDs in his car, which he uses also for DJing. He provides the best soundtrack for crusing through the city. Track after track he changes the CD and after a while we become a perfect team , he is the DJ and I MC acapella scratching while his CD machine is loading. In the club, he starts getting nuts for good, now. He is wearing his girls fur with sunglasses playing funky techy music. The biggest laugh is an old 60s track he plays as a remix with the lyrics: if you gonna ride, dont ride the white horse, and then the next hook goes: you wann be rich , gotta be a bitch, and all the wannabe models on the dancefloor smile and sing along...!!!

Shame on us that even the best partynight ends somehow, but the memories are in our hearts, just like in the hearts of the armenians, russians, and the german students who we met in Moscow that night. Sunday, we have the chance to hang out some more time in Moscow and we go for dinner with two of our friends in an old sovietresturant. I love russian food, again we get beetroot, kraut (isnt that german ??), lovely bread, pickels and fish - of course with the finest wodka. After two glasses of wodka I begin to understand why everybody drinks whisky in the clubs - I start to get terribly drunk, but with the food its ok. I think this food deserves wodka and viceversa, its probably a composition that only works as a whole. In the resturant, the waiters are all called Petrowitsch and on the plates you can see funny comics from the old days of the USSR. One shows a chef with a knife in his hand who is screaming at a guest: there is my soul on your plate, and you complain....! Behind our table there is a little fountain and the legend says, that in the beginning of the resturant there was wodka in this fountain, so everybody would just go and refill the glass, with mighty consequences. Too bad, that today its water again and you have to order the wodka from the Petrowitsch waiters. Thanx for the good time we had :) and we trust in our russian friends and aquaintances that they are proper partypeople !