Archive
Primum Vivere
The Opening Series 2019 — 2020
PV XIII
What good is the sweltering heat of summer without the crisp chill of winter. We have some of it here in Georgia for the next couple of months. Enjoy while it bites!
Here comes Oliver Klostermann, a prodigious pianist, composer and producer. Born in Munich, Oliver's classical music education commenced at the age of five. Later in his teens, he was introduced to jazz and graduated from the academy firmly grounded in modern music.

In the course of the next few years following his formal studies, Oliver's interest shifted toward the possibilities of new sound and composition. He embarked on developing his unique style which, by now full-fledged, combines the classical techniques and genuine improvisational approach to jazz with the experimental methods that define the cutting edge of electronic music.

2016 saw Oliver move to Berlin where, given his talents and sociability, he was very soon recognized as one among the most promising newcomers on the club circuit.

These days his live acts and dj-sets often grace the bills of Berlin's most esteemed underground venues such as Sisyphos, Ritter Butzke, Wilde Renate and regularly embellish the programmes of major subcultural events – to name Fusion and Grabicz festivals. He is also the mastermind and main propulsive engine behind Slaves of Discotheque, his signature party at KaterBlau.
Oliver Klostermann: So excited for my upcoming concert at Noble Savage in Tbilisi! For the last couple of weeks, I have been busy amalgamating into my new live-set the elements of classic rock and gospel. I dedicate all the effort and the results to Jon Lord (RIP 2012), a legendary English composer, pianist, and organ player known for his pioneering work in fusing rock with classical forms – especially as a member of Deep Purple. I have been studying his work meticulously and for quite a while. Wish me luck, sweethearts!
David Gabunia made his first foray into music in 1999 when he founded 4U. The project ran under this name for a few years – just enough time for David and his occasional collaborators to test and refine their nascent talents, experimenting with various genres, techniques and audiences. In the process and as it goes, David soon discovered some new territories to explore, which prompted him and his partners to change the direction and to reform within, reemerging on stage and in the studio as Vitamin, a music entity based on a more solid foundation and reaching far beyond the local scene. This has been the pattern for David Gabunia as an artist all along ever since: ongoing experimentation, exploration, refinement and immersion with the form of his making – always with an eye and ear to something new, fresh and exciting, leading eventually to a paradigm shift.
And so the late 2000's see the artist co-firing Beatnik Brothers, an electronic duo taking in and synthesizing the influences from sources as diverse as Bloody Beetroots, Mstrkrft, Soulwax, Justice, Daft Punk. In 2012, David launches his solo project, eponymously dubbed Gabunia. In 2013, the artist forms Unresolved Situation, the band which these days bills itself as Easy Solution marking the turn towards nominal positivity reflecting change in outlook.
Frankie Beatnik is David Gabunia's most recent artistic manifestation, his happy-go-lucky adventure in the sparkly rainbow fields of dance music which properly spells as house.
PV XII
You may want to bring your full-mirrored polarized shades and a jarful of sunscreen this Saturday – so you do not melt sizzling to the bones, not so instantly, in the scorching heat of the winter night microwaved by these radiant electromagnetic gents on the bill.
PV XI
Primum Vivere XI is a warm welcome to all of you breathing in the crisp late autumn air, and so much behind the decks to Esther Silex visiting us from Berlin and to Elefunk residing in Tbilisi.
The multitude of one... Luka Metreveli is a walking evidence and shining proof that multiple personality, one's double or triple existence, if only nominal, is a very sensible and quite practical mode of relation to the outside world which itself is never uniform. It is especially true a thesis and viable developmental strategy in cases of one's numerous natural endowments and diverse cultural ambitions – various visions, talents, expertise, resources and aims of an ostensibly single individual.

Preparing for Primum Vivere XI and considering Luka for the program tonight, we managed (not without a few wrong turns) to pin down as many as three such identities in him – ultimately settling for the one least recognized so far. Elefunk is Luka's brand new project. Ourselves being total newbies on the block, no safe formulae to rely upon (Tbilisi is not exactly New York, Berlin, Tulum, Rio, Mykonos or Ibiza in our track record), no distinct name to bank on – nothing, but pure Dasein,– it gives us great pleasure to support Luka's new pursuit, just as any creative endeavor in its embryonic state, any journey off the beaten path of Becoming. The way of Noble Savage!

