#003: intergalactic gary

Please tell us a bit about your background and how you came in contact with electronic music?

The first time I came into contact with electronic music was in the summer of 1980.

A friend from school told me that he was running a small pirate radio station together with a friend of his.They went out every weekend to a discotheque called “Bar Dancing de Marathon” and he invited me to come along.The following weekend we were the first visitors at “de Marathon”, and a whole new world opened up for me.The music played by one of the resident DJ’s (Erik Benjamin or Rens) was something I’d never heard before and it blew me away totally . It was so different from the top 40 stuff I was listening to before on the radio.They started on a slow pace with some soulful U.S. disco and at 10 o ’clock they dropped the opening tune (Eta Misa Est by Martin Circus, which was a standard number for opening the dance). Lots of stuff that was played that night became disco classics: Kano, Azoto, Easy Going, Vivien Vee, Peter Jaques Band, David Zed, Revanche, ect.

From then on I started to listen to the local pirate radio stations as often as I could: Penelope Radio, Radio Eldorado, City Radio and some of the more unknown smaller pirate radios. The following week I bought Harlow’s Take Off -lp, my first disco record, at one of the import record shops in The Hague, Disco Boutique 76. Every weekend I went out to “de Marathon” to hear the latest import records, and if I had saved up enough money I would go to one of the local import shops.

From summer of 1980 till 1984 I would spend every friday night, saturday night and sunday afternoon in “de Marathon”. Music-wise it was the most interesting time of my life, the sounds were changing all the time. 1982 the first imported records from Italy hit the shops in Hague. (Gary Low, ’Lectric Workers, Gay Cat Park, ect.)  and by the autumn of ’82 those imports were becoming more and more dominant part of the local scene. That time I was totally into Italo Disco.

1984 I got fed up with the whole disco scene. Most of the people were too narrow-minded and square for my taste, so I moved on to the more alternative clubs. By the end of 1986 I stopped buying Italo records because it was going into a direction I didn’t like so much. Still there was some amazing stuff coming out. My little brother would buy tapes from Radio Stad Den Haag and I’Venti D’azzurro, and I listened to those every week when I visited my dad, so I was updated. I took a break from music for about two years, but in 1988 House Music broke loose.

Although not having a real club scene, The Hague has proved to be a furtile ground for underground electronic music, spawning some of the most renowned squat parties, labels, artists and offcourse the Intergalactic FM streamradio station (CBS). Could you explain how this scene came to be and how it developed to what it is today?

For me the whole underground scene in The Hague started somewhere around 1993. I was a resident DJ at a club called the LA DS (first club in The Hague were they played house Music all night long). Every saturday I visited Rhythm Import record shop to get the latest records for sunday night’s party. Then I heard about a new shop called Hot Mix. From then on I visited Hot Mix every friday afternoon after work. Hot Mix was so much more interesting. They would sell stuff that other shops would never sell because they thought it was ”weirdo” music.

The whole  atmosphere at Hotmix was super relaxed, not that arrogant commercial asshole attitude that I had to deal with in shops like Rhythm Import. Ferenc (I-F) and the other guys that worked there were actually interested in your taste and the music they were selling. Hot Mix became a hang out for me, a place where I could share my passion for music and chill out. A lot of the local freaks met each other there for the first time. I guess some interesting connections were made back then. At some point Ferenc told me that he had started his own record label, and that he was also producing his own tracks. He asked me if I had any produtions that might be interesting for one of his labels. I had just started making my first tracks and not too long after that my first record got released on the Top Secret label. One of the tracks that I had made contained a sample from Gaucho’s Dance Forever, and when Ferenc heard that track, he got really excited. We were both italo freaks, so we had this special connection.

Those were very inspiring times: the first Electronome release came out and Bunker records started. Lots of things were happening, labels were started and lots of music was being released. At some point I was asked to play in “De Blauwe Aanslag”, a famous squat place in The Hague. The place was totally of the hook. A bunker-like basement with stroboscopes, lots of people on dope and banging acid and techno music. This was a great venue for me, as I could play all that acid and techno stuff that I was buying. In other clubs it would’ve been too weird. At one of the Acid Planet parties Guy Taveres played Panta Rhei by Unit Moebius and people were covering their ears, because of the high frequencies coming from the SH-101.Guy was really getting off because of that! 🙂

1996 was a turning point. The music was at a dead end and Hot Mix closed down, leaving a void to the scene. I gave up my residency in La DS, because I was fed up with the narrow minded attitude of the people. Things got quiet for a while. Then Serge opened up Clone records in Rotterdam.

