Shumi: “Talking Kaput 081020” (Kaput Mix 010)
When everybody is talking about the new paradigm of club bookings after Corona, the common sense is: it will all go back to local structures, less of the international DJ Jetset with its high fees. The somehow blind spot in this discussions are those DJs who always stayed more or less local to be the perfect hosts for the guest from all over the world anyway and made by that sure both worlds unit, for them this is no new setting at all.
One of them is Shumi, one of Colognes finest DJs and besides that also the booker of Gewölbe and in charge of the sophisticated music mix of the club. Shumi is a true supporter of the local scene, one just has to give his Beat in Space mix a listen. For his New York debut he dropped in 2013 lots of tracks by his Cologne friends: Camp inc, Bryan Kessler, Barnt…
On 8th of October Shumi played alongside Sedef Adasi a set at Gewölbe during the latest installment of “Talking Kaput” (and in a Corona appropriate setting). Before the sets Sedef and Shumi talked to Thomas Venker about their 2020 experiences so far. The following quotes are extracts from this conversation, the whole piece is watchable and listenable in our video recap.
“I did all the things you find in magazines like Brigitte. I started baking bread, I made kimchi and also other Korean food like bimbap rolls. I looked at everything on Netflix. Without financial pressure, the first couple of months felt okay, but since summer it started to get on my nerves quite hard. I need to make a list of things to do in the morning, otherwise… it starts to get depressing. I never thought I will feel boredom.
In the beginning I was also positive that streaming might be an opportunity, but that changed pretty fast. (…) I mean, is there anything more boring or sad than a DJ alone in the club throwing it down.Not long and the whole thing was reduced to who has the most freaky location: on a ski jump, in the botanical garden or … – I mean, is this really what we want? (…) I was exaggerating – let me make it relative. The problem was the huge amount of streams popping up. Nobody was able to see any difference anymore. And then they all disappeared.
I keep buying records like nothing changed. I would be able to play five hours of music with only new records now. Totally crazy, right? But I also listen to other music – and I also DJ other music. I buy music in a diverse and miscellaneous way. (…) I reduced my record collection a view years ago, really quite radical, from a few thousand to something like two thousand. Now I re-listened to a lot of my records and was quite surprised – I didn’t know I had so much Brazilian music!”
“Talking Kaput” is kindly supported by the Kulturamt of the city of Cologne.