So here we go: While we are nailing the interview with Luka – him collecting thoughts on the whole range of general topics and explicating the scores of his artistic engagements over the years under different alias,– please meet and greet Elefunk (aka L8, aka L9 and who knows how far in the matrix of infinity this numbering goes!)
PV X
A maverick in the literary world and philosopher extraordinaire, Kurt Vonnegut once and forever lamented that thanks to TV, the Mass Media in general which tend to represent the world in binaries creating artificial dichotomies in the sociocultural sphere, we the audience can only be one of two kinds of human beings – either a pro or con type, thinking and acting for or against something with the vast space for cognitive and behavioral positioning in between the opposites simply unimaginable.

How about we change this binary protocol of co-existence? How about we tune out – if only for one night a week – and be neither pro nor con strictly speaking, whatever the issue. True recreation scenario. This is the way of Noble Savage where Primum Vivere is a milieu, one of a kind, where all the differences – always more imagined than actual, always more dogmatic than intellectual – are petty concerns which quickly evaporate around our tribal campfire. Primum Vivere: here you live and let live, intermingle, make friends; here you are fully human. Good times! After all, it's what club culture is all about.

Primum Vivere X is a warm welcome to all of you breathing in the crisp late autumn air, and so much behind the decks to legendary DJ T. visiting us from Berlin and to prodigious Bekuchi from Batumi.
There are very few artists in this world whose legacy looms so large in the universe of electronic dance music. This legacy is so very much alive today that it is most likely to endure far beyond the horizon of tomorrow.

DJ T. (aka Thomas Koch) has devoted every fibre of his being to the development of underground club culture. For more than three decades he has been busy traveling the length and breadth of the planet to spread his gospel and setting up some of the most fecund platforms to nurture new talent and springboard it to the stars.
Born in Dusseldorf, Thomas moved with his family to Frankfurt where – early in life and inspired by his parents' record collection – he fell for the hypnotic grooves of soul, funk and disco. The kid was already fully immersed in music by the age of nine and no distraction in the world could get in the way of his ceaseless appetite for it. The infectious rhythms of all those genres continue to permeate the forms he listens to, creates and plays today.

Before emerging as a DJ on the local scene, young Thomas was channeling the energy of music through his body, responding to it and passing the vibes on in a very physical manner, as an avid break-dancer.

He describes the late eighties as a pivotal time in his life. It was when acid house was sweeping through Europe with the tsunami waves of techno to follow soon after. It was when Thomas became DJ T. absorbing all the fresh new sounds from Chicago, Detroit, the UK, conflating and modulating them into "the sound of Frankfurt."
It was also the time when DJ T. picked up a residency at infamous Music Hall and then pretty much at all other clubs across the city, establishing himself over the course of a decade as a master purveyor of danceable electronica. By the end of the nineties, he was one of Frankfurt's top house and tech house selectors, amassing some 50,000 records.

In 1989, DJ T. tapped into another source of his creativity launching and for the next 15 years chief-editing Groove Magazine, one of Europe's premier electronic music publications covering underground dance music and club culture.

In 1999 he opens and concentrates his energies on the promotion of Monza Club in Frankfurt. Three years later, together with Booka Shade and M.A.N.D.Y., he co-founds Get Physical, a seminal label the name of which voluminously speaks for itself.
A DJ, journalist, essayist, publisher, music collector, radio host, sub-culture missionnaire, impresario, imprint founder and label manager, Thomas Koch cuts a huge and authoritative figure on the scene. Adding to the profile, DJ T. is also a prolific music producer with three albums under his belt and boasting an impressive track record of collaborations with such luminaries as Maceo Plex, Maya Jane Coles, Tale Of Us, Art Department, David August, Daniel Bortz, Jamie Jones and Lee Foss.

Since 2015 DJ T.'s output has been hitting new heights – with his tracks released on Aus Music, Moon Harbour, Truesoul and Jackathon. With respect to his Chicago and jacking house origins, DJ T.'s latest production revitalizes the old school styles injecting into their muscles the sort of sonic nutrients which make for maximum strength in the cutting-edge music paradigm.
DJ T. as a name is also synonymous with the fine art of remixing. For the last decade or so, Thomas Koch has been putting out numerous quality reworks for an array of notable artists and labels. Among many others, his ever-growing re-list includes Defected, Suara, Exploited, 20:20 Vision, Strictly Rhythm, Roush and Culprit.