I met Ferenc again and he had just released his hit “Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass.” He asked me, if I wanted to make a cover version of  Easy Going’s Fear with him. At first we really struggled to get anything done. I guess we were not really ready at that time. About one year later we tried again, but ended up with our first track Lift Off instead. We continued making tracks as The Parallax Corporation for the next  five years and in the meanwhile more people were getting inspired in one way or the other and started doing their thing.

You’ve been around for quite a while (you devoted almost your whole life to collecting vinyl) and saw genres and trends come and go. How do you see the future of electronic music and djíng, especially with developments as the digital format, traktor etc?

New technology has its good sides (Traktor for example). You don’t have to drag your record box around, or wait for your records at the airport. You can play unreleased tracks and edits and so on. I’m sure that stuff will become the standard in the future and will be improved more and more. On the other hand, there will always be people who play and collect vinyl.  For me nothing will ever replace the feeling of playing vinyl.

Your podcast includes some pretty obscure stuff, could you please tell us something about your choice of records and how your collection (which is nothing short of legendary) was build over the years? Your mixes always contain a lot of vintage material, are there also new and upcoming producers you think we should keep an eye out for?

In this mix the tracklist is quite random. I was trying to create  a certain vibe and to keep it interesting by using stuff that wasn’t so obvious. This doesn’t mean that it all has to be super obscure or rare. I’ve been a collector for 30 years now and I bought lots of that stuff when it actually came out. But through IFM and CBS I met people who became my friends, and from them I’ve learned that I only knew a very small percentage of electronic music in the end.

Some producers that have impressed me lately:

Newworldaquarium, James Cotton, D’Marc Cantu, Morphosis, Jamal Moss, Xeno and Oaklander, Tim Toh, Ratsnake, Roberto Ausser, Mark du Mosch. I hope to hear from them in the future as well.

It has been a while since we’ve heard from you in terms of your own productions, are you still working in the studio and can we expect more music from you in the future? Any other future plans?

I haven’t been working in the studio since Parallax Corporation. I’ve rebuild my studio recently and have some problems with my machines and midi that I have to solve first. The plan is to get into the studio again and hopefully get something done

.

The first time I came into contact with electronic music was in the summer of 1980. A friend from school told me that he was running a small pirate radio station together with a friend of his.They went out every weekend to a discotheque called “Bar Dancing de Marathon” and he invited me to come along. The following weekend we were the first visitors at “de Marathon”, and a whole new world opened up for me.The music played by one of the resident DJ’s (Erik Benjamin or Rens) was something I’d never heard before and it blew me away totally . It was so different from the top 40 stuff I was listening to before on the radio.They started on a slow pace with some soulful U.S. disco and at 10 o ’clock they dropped the opening tune (Eta Misa Est by Martin Circus, which was a standard number for opening the dance). Lots of stuff that was played that night became disco classics: Kano, Azoto, Easy Going, Vivien Vee, Peter Jaques Band, David Zed, Revanche, ect.

From then on I started to listen to the local pirate radio stations as often as I could: Penelope Radio, Radio Eldorado, City Radio and some of the more unknown smaller pirate radios. The following week I bought Harlow’s Take Off -lp, my first disco record, at one of the import record shops in The Hague, Disco Boutique 76. Every weekend I went out to “de Marathon” to hear the latest import records, and if I had saved up enough money I would go to one of the local import shops.

From summer of 1980 till 1984 I would spend every friday night, saturday night and sunday afternoon in “de Marathon”. Music-wise it was the most interesting time of my life, the sounds were changing all the time. 1982 the first imported records from Italy hit the shops in Hague. (Gary Low, ’Lectric Workers, Gay Cat Park, ect.)  and by the autumn of ’82 those imports were becoming more and more dominant part of the local scene. That time I was totally into Italo Disco.

1984 I got fed up with the whole disco scene. Most of the people were too narrow-minded and square for my taste, so I moved on to the more alternative clubs. By the end of 1986 I stopped buying Italo records because it was going into a direction I didn’t like so much. Still there was some amazing stuff coming out. My little brother would buy tapes from Radio Stad Den Haag and I’Venti D’azzurro, and I listened to those every week when I visited my dad, so I was updated. I took a break from music for about two years, but in 1988 House Music broke loose.

