Interview Booka Shade

Can you introduce yourselves to us?

- I’m Walter - I’m Arnold We are Booka Shade and we play electronic music. We just came off stage at the Lucerna Music Hall here in Prague.

There was a great atmosphere from the crowd. Is there a special reason you enjoy playing in the Czech Republic?

One of the first gigs we did was in Prague. So from the early 2005/6 we started to play here at some really great festivals. We played at The Roxy in Prague and other big venues, we love the drive down and the train back up to Germany.

What’s your part in Century of Sound?

A: Ben Osborne was actually fundamental in our decision to take part. We’ve known him for about 15 years now. We love the opportunity to perform and transmit our mission to people everywhere in the world and that is ‘love’. We want people to find faith in the music. Our generation feels European, more-so than any single country.

W: We love electronic music. We started out with synthesisers in the early 80’s, but it really started in the early 70’s. And it was the last music revolution we had.

Groove Armada kicked off the Century of Sound Festival and you’ve finished it. Will we see more of you?

If Ben asks, absolutely, we are very up for being a part of future projects. He’s always got some exciting and artsy ideas that we love to do. It’s not all about the banging techno, we also enjoy electronica as well.

Were the visuals for this gig your idea?

Yes, we’ve always loved the combination of cinema and movies and soundtrack, so we’ve always had videos running with our music. We always love to combine the music with a strong visual element.

You just released a new album, tell us a bit about it?

The album is called Cut the Strings, it’s a new start for us with electronic music as we’ve been doing it for a very long time. A couple of years ago we felt like we needed to do something different and outside of the club called Galvany Street. After doing that we realised how much we could get out of club music. We like to believe that we can get more out of it than just a melody or baseline. Cut the Strings, is a start into a new era, where we have a strategy where we have a new song or EP or remix, which wasn’t the case in previous years. Now it’s very fresh for us, we’ve known each other since school and now we have our own label called Belfield.

Last question, what is it we can expect in the future from Booka Shade?

We just played one of our new tracks with an Icelandic singer, we also did a single with a band called ‘Under Her’. So our next project is an album that incorporates collaborations in different countries. And we’re working on bands we’ve been signing from all over the world.

You’ll see us back in Prague next Summer. It’s usually our European season.

By Claire Dognini, Oliver Horsfall & Petar Mrdjen

Photos by Booka Shade

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