Over 30 years down the road, DJ T. remains as thrilled about anything music as he was in his formative years. His desire to create and recreate it is as strong and insatiable as his yearning to spread music far and wide. Welcome to Tbilisi!
PV IX
Saturdays are for adventure. Our itinerary for it, as always, is Primum Vivere, which basically means: thrust all your lofty thoughts and mundane worries away till next week and "get a life" – for god's sake! Come join us in the Eden around the fire for another warm night of lively conversations, meeting new people from around the world, and all the excitement and cathartic relief dancing to the feral grooves of The Sorry Entertainer from KaterBlau Berlin; and Gacha Bakradze from Tbilisi.
Hugo Capablanca is a charismatic and in equal measure whimsical character – a prolific producer/DJ who for the last decade or so has been steadily building a reputation for making his playful dilettantish approach a proper genre of his own. Originating from Spain and currently based in Berlin, his DJ sets and studio work reflect this nomadic, wild and eclectic energy which blends psychedelic influences, disco, industrial, acid and other far-out styles melting them together to create raw and organic concoctions that tickle the body and excite the mind.
His refusal to stick to any particular genre is also manifested in his collaborations with other artists and marks the output of Discos Capablanca, his own record label that has scored several seminal EPs by a number of the artists extraordinaire such as Grackle (Burns), Two Dogs in a House (Morelli & Summers) and the Mutant Beat Dance (Traxx & Beau Wanzer). Hugo's name is also closely associated with the imprints as prominent as Hivern Discs, Cómeme, Correspondant and Astrolab.
So let there be Primum Vivere IX... As Dr. Emmett Brown, one of the lead characters in the Back to the Future trilogy would put it: "It requires something with a little more kick". Fast-forward the future to Saturday to meet Vasil Kutidze, a co-founder of Mzesumzira Records, one of Tbilisi's finest imprints and a primary pillar of his native underground club culture. Why another name to go by? – as if his real one is not evocative enough.

Vasil explains: He has been addicted to music since he remembers himself. However, such an addiction is never static as music itself is anything but a fixed singular phenomenon. It's a living and ever-growing multiplicity of forms, techniques and experiences. Over the years one's personal relationship to music naturally changes – it develops all the time in response to that process.
This relationship is also modified and solidifies as a whole through certain events in one's life. Vasil recalls his trip to Berlin in 2012 as the key formative moment: "See, kids grow up dreaming to become famous athletes, superstar actors, trans-galactic astronauts, or to win the lottery jackpot. Chasing no pies in the sky, I grew up knowing I would be a DJ. That trip to Berlin kicked it off for real." Vasil speaks of visiting and soon debuting at Club der Visionaere, Sisyphos, KaterBlau; since then holding courts pretty much at every club of notice in Georgia. So what is he if not a DJ?

The choice of Dr. Emmett Brown, as his new alias, marks a shift – if not an evolution – in Vasil Kutidze's repertoire from minimal sound, by now sufficiently explored, in the direction of dance music with a more propulsive groove, toward the sound with an extra haptic quality to it. It's the kind of sound, feral, we happen to love in our tribe, relating to it very physically as it goes at Noble Savage: "Something with a little more kick", indeed.
PV VIII
Saturdays are for adventure. Our itinerary for it, as always, is Primum Vivere, which basically means: thrust all your lofty thoughts and mundane worries away till next week and "get a life" – for god's sake! Come join us in the Eden around the fire for another warm night of lively conversations, meeting new people from around the world, and all the excitement and cathartic relief dancing to the feral grooves of The Sorry Entertainer from KaterBlau Berlin; and Gacha Bakradze from Tbilisi.
PV VII
Saturdays are for adventure. Our itinerary for it, as always, is Primum Vivere, which basically means: thrust all your lofty thoughts and mundane worries away till next week and "get a life" for god's sake! Come join us in The Eden around the fire for another warm night of lively conversations, meeting new people from around the world, and all the excitement and cathartic relief dancing to the feral grooves of Levi Love Disco and Tobako Tween, both from Tbilisi.
PV VI
Saturdays are for adventure. It's about time for another one. As life itself is meant for it, join us stepping into the night and finding it in abundance deep below the surface around our tribal crackling campfire in The Eden and spilling over to the dance-floor animated by the feral grooves and frantic beats which make for that unique Noble Savage signature sound.