Although not having a real club scene, The Hague has proved to be a furtile ground for underground electronic music, spawning some of the most renowned squat parties, labels, artists and offcourse the Intergalactic FM streamradio station (CBS). Could you explain how this scene came to be and how it developed to what it is today?

For me the whole underground scene in The Hague started somewhere around 1993. I was a resident DJ at a club called the LA DS (first club in The Hague were they played house Music all night long). Every saturday I visited Rhythm Import record shop to get the latest records for sunday night’s party. Then I heard about a new shop called Hot Mix. From then on I visited Hot Mix every friday afternoon after work. Hot Mix was so much more interesting. They would sell stuff that other shops would never sell because they thought it was ”weirdo” music.

The whole  atmosphere at Hotmix was super relaxed, not that arrogant commercial asshole attitude that I had to deal with in shops like Rhythm Import. Ferenc (I-F) and the other guys that worked there were actually interested in your taste and the music they were selling. Hot Mix became a hang out for me, a place where I could share my passion for music and chill out. A lot of the local freaks met each other there for the first time. I guess some interesting connections were made back then. At some point Ferenc told me that he had started his own record label, and that he was also producing his own tracks. He asked me if I had any produtions that might be interesting for one of his labels. I had just started making my first tracks and not too long after that my first record got released on the Top Secret label. One of the tracks that I had made contained a sample from Gaucho’s Dance Forever, and when Ferenc heard that track, he got really excited. We were both italo freaks, so we had this special connection.

Those were very inspiring times: the first Electronome release came out and Bunker records started. Lots of things were happening, labels were started and lots of music was being released. At some point I was asked to play in “De Blauwe Aanslag”, a famous squat place in The Hague. The place was totally of the hook. A bunker-like basement with stroboscopes, lots of people on dope and banging acid and techno music. This was a great venue for me, as I could play all that acid and techno stuff that I was buying. In other clubs it would’ve been too weird. At one of the Acid Planet parties Guy Taveres played Panta Rhei by Unit Moebius and people were covering their ears, because of the high frequencies coming from the SH-101.Guy was really getting off because of that! 🙂

1996 was a turning point. The music was at a dead end and Hot Mix closed down, leaving a void to the scene. I gave up my residency in La DS, because I was fed up with the narrow minded attitude of the people. Things got quiet for a while. Then Serge opened up Clone records in Rotterdam. I met Ferenc again and he had just released his hit “Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass.” He asked me, if I wanted to make a cover version of  Easy Going’s Fear with him. At first we really struggled to get anything done. I guess we were not really ready at that time. About one year later we tried again, but ended up with our first track Lift Off instead. We continued making tracks as The Parallax Corporation for the next  five years and in the meanwhile more people were getting inspired in one way or the other and started doing their thing.

You’ve been around for quite a while (you devoted almost your whole life to collecting vinyl) and saw genres and trends come and go. How do you see the future of electronic music and djíng, especially with developments as the digital format, traktor etc?

New technology has its good sides (Traktor for example). You don’t have to drag your record box around, or wait for your records at the airport. You can play unreleased tracks and edits and so on. I’m sure that stuff will become the standard in the future and will be improved more and more. On the other hand, there will always be people who play and collect vinyl.  For me nothing will ever replace the feeling of playing vinyl.

Your podcast includes some pretty obscure stuff, could you please tell us something about your choice of records and how your collection (which is nothing short of legendary) was build over the years? Your mixes always contain a lot of vintage material, are there also new and upcoming producers you think we should keep an eye out for?

In this mix the tracklist is quite random. I was trying to create  a certain vibe and to keep it interesting by using stuff that wasn’t so obvious. This doesn’t mean that it all has to be super obscure or rare. I’ve been a collector for 30 years now and I bought lots of that stuff when it actually came out. But through IFM and CBS I met people who became my friends, and from them I’ve learned that I only knew a very small percentage of electronic music in the end. Some producers that have impressed me lately: Newworldaquarium, James Cotton, D’Marc Cantu, Morphosis, Jamal Moss, Xeno and Oaklander, Tim Toh, Ratsnake, Roberto Ausser, Mark du Mosch. I hope to hear from them in the future as well.

It has been a while since we’ve heard from you in terms of your own productions, are you still working in the studio and can we expect more music from you in the future? Any other future plans?

I haven’t been working in the studio since Parallax Corporation. I’ve rebuild my studio recently and have some problems with my machines and midi that I have to solve first. The plan is to get into the studio again and hopefully get something done.