ENGLISH INTERVIEW MAY 2006

THIS IS AN ENGLISH INTERVIEW WITH ALEX ABOUT THE MIX-CD "LIVE AT ARIA":

Travelling around with his records in his bag Alex Bau has discovered many exciting places over the last years. One of his favourites is Montreal, Canada, and obviously there`s a connection between him and the techno-loving crowd of this city as he returned to Montreal in January 2006 for the third time meanwhile within around 2 years - and it changed everything! What happened to Alex that he declares this night to be one of the best he ever had behind the decks? Question: Alex, you will be coming back to Aria / Montreal on May 19th for the presentation of your Mix-CD "live at Aria / Montreal". How much did they pay you to promote the club via a official DJ-Mix... ;-) A: Actually nothing, and they did not have to think about it even. My gig in January was so impressive that I simply had to archive it and Aria is one of the best clubs I ever played. I was sitting in the plane back to Munich and thought "Man, what happened there? It`s January, how should I top this during the rest of the year?", after a while I was talking to Creator from Ravemontreal who brought me there again and he was also very interested in supporting the CD-project. Question: Don`t you think there are too many Mix-CD`s out on the market? What`s the difference with "live at Aria"? A: It`s authentic. Maybe as authentic as can be! It`s not an Ableton-mixed studiosession, it`s real, pure clublife, a tracklisting that was perfect for the moment, actually a tracklsiting that was also determined by the crowd of course. You can see loads of Mix-CD`s on the market that are just there to promote the Act, but not the music. They jump on the minimal train because it`s fancy, they jump on the hardtech-train because it`s easy to sell or whatever. Of course, this mix is also a good promotion for me, but the main reason was that I wanted to keep these unique moments at Aria on January 27th 2006 as good as possible and also wanted to share them with others. It`s simply dedicated to all the people who have been there and for those who are interested in versatile technomusic. It`s not only the music, for example the whole booklet is full of pictures of that night and my stay in general, it tells a story and the cd is the soundtrack to this story that hopefully shows people how much fun techno still can bring to us. Question: The tracklisting features a very broad mixture of styles, how did that happen? A: Well, as I said, I was totally open for the response of the crowd that night. Before me Dj X-Cube was playing a really fine selection of electrohouse records so I tried to connect my set to his by choosing some more groovy stuff in the beginning. I like this a lot, I always try to build up my sets, not going on 100% from the first record. The crowd desired more, they were waiting for techno, so I turned to techno within my bandwidth of music. Question: The mix is splitted into two parts, why? A: It`s simply a decision by the distributor (ELP Media and Distribution, www.elpmedien.com) as they were afraid of having troubles with selling a expensive double cd-package from a DJ who is far away from names like Chris Liebing or whoever. I am pretty realistic, this CD is not mainly a commercial project, it`s what I am all about: the love for DJing and partying together with a fantastic crowd that is open for different styles of music and the atmosphere of this night showed me that the best nights happen when you combine groovy stuff together with more driving techno. Fuck off purists ;-) Question: There are rumours that you produced a bootleg from Blur`s "Song 2" just a couple of hours before you went to Aria in order play there and it`s reported that this remix was the song of the night? A: I wouldn`t say it was the track of the night, but people seemed to like it, yes. I was shopping in Montreal during the afternoon and I found the blur-cd in a store at St. Catherine`s and I was into doing this remix for more than two years. When I saw the CD I had to buy it and went back straight to the hotel to my laptop to do a first version. Question: So when will part 2 of the CD be out (with the Blur-remix)? A: I don`t know, there are plans to bring it maybe as a free limited mix inside my upcoming album on zenit later this year, I don`t know. We`ll see. Question: Talking about Zenit we have to point out your latest works on different labels, tell us more about it! A: I was pretty busy with producing the first two months of this year, actually after my Montreal gig I did not play any more gigs until end of march. I finished my album for Zenit on which I am really proud of. Some 12" came out on Zenit, Ante Zenit an a really hard slammin release on Chris Liebing`s CLR label. I like this, one week you get a record from me with groovy, acid-like tunes on Zenit, next week you get a really hard technorecord on CLR. Especially for the people in Germany it`s hard to understand that one artist can be flexible with his music, but I give a fuck on that. The music I do comes from inside of me, and one week I am in the mood for easy going stuff, the next week it`s harder techno. The main common thing is always the groove! Question: So what are your plans for the rest of 2006? A: On the production side the main focus lies on my album, coming out on Zenit in fall this year, there will be several 12" before, mainly also on Zenit and some other labels with ELP. We will have Toneman, my own label with Sven Dedek, being reactivated after nearly a year and I also spent some time on starting a new label "Accidential Souns", hopefully the first release will be out soon. On the touring side I am completely back on the schedule and we are already now are planning my albumtour starting September, hopefully I can come back to north america again during the tour. Question: Thank`s Alex and have a lot of fun in north america in May!