Primum Vivere VI is a warm welcome to all of you breathing in the crisp autumn air, and so much to Isabeau Fort behind the decks on Saturday, one half of the Brothers duo – curiously all-female combo – from the fabulous Laut & Luise family; and to Stimmhalt, a young prodigious Georgian producer and DJ from the Crosstown Rebels/Kindisch rosters.
Every little thing carries an atmosphere about itself. Apathy or excitement, bitterness or sweetness, malfeasance or wholesomeness, staleness or freshness. And so does the music. Especially the music – in its every single note. It's very much like the weather. Music sets the tone for an entire experience. Discordant or euphonious, it can make or break your day. It heats you up or chills you down. Just like the weather, it changes all the time perfectly registering on the scale from calm to storm.
Concerned with the processes and phenomena of the sonic atmosphere, Isabeau Fort is a music meteorologist. She is a scientist who closely observes and thoroughly studies the atmospheric conditions for good vibes in the room, and a sorcerer who conjures the weather of emotions, creates a certain climate of feelings on and around the dance floor – all in the spectrum of fine ones.
It's all in the name of Isa who grew up on the shores of the North Sea, the land of ancient fishing villages: Beaufort is a scale that measures the intensity of wind in your sails from "just sufficient to give you steerage" to that which "no sails could withstand". Scaling in between Light Breeze and Fresh Gale, she is that kind of wind – gentle, sometimes vigorous – that fills your sails, lifts you high, flies you far and brings you back intact, refreshed and enriched.
Noble Savage Club – Isabeau Fort
Born David Gvaberidze in Tbilisi, Stimmhalt has been immersed in the local electronic music and club scene since his teens. Twelve years down the road, his music has been released on vinyl and in digits by Crosstown Rebels, Get Physical, Kindisch, Akbal Music, Seven Villas, L'enfant Terrible, Underyourskin, Exotic Refreshment, to name some of the imprints.
You have seen Stimmhalt since then on the bills with the likes of Nicolas Jaar, Apparat, Moderat, Matthias Mayer, Robag Wruhme, Max Cooper, Jan Blomqvist, DJ Three, Andhim, Nuno Dos Santos.

One cannot fail to notice and be impressed by the list of his supporters and aficionados: to name John Digweed, Damian Lazarus, Solomun, Audiofly, Serge Devant, YokoO, Madmotormiquel, Schlepp Geist, Jan Oberlaender, Dapayk, Fulltone, Pezzner and other genial, discerning and prolific artists who have ever picked up Stimmhalt's gems for their sets and to remix them for various audiences and situations.
Hear his music gracing the global airwaves, featured in the programs for BBC1, Kiss FM, Ibiza Sonica, etc; and Stimmhalt's numerous guest mixes being streamed by Gardens of Babylon, Deeper Sounds, Asterophone, Deep House International, Relevation and other podcast platforms.

Since a couple of years ago, Stimmhalt has made his way to the international festivals in the ranks of Burning Man and Decibel. And it's all just for a start really.
PV V
Saturdays are for adventure. Our itinerary for it, as always, is Primum Vivere, which basically means: thrust all your lofty thoughts and mundane worries away till next week and "get a life" – for god's sake! Come join us in the Eden around the fire for another warm night of lively conversations, meeting new people from around the world, and all the excitement and cathartic relief dancing to the feral grooves of Woody from Heideglühen in Berlin; and the frantic beats of Ako Von Unten from Mzesumzira Records, Tbilisi.
On the fringes of the city, deep in the middle of urban nowhere, lost in between Moabit and Wedding boroughs in Berlin, one finds (as luck would have it – provided this person is not giving up his/her search upon the initial failure, the only outcome of all possible guaranteed) a curiously malformed wooden compound, a loosely fenced cluster of grotesque shacks – summing up and appearing as the whole cosmos in and of itself. Each hut with its own story to tell and so much more cute dirty secrets to keep, they are all interconnected and unified by a shared vision and reason: Let the good times roll! By all means...
Heideglühen doesn't publicize its address, which turns getting there into a veritable journey. Heideglühen does not unveil the lineups, which makes this incongruous club a destination in its own right. Heideglühen favors friends and regulars. A stranger, if you have endured the endless queue and ultimately made it through the door, it's because on entry they somehow can always tell it's your destiny. They know before you come to realize – the next day and still there dancing – it's precisely the case and there is no such time as tomorrow.
There is no such time as tomorrow for Woody. It's always now for him at Heideglühen where he is fulfilling his destiny as a co-founder, program director and resident DJ. A maverick funkateer whose whole life revolves around music, all he needs is two turntables, a mixer and audience to feel he is fully alive – his existence filled with joy and purpose. That is to say, purpose and joy.
Noble Savage Club – Hazy Pockets
His nom de plume dates back to the mid-80's when Woody emerged as a distinct figure on the graffiti and break-dance scene in Munich; soon after and quite naturally merging with the local club scene. He played his initiation gigs at Babalu Club and, given his talent, it did not take long for him to get noticed outside his hometown.
Noble Savage Club – Hazy Pockets
And so it goes: In 1992, Woody is already holding court as a resident at Planet in Berlin and then at E-Werk, one of the most prominent and vital techno clubs in the world back in the days, on par in status with Berghain today. Ever since he has established himself as a well-respected, much-adored and indispensable character in the house and techno scenario. His multiple engagements in the field and voluminous contributions to the scene over the years defy hasty enumeration and cursory explication.
Noble Savage Club – Woody
Suffice it to say here that Woody has been around and active long enough – 30 years, mind you, as very few others in the world staying sexy and relevant – to witness many twists and turns, ups and downs, high rises and low falls on the murky wavering path of underground club culture; himself wisely keeping his head down through all these seismic shifts, staying focused and true to himself.

