Electronic Beats – 2011 Review
Welcome to the final round up of the year as we take a look at what happened in the world of Electronic Beats over the last 12 months with change and rejuvenation, unforgettable live music experiences, and in depth cultural exchanges.
2011 began with a new outlook and a fresh perspective. In April our beloved print magazine was relaunched with a bright new design and outlook as spearheaded by new Editor in Chief Max Dax. Max bought a wealth of experience and a new perspective to our quarterly document, shifting the focus to conversations between people – frank and sprawling discussions with artists including Ai WeiWei, Caribou who spoke to us in depth, Bjork or Brian Eno in conversation. We were honoured to be able to present such a broad range of cultural comment as part of the Electronic Beats Programme. Changes were happening elsewhere too. EB.net was given a complete redesign making our online portal an even more essential destination for cutting edge music and culture as well as all the latest on EB events. The website generated debate as well with articles from our editorial team that looked at gender discrimination in electronic music, the new digital reality and the changing face of new music. Add to that literally dozens of exclusive video premieres such as Dillon, Tarwater and Jeans Team and we can count 2011 as a pretty successful year. We also staged our very first editorial takeovers with Azari & III, King Midas Sound and Modeselektor taking over the website for a day. Modeselektor found it so stressful in fact they ended their working day with a massive party in the EB offices with sets from Shed, Phon.O and Doc Daneeka streamed live on Ustream to nearly 7000 people!
Then there were the live events and what events they were! Starting in May in Cologne with Modeselektor and Holy Ghost, before we knew it it was June and we were on our first whirlwind tour of Europe, stopping in Prague and Vienna. On the line up we were pleased to bring to the Electronic Beats Festival artists such as Apparat and his brand new live band, Plannigntorock, Bonaparte, When Saints Go Machine and Animal Collective. Fast forward to October and we returned to Vienna with the stunning live techno of the Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble, Peaches and Wolfram. More trips to Bratislava with Lamb and Who Made Who and possibly one of the biggest, craziest EB festivals ever in Zagreb. Digitalism and Roisin Murphy and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs almost created a riot with the thousands of fans later signaling their approval on the website. Then to close the year, Groove Armada, Zola Jesus, Wiley, The Drums and Buraka Som Sistema bought some heat for the winter months to Budapest and Warsaw.
Not only did we have the festivals, we also presented Azari & III and Apparat on more intimate club tours as well as one of our biggest events of the year in December. Not Christmas –Bryan Ferry performing in Berlin. A true icon who alongside his ten piece band played a stunning show which we continued to enjoy at the star studded after party. And seeing as we had Ferry in town, we also took the opportunity to host an exhibition of Ferry’s photos form his long and illustrious career at our new print HQ of .HBC which in fact continues until January 8th.
Elsewhere Slices went from strength to strength, as we opened arms to new music from Gold Panda the Wolf and Lamb crew and Laurent Garnier who we spoke to in an epic extended interview. We looked at different music formats in a lively exchange on DJ technology and made more of our archive videos than ever available online. We also presented exclusive interviews with S.C.U.M, Zola Jesus and more for EB online. In the meantime the EB Radio sessions continued to present state of the art DJ mixes from all over the world, collecting the best from house to techno, from dubstep to all forms of broken beats or disco madness.
Finally, Electronic Beats managed to collect a cool 5500 euros for the Youth Centre charity at our auction in the 4010 store in Cologne earlier this month. A fitting end to an amazing year.
All that remains is to thank all of our readers and the whole Electronic Beats community for your support and wish you a happy Christmas and a successful new year.
x
Published December 23, 2011.