Wolfram’s Travels: Playing the piano for Moby

The countdown to Electronic Beats Festival Vienna 2012, which features headliners James Blake, Squarepusher, and Hudson Mohawke, is ticking, and the festival is already sold out. Our friend Wolfram is among those performing, and as a sort of teaser he’s sharing a few select stories about his most exciting gigs.

The first time I met Moby was at the Standard Hotel in Miami; that must have been around 2009 or maybe even 2008. I had played a few gigs there and he’d probably done the same. So we met at the hotel lobby and started talking and somehow we got along pretty well. One thing led to the other, which in our case didn’t mean casual sex but attending each others parties in Miami and having dinner together. By coincidence it also turned out the we were on the same flight back to New York, which is where I decided to give him Disco Romance, the Sally Shapiro CD that had been released on my label Diskokaine. In New York I had to catch my flight back to Vienna and we kinda lost track of each other (it was pre-Facebook) but a few weeks later I got an email asking if I wanted to do a remix for his new single. Of course I said yes and from that point on I mostly dealt with his management. But they didn’t get back to me regarding what kind of style the remix should be, so I did three (I was really worried about fucking things up back then…): a disco mix, one more techno/house oriented and a third one and sent over all three – with the info that they should decide on one. A few days later Moby called me and said he liked all the mixes I did, but the management only has the budget for one. But if I agreed, I could stay at his apartment any time I’m in New York.

So it turned out that I ended up not only with three remixes on the Moby single “Disco Lies”,but also a place to stay in New York (which in a way also made it possible for me to play a gig with Lady Gaga – but that’s a story for next week) as well as me picking up the slack for Moby’s piano dude, when he played a show in Warsaw or Prague (I can’t remember). It must have been Autumn 2009 and I can’t remember much… except that I was dead nervous that night. Lucky for me I took video during the last song.

Published September 26, 2012.