In high demand, he is however never too busy or tired to share his vision of a perfect party and to bring the funky Heideglühen vibes to dance floors across the globe. This Saturday – to Tbilisi.
PV IV
Saturdays are for adventure. Our itinerary for it, as always, is Primum Vivere, which basically means: thrust all your lofty thoughts and mundane worries away till next week and "get a life". Come join us in the Eden around the fire for another warm night of lively conversations, meeting new people from around the world, and all the excitement and relief dancing to the feral grooves of Hazy Pockets from Berlin by way of Texas and California; and the frantic beats of our local hero Frankie Beatnick.

Read on and prepare yourself for it tonight as we are digging deep into the bottomless pockets of Joel Isaac Black, one of our all-time resident DJs, and chasing David Gabunia leaping across the sparkly rainbow fields of dance music.
Noble Savage: WeeOoo-WeeOoo-WeeOoo... Hold your horse, cowboy, and pull over! As it goes during the unwarranted body search & seizure procedure, the classic case, how about you empty your pockets first.

Joel Isaac Black: 1) The world is in motion. Nothing stays the same. I always carry an adapter – just in case I also change; 2) You never judge a man by his shoes. Rather by his belt buckle; 3) Dream Boogie, an epic portrait of one person, singer Sam Cooke, the father of soul music, striving to achieve his vision despite all obstacles during the turbulent and hopeful 1950s and 1960s in America. I dig the sound of that. In fact, you will soon have some of it, too; 4) I was searching and have found the missing link between the American southern folk blues traditions and the DDR socialist workers' repertoire of songs. And it's this particular book. Righteous blues behind that wall; 5) Keep your lights on in the dark!
Noble Savage: All this implicates you alright. But who on earth is Hazy Pockets?

