The following months we will introduce all the members of the Triphouse Rotterdam crew with a series of interviews. First up was Taylan Alan and now it’s turn for the silent force behind the Grooveline stream channel, Jose Saiote to introduce himself. The interview was held by Glenn Wever.
PLEASE CAN YOU INTRODUCE YOURSELF, TELL US WHERE
YOU ARE FROM AND WHAT YOU’RE CURRENTLY WORKING ON?
Hello, I’m Jose, I was born in Sintra, Portugal, a magic sea land next to Lisbon, Currently I run a corporate streaming company broadcasting different types of media, one of the most known project is Grooveline.
The beautiful city of Lisbon, Portugal
CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT PORTUGAL, AND THE SCENE YOU WERE INVOLVED IN OVER THERE?
Portugal is a fantastic place to chill, to be laying in the beach till dusk, to party-on for days, and to eat sardines. Scene starts in Portugal around 89, 90, in small clubs in Lisbon and its suburbs, than a big rave hype would come later in 93. There were not that many DJS in the scene back then, maybe one of most well known DJ still working is DJ Vibe, as well as Rui da Silva (Doctor J back in the time) both performing as “USL” Underground Sound of Lisbon”
My father was a DJ back in the 80s, he use to dress like a woman and play in Disco Club, me my mother and brother use to go sometimes and make fun and play jokes, I think thats one big reason that I got interested in this field of activities. I was evolved into the new Dance music scene around 93 experiencing my first raves and moves, my life was starting to be different focusing on DeeJaying, collecting music, dressing different, and buying equipment.
I use to be part of a group of friends where we were all DJS and artists known as Art’ n’Dance Culture. Every day we were spending our time during the week playing vinyl and doing drugs, at the weekends we always had gigs to perform. We also use to produce some events, some of us were in the theatre and we were exposing a mix of theatrical arts performance with DJing in it.
After a few years we were only 2 left from the group performing as a DJ, and later in 1998 I was left alone 🙁 but nevertheless, because I had huge boost on my DJ career during the upcoming 4 years, some of my experience received during the years back made me playing good, solid and everywhere, being resident in different venues and bars, life was a bit intense, I was playing regularly during the weekends as well at week days.
CAN YOU TELL US HOW THE ‘GROOVELINE’ PROJECT DEVELOPED?
Grooveline was a records shop, born in 2001 when I decided to quit my audio studies for the chance of running a records shop in the area of Chiado in Lisbon, I was DJ resident in a bar “Amo.te Meco” which the owner is a famous TV presenter, and he was going to open another restaurant in a fancy shopping center owned by Vodafone, in that same shopping center they were looking for someone to run a records shop and I was interested in doing it.
The broadcasting DJ concept, starts with a small studio inside the same shopping center which I could use for variety activities, one of my goals was to re-do DJ Live Video streams that was made before by a big company in San Francisco, Groovetech, it was also the base to decide a line for the record store name.
“Groovetech was one of the most inspirational websites that ever existed in my life, suddenly disappear early in the year 2001, and none really said why, it was the greatest internet radio ever existed, the records store sucked but the radio.. At those years, streaming audio, video, awesome international Djs and different genres and channels, different studios in London, Seattle, you could see the dj, you could chat with the DJ, they could switch the camera…Groovetech was the live peek of 97-99. Groovetech disappears without trace in 2001.”
Classic Grooveline recording from 2003
But based on the concept of Groovetech, live interactive chat stream with audio and Video I decided to do the same to pull costumers and Djs into the Records shop. The internet and technology was a little bit more advanced than the Groovetech years and I had now ways to stream video and audio around 96kbits/s which made my broadcast interesting. That’s how Grooveline developed, in my backups I have an amount of 500 videos of each 2h min from all performances.
WHEN, AND FOR WHAT PURPOSE DID YOU DECIDE TO LEAVE YOUR HOME COUNTRY?
