Argenis Brito
Born in Venezuela, Argenis Brito is one of South America’s most diverse and experienced musicians and anything but your average live set. His long history in the music business has culminated in him becoming an international touring artist of solid underground repute in the last 10 years, taking him to every major clubbing destination across the globe, as well as cementing his position as an in-demand producer, proven by a multitude of releases on labels like Crosstown Rebels, Cadenza, Dame Music, Mobilee, Tuning Spork and Contexterrior amongst many others. A true musician, setting him aside from the crowd, Argenis continues to flourish as a curator and entertainer of boundary pushing electronic sounds.
A resident in Berlin since 2002, after stints in New York and Santiago de Chile during the 90s, he has proven to be a core part of the ever growing scene there, finding time to play at all the major clubs in between his international tours to South America, the United States, Japan or closer to home across Europe. Thanks to the development of his live act, with performance typified by often unreleased music unique to each gig, and crossing a spectrum of influence from latin music to dub, house and techno, he has been able to ensure that his performance avoids the traps of a monotonous or repetitive sound.
The breakthrough moment in Argenis’ transition from past musical experiences into his current love with electronic experimentalism came in 2006 with his double EP ‘Micro Mundo’ on Cadenza; elevating him to many high profile gigs across the world, including several Circoloco events. Since then, following extensive studio work as producer, vocalist, collaborator, remixer or a combination of everything on the most highly sought imprints around, including most recently in 2011, Crosstown Rebels and Dame Music.
2012 sees him on the cusp of the most productive period of his career, with a new Mambotur album set for release together with Pier Bucci in spring, a new Los Refrescos album scheduled with Dandy Jack, a further solo album and countless collaborations, such as with Dinky, Mike Shannon, David Delgado and also Ricardo Villalobos with whom he has been making some really interesting sounds such as the Peculiar track released earlier in 2011 on Sei Es Drum. This is all preceded with a fresh South American tour at the start of 2012, taking Argenis back to his homeland and the source of his inspiration for his particular sound.
Argenis was instrumental in his work with Señor Coconut, Tobias Freund and Jorge Gonzalez, where he pioneered the use of Latin American sounds and rhythms in the context of contemporary dance music. The significance of this came from the early 2000s when eventually Argenis, Pier Bucci, and also Luciano, perfected this style before making it the defining sound of underground by the end of the decade.
PAST EVENTS
Dj Tennis
DJ Tennis born in the 70’s and raised between New Jersey, Sicily and Parma in a family who paid just a passing attention to music. No relatives played any musical instruments, nor were there any around the home – music was never given any special amount of love in the Romano household. But despite this, and perhaps as a direct result of this, Romano’s creative and artistic attitude has always centred around music: singing, creating and collecting weird and noisy musical instruments at every turn.
In 1988 before embarking on computer science studies he was already playing and singing in college bands and had an indie rock radio show on a local radio station in Palermo.
Recording with bands, organising events and DJing at the local tennis club where he used to play semi-professionally (his DJ moniker comes from his passion for the sport) became his way to support the costs of his studies, though when he graduated he never imagined he would turn that hobby into his fully-fledged career. Whilst starting out as a DJ he began focusing on promoting new underground music in his country, founding and developing some of the most important Italian underground musical events such as the Elita festival in Milan and the Dissonanze festival in Rome – at the same time creating forward-thinking new promotional concepts around the Italian clubbing scene.
In the early 90s Romano also started producing music for theatre, movie soundtracks and TV commercials, his production skills always taking inspiration from the psychedelic, dark and melancholic sounds of the 60’s, thru to early 2000’s IDM. The range of influences paint a picture of his musical worldview: The Beach Boys, The Who, Talk Talk, Ultravox, XTC, Fugazi, June of 44, Suicide, Radiohead, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada and Plastikman – into every musical project he poured elements, sounds & feelings from all of these artists and many more.
In 2010, after growing tired of the the more overtly generic output of the contemporary scene he decided to collect all of his musical works and, along with Thugfucker’s Greg Oreck, started a new techno and pop label called Life and Death. The name of the label has a specific meaning, inspired by the socratic method of the maieutic process to turn ‘dead’ elements into a new life, and referring to the hypnotic power of music used in the mesmeric processes for brain therapy. Life And Death was alive.
Romano bases himself in Berlin where he also shares the label experience and a studio with the innovative deep electronic duo Tale of Us, whilst he working hard to create a crew of young and inspired musicians like Clockwork and Esperanza, amongst others. On top of all of this he still maintains his main job is still being a Promoter and a Booking agent in 2012. He may go by the name Tennis but he continues to be a hugely talented all-rounder.
Tale Of Us
Tale Of Us are Berlin-based DJ and production partnership Karm and Matteo who are currently re-writing the rulebook for deeply moving, emotional electronic music. Together they share a sonic vision that pulls together elements of house and techno with influences from pop, nu-disco and even rock music. While all of their productions are instantly recognizable as Tale Of Us, these range from straight-up dance floor jams to low-slung ambient tracks and more abstract compositions. While both originally hail from North America, Karm was born in Toronto and Matteo in New York, they moved to Italy as children, which is where they met and formed the close working bond that they now share.
PAST EVENTS