Joel Isaac Black: Hazy Pockets is a drummer. As a time-served and accomplished soul drummer, you get to know your way around the pocket. The pocket is the push and pull of the beat that despite a regular tempo, takes you somewhere forward and massages you into ecstasy. Now ecstasy could be a pneumatic steam-hammer pounding mechanically, but it could also be saucy strut, or a lazy sashay… Knowing how to put those moves together is where it gets complicated. It gets real Hazy.
Noble Savage Club – Hazy Pockets
Feeling is king, and the job of a DJ selector is to get his majesty's word out. This job takes a special language. You want to really know what the song is about and that is a hard-earned skill. Where it is all coming from, and to whom it is addressed – the context matters! I have to break it to you, but everything counts in ridiculous amounts. The unspoken qualities of music are deafening in the buzz of the nightclub. Disco-histrionics, rock 'n' roll pout, acid house throb all harmonizing in the same room… Where it gets real Hazy.
Noble Savage Club – Hazy Pockets
Technique and ambition can carry a dance floor only so far. After that, it's the learned intuition that comes from decades of molding audiences and listeners into the place that you want them to be. When the energy is there, when the dance floor is with you, it's a tightrope walk, and every wobble or every graceful step forward is felt by all, and duly responded to. No one wants to see you plunge into the abyss, and it is certainly not fun on the way down for the performer. Do what you need to do, but lord knows… Stay in that Pocket!
Noble Savage Club – Hazy Pockets
Noble Savage: Sounds to me like "oh my god we work so hard we gonna have a good time tonight" gibberish. Gotcha! You and your horse are both under arrest!
David Gabunia made his first foray into music in 1999 when he founded 4U. The project ran under this name for a few years – just enough time for David and his occasional collaborators to test and refine their nascent talents, experimenting with various genres, techniques and audiences. In the process and as it goes, David soon discovered some new territories to explore, which prompted him and his partners to change the direction and to reform within, reemerging on stage and in the studio as Vitamin, a music entity based on a more solid foundation and reaching far beyond the local scene. This has been the pattern for David Gabunia as an artist all along ever since: ongoing experimentation, exploration, refinement and immersion with the form of his making – always with an eye and ear to something new, fresh and exciting, leading eventually to a paradigm shift.
And so the late 2000's sees the artist co-firing Beatnik Brothers, an electronic duo taking in and synthesizing the influences from sources as diverse as Bloody Beetroots, Mstrkrft, Soulwax, Justice, Daft Punk. In 2012, David launches his solo project, eponymously dubbed Gabunia. In 2013, the artist forms Unresolved Situation, the band which these days bills itself as Easy Solution marking the turn towards nominal positivity reflecting change in outlook.
Frankie Beatnik is David Gabunia's most recent artistic manifestation, his happy-go-lucky adventure in the sparkly rainbow fields of dance music which properly spells as house.
PV III
Saturdays are for adventure. Our itinerary for it, as always this day, is Primum Vivere, which basically means: thrust all your lofty thoughts and mundane worries away till next week and "get a life". Come join us in the Eden around the fire for another warm night of lively conversations, meeting new people from around the world and all the excitement and relief dancing to the frantic beats of Spaniol from Brazil and the feral grooves of Kote Japaridze.
There are many artists in this world who believe in what they do. Some of them are so focused, staunch and vigorous in their faith that the Universe has no option other than to reshuffle the cosmic dust of reality, clear some space in the cluttered ontological chamber and materialize their inner visions in there – with the sun and other stars shining on their paths. One such artist is allegedly Felipe Torquato, better known on the international music scene as Spaniol.
A prodigious and prolific producer hailing from Brazil, he is on the path of finding and creating music which is universal in vibe – the kind of music which deeply resonates with the soul of any human being, any time, anywhere.
Spaniol - Noble Savage - Tbilisi
Founder of Sonido Tropico, an imprint breaking new grounds in Latin ethno-electronica, Spaniol has been producing music since the age of 15 when he was experimenting with organic sounds to be refined over the years to define and distinguish much of his current output in affiliation with such notable labels and collectives as Feines Tier, Akumandra, Urban Cosmonaut, The Magic Movement, Shika Shika, Nomade, Sol Selectas and Trip to Deep.

If you ever happen to observe a bright glow of light in the nightly air, coming upon you in many shades and colors, it is not necessarily a ghost or UFO. It may just as well be our amigo. Though, prepare to be abducted anyway!
Life is good and it's getting better. But where exactly does this incremental goodness take us? This week, it leads the world to Kote Japaridze.

Kote Japaridze is a relatively new name on the block. But so is the block itself which has come to be recognized as a distinct and salient phenomenon on the international club circuit since not so long time ago and primarily with reference to Bassiani, "the darkest club in the world", founded in 2014. This kind of historic context bestows upon Kote Japaridze, as a matter of course, the status of a veteran on the local scene, one of its foundational figures.
A former resident DJ at Bassiani, he is often found these days holding court at the infamous Horoom Nights there and on the bill with global luminaries elsewhere.

One may say, Kote, among so many others, was fully baptized into his vocation a year or so ago – in the storm of rave-lutionary events, in the backlash from the authorities in their wake, to be more precise, threatening his very existence as an artist and imperiling the prospects of the entire club scenario in his native Tbilisi.
Raised on music in the broadest sense and still taking inspiration from a variety of sources, he is one of the few DJs here who can walk the line in between audibly incongruous genres masterfully blending funk, disco, house and techno.
PV II
Bless your little heart. Hazy Pockets has just rode into town. Cowboy-conjurer, dedicated disco dilettante, Berlin DJ by way of Texas and California, Joel Isaac Black is a tireless soul man preaching boogie music in a robotic techno town. Hazy Pockets' marathon sets steal from the best and give to both the rich and poor, ecstatic dancing for the raver kids and the suits, human-level soul music at the club.
In his last years as both DJ and chef at Berlin's Kater Blau club and Katerschmaus restaurant, Joel's primary calling has been honing his rigorous instinct for performance and service, often combined: Long nights in the open kitchen, riding the pulse of a packed house of fine diners are followed by indefinitely longer Berlin club nights, pushing dancers into soulful ecstasy with relentless disco-house, acid-funk, and blues-stomp. Joel is a zealous toiler, a veritable drudge obsessively devoted to his craft, the embodiment of self-abandon for the sake of your enjoyment. It's working-class blues, drinking music. It's oh my god we work so hard we're gonna have a good time tonight music!
Joel Black was born in Texas to a blues musician father – harmonica and swamp guitar his lullabies. Moving out West to L.A, working first as a rock 'n' roll drummer, and later a studio owner and producer, Joel continued chasing that certain guttural, soulful sound he was introduced to at an early age. Arriving in Berlin, re-baptized at the discotheque, he is still seeking those uplifting, funky moments to this day – albeit in maximal dance floor form.