I use to come regularly to the Netherlands with my parents since I was six, we have Dutch friends living here. I got used quickly to the Netherlands way and used to travel back and forth often here as well as London to buy new vinyl. In 2006, I left my records shop due to an intense crisis period for vinyl sales, digital was gaining room. It was pity loosing the broadcasting studio. The records shop I was actually happy that I got rid of it. I decided to take my audio studies further, and came to the Netherlands for that purpose.
ABOUT YOUR TIME AT VARIOUS EDUCATIONS: WHAT DID YOU STUDY AND IN WHAT WAY DOES YOUR GAINED KNOWLEDGE SUPPORT YOUR CURRENT (OR FUTURE) ACTIVITIES?
I did different sorts of sound educations, Audio engineering, Sonology and Sound Design developing my knowledge towards programming and synthesis. I worked for Dutch national movies like Nothing Personal, Schemer, De laatste reis van meneer van Leeuwen and a few more novels and short films. My biggest interest is doing interactive media projects and installations related to sound and image, building instruments, proving thesis, researching, analyzing. And that’s what I tend do in the future, hopefully having more room time than I have now to take ideas further.
Soundtrack for the movie Schemer
YOU ALSO HAVE YOUR OWN MUSIC PROJECT: ‘ZDB’. HOW IS THAT WORKING OUT FOR YOU?
Honestly since I don’t DJ or neither produce much these days, this project is close. It use to be my DJ name since my 14, and during the last 12 years I produced tracks with that same name, most of the music is techno, deep and dub.
Than I have 2 other projects completely different from each other, with my own name I have a project which compositions and sounds are hard for most of people to listen till the end, this was due to the intense learning curve I had in the conservatory, which change allot of my perception towards Serialism and musique concrete genres.
The other project is a contradiction of this last one, Migration is way based on feeling instead of mental perception listening, with Migration I produce the music with hardware, cinematic music inspired by the 80s…
HOW DID YOU BECOME CONNECTED WITH TRIPHOUSE ROTTERDAM?
I have met the two fellows Steven and Khalil when I came to the Netherlands in 2006 , they were making a party at Worm in which I use to work some nights, we changed allot of info listen my music on my ipod and discussed about music, later on, I’ve noticed Steven was living at my front in the same street, and later saw that he was heading Triphouse in a good level and that made me realize we could work together, we had a meeting years later and since then we work together in Triphouse.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN MOTIVES THAT KEEP YOU ACTIVE IN THE MUSIC SCENE?
Everything around me doesn’t let me escape this activity. …my friends, …….. The music I listen, …… my room, ….and even my family! It’s all my devotion towards art and sound is one big piece of it.
IF YOU WERE TO PREDICT THE FUTURE, HOW DO YOU THINK MUSIC, SOUND AND OUR EXPERIENCE OF IT WILL EVOLVE? DO YOU NOTICE ANY SHIFTS GOING ON IN PEOPLE’S APPRECIATION FOR DIFFERENT KINDS OF MUSICAL GENRES? AND LASTLY, HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY A PART IN THAT?
It is quite difficult for me to predict both music or sound in the future, what see is that in the music fashion world the industry tends to make an unpredictable curve every 7 years, this of course depends on generation to generation creativity, it’s hard to tell what is going to be the next baby inspirations.. In sound quality we already reach a very high state, you want to go back a little and be more anal, there are many fancy simulations and idiot concepts out there trying to implement their crap. In peoples appreciation, yes completely, especially now that everything is over consumed I start to notice people like more what I like that makes me calmer.
Sound itself is a complex waveform of particles of air, music you call the composition of those particles. I guess that instead of only learning music from feeling or from moving ass, we should develop more our ears with attentive listening without body distractions towards sound, of course technically this requires a learning curve and patience, a big effort to listen the way that sound spreads itself developing more air particles till it reach and goes through our ears, making us judging by our emotions and feeling rather than by our common sense.
http://soundcloud.com/josesaiote
http://soundcloud.com/migrationpop
http://soundcloud.com/zdb