Drawing upon a 15 years of crate-digging and curating the music collections of Amoeba, a world-renowned vinyl record store in Los Angeles, Hazy Pocket's knowledge in the field and skills as a sensitive and creative selector are unrivalled. His arsenal of dance matter is extremely diverse – a conscious love-letter to both the undeniable pop hooks and the obscure dirty bass counterparts. It's funky-disco-acid house, startling edits, and future boogie in subtle winks and deliberate bounce, but all imbued with human funkiness that shakes it all loose.
Hazy Pockets is long-time resident DJ at the Kater Blau club in Berlin, a founding participant and resident at the Garbicz Festival in Poland. He is especially dear to us, Noble Savages, as a resident DJ and fellow curator for the Summer Air 2016–2018 series of events at Jackie O Berlin. As part of the Quality Time Booking crew, Hazy Pockets continues to welcome a truly international DJ scene to his home in Berlin, and travel the world performing and curating music events for clubs, festivals, and cultural events abroad.
Nour has been spinning records for years – first to herself, as it goes, searching for a sound that would reverberate with her soul. She ultimately found one – in between various genres, modulated by her moods. She connects to music through a myriad of outside influences and inner, deeply personal experiences living in very different, often contradictory, cultural and natural environments. Born Palestinian, ever since cosmopolitan... This alone speaks volumes.
Nour emerged as a consummate and inimitable stage identity first in Tulum, her near permanent base; then on the international scene – through her involvement with a number of outstanding and paradigmatic projects. The Papaya Playa Project in Tulum (Mexico) is one such, a Caribbean brainchild of legendary Bar25/Kater Blau. One of a kind venue, according to ecstatic reviews in the global Media (from Vogue to Wall Street Journal), it has allegedly kick-started the development of the entire area making the small town one of the most desirable destinations in the world. Nour held residency at the PPP beach club for three seasons, from 2012 until 2015, considered the golden years of the project, and has been dropping her periodic guest mixes there ever since.

In 2015 and on for the next two years, she was in charge of the scene at Gitano, another gypset outpost in Tulum, playing her residency sets and booking guest DJs worldwide for her time-off at the decks in the jungle. The year 2015 also saw her full-time and in different capacities involved in kicking off Scorpios, a brand new beach club in Mykonos, Greece – but primarily so as a resident DJ sharing the stage with the likes of NU, Acid Pauli, Damian Lazarus, and Bedouin.
2017 marked a new phase in the development of her talent with Nour embarking on the sonic journey in the field of production, music anthropology, sound therapy and crisscross creativity. Her collaboration with Lamat Uuc has resulted in the release of her first EP imprinted on Talavera Records containing a number of original tracks and remixes which reveal Nour's interest expanding to embrace the traditional Arabic harmonies and brainwave meditation frequencies.

Her credo is best identified as deep house oftentimes generously elaborated with her native patterns of the Orient and vibed to reverberate with the subconsciousness. It's the kind of house which makes so many in her audience feel so very much at home despite their cultural differences. It's the feeling of being at home understood not in terms of any specific here or there down the block, but that of being at home in the universe at large, being an inseparable and reciprocal part of the community of human destiny...
PV I
Friends! So thrilled to announce that the project we have been working on for the past two years is now coming into fruition. We are premiering it on Saturday September 28th. Noble Savage is an arts and social club with the mission to facilitate exchange between cultures and bring them closer together. Based in Tbilisi, Georgia, we are delighted at the prospect of seeing you soon as special guests and enjoying your lively company. Save the date!
A towering German choreographer, founder of Tanztheater and the major source of influence in the field of modern dance since the 1970s, Pina Bausch once proclaimed: "Dance! Dance! Otherwise, we are lost.'' Her resolute words of wisdom have stirred and lifted many souls including the passion of Esther Silex who – herself a ballet dancer in the past – credits Bausch as her oracle channeling secret spiritual rhythms which drive her music production and performances.
Following her nomadic childhood living on wheels with her hipster parents traveling all around Europe, Esther collected herself in one place settling at the age of 17 in Cologne where – now on her own terms, focused and determined – she, while navigating through her family's old record collection, as vast as eclectic, found her purpose in life and fully gave herself over to music.
She soon took her newborn devotion from its cradle to clubs starting with the one in the neighborhood whose owners were kind enough and percipient to let Esther use their equipment and facility as a workshop to acquire and hone her mixing skills. Her mastery over the technique all too obvious, the first booking ensued and then another across the street and so on all around the city. Esther was playing her weekly finds ranging from soul and funk through disco to house and techno, all weaved seamlessly with a touch of magic; ultimately evolving to become an integral part of the Cologne club circuit.
It's around this time when Esther ventured into deeper waters with her new interest in music production. The effort to distill the eclectic immensity of forms in her playlists into a piece of her own creation resulted in Pachamama EP released in 2016 as her debut on Studio Barnhus, a prolific "blob of colour splashed right onto the gray scales of modern dance music."

Since she moved to Berlin a year or so ago, Esther Silex's biography has been difficult to trace without assuming the full-time role of her biographer on the road. Aside from becoming a resident DJ at Kater Blau – which is a tall order in and of itself – she has been very busy playing events, clubs and festivals in different and remote parts of the world. As it happens, not so much time for interviews.
The Sorry Entertainer is exactly what he is... or something totally opposite – in the minds of those few people in the world, falling from another planet, who have never heard of the artist. They have to blind-guess whether his name is a precise and comprehensive description of his talent which promises no joy; or, perhaps, it's a self-ironical denotation capturing the stoic attitude of not taking oneself too seriously. Smart people in this category would relate to the name instantly: "The cleverest of all is the one who calls himself a fool at least once a month."
Ourselves? Knowing The Sorry Entertainer very well – all too well – through various low-to-high-intensity collaborations and numerous parallel engagements around the world in the course of the past decade and even more so through his everlasting residency and off-duty omnipresence at the infamous Kater Blau club in Berlin (Bar25/Kater Holzig), the portrait of the artist gets real fuzzy.
When it comes to music, The Sorry Entertainer absorbs and exhales the entire galaxy of grooves, beats, vibes, textures, moods and flavors – with a single constant accent on all that which unites. He is the universe that fades in and out, snatches and skips; spins, loops and boosts; pulsates and resonates – the heavens to be endlessly explored and infinitely loved. The Basics of Paradox, his most recent experimental series which comes in "chapters" – each blurring the lines between music and noise; also literature, film, psychology, philosophy, sheer nonsense, you figure and name it – reveals how fuzzy, diffused and bizarre his cosmic "entertainment" can get at times. Paradoxically, this is the kind of sonic haziness which prompts adjusting your focus; the kind of ambiguity that elicits maximum concentration on the receiving end.

Just as is he a bottomless chasm on a personal level, a vagabond on the sinuous – sometimes circular – journey of perpetual self-discovery and re-invention, with each finding and identity reconstruct dreaming the next one already.

Also known as Lotti who dwells in between the shelves of records, the shelves which never collect dust, he is often credited as one of the seminal figures in Berlin responsible for shifting its original robotic techno paradigm, hard-wired into the dark and malodorous concrete bunkers, toward a more playful, cheerful and mischievous sound unleashing it into the fresh, breezy, healthful and fragrant ambiance of parks, gardens and riverside lawns. In the words of Daniel Johnston, an eccentric American singer, songwriter and progressive activist who passed away just a few days ago, leaving Lotti as a sole carrier of the name: "Where the wind blows – That's where I go; Where the moon is – That's where I am; I am a sorry entertainer..."
The Sorry Entertainer is indeed a clever name. It sounds most appropriate in Berlin with its egalitarian free-form music and club culture which defines itself in opposition to the standardized processes and mass products of culture industry; the genuine culture which asserts itself as underground in antithesis to stardom propelled by hype, glitz, posturing, aesthetic mimetism, and faceless narcissism. The counter-strategy here is self-deprecation, which often requires a special extra talent and vast sense of humor; demands and ultimately signifies the excessive strength of character, overflowing self-confidence, as one intentionally creates symbolic obstacles on the way to his/her success and renown. High art of becoming: You overcome yourself, not the crowd.
Just as many artists of cultural relevance and separate aesthetic existence in Berlin, Lotti is a hero, not a celebrity. After all, you don't emit much starlight calling yourself The Sorry Entertainer and releasing your gems on imprints with the names as unmusical as Shitkatapult. You would sell much better as MC Magic sharing the spotlight playing back to back with DJ Fabulous. But playing tennis with the net down is not Lotti's game.
The Sorry Entertainer - Noble Savage - Tbilisi