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Dearest stylistberlin blog readers,
I am really happy to announce that you will get to see Walker Barnard (US) playing tonight at Cookies! The WE ARE label night features him and Agaric (Sweden), label owner of WE ARE.
*** For guestlist, send an email to: stylistberlin at gmail dot com with the header “we are” with your name and fon number, deadline is 21h today! You will get an email / sms :) ***
And here for those of you who want to know more:
Walker is already well-known in the scene through Sweat Lodge podcasts, his live sets on Twen.fm, Maria, Well, he is one of the veterans of the scene:bar25…
Walker Barnard grew up on an ashram outside the American mainstream, listening to Balinese monkey chants, classical Indian music and The Beatles White Album. His first experience of the funk came early on when his father, who was making music videos for Motown, brought him to hang on the set of the shoot for Rick James’s Super Freak video. In the early nineties, Walker started playing the bass in a funk-rock band called Mobius Trip. The band recorded in Los Angeles with the Dust Brothers of Paul’s Boutique fame and then with Beastie Boys keyboardist Mark Nishita. Walker threw down on a range of projects—Including a Lemmy remix, and Vince Neil’s solo record.
From there Walker’s journeys led him to Santa Fe, New Mexico where he continued to hone his bass playing and recording chops in a number of projects. It was in Santa Fe that Walker dove into the world of house and techno. On re-emerging from the depths of the sweaty dance floor of his first warehouse party he knew that his funk was electronic. It was then that he began his mission to transpose the soul and depth of his live music experience onto the realms of house and techno.
While living in a teepee outside Santa Fe, Walker got a call from a friend in NYC who was looking for a producer engineer to come work at a downtown manhattan hip hop studio. He thought that sounded pretty good, so with fifty dollars in his pocket boarded a plane bound for New York ready for the next chapter. The studio turned out to be the epicenter of independent hip hop in NYC. Walker spent the next two years working with a long list of artists such as Company Flow, Saul Williams, Mike Ladd, Rob Sonic, Mos Def, Cannibal Ox and countless others. During this time, Walker also worked closely with producer and engineer Mike “Tweakin” Rogers, who engineered Deee-Lite’s first record, as well as countless classic Chicago and New York house releases.
In 1998 Walker produced “1972” with Saul Williams for the Ninja Tune imprint Big Dada. It was also at this time that Walker met and began collaborating with Jaymz Nylon on a string of house records for such labels as Nitegrooves and Dirty Loop/3 to 5. The late nineties in New York was a heady time where live and electronic music was constantly brewing together in clubs and hole-in-the-wall bars across the city. Walker himself was immersed deep in this bubbling boullabaise, playing bass and live electronics in lofts parties, warehouses, bars and clubs all over the city and East coast.
By 2000, the bubble was beginning to burst and Walker began seriously longing for the open skies and high mountains of New Mexico. He decided to follow his heart and so moved back to Santa Fe, where he began the serious study of recording and mixing music and in 2004 designed and opened his own recording studio to facilitate the production philosophy he had developed through his previous decade of experience. During the next four years, he produces and engineered numerous records, including the 2006 Grammy winning album “Sacred Ground”.
Walker’s studio eventually became the home base for the small but incredibly fertile dance music scene in Santa Fe. Along with his partner, Sylvie Forêt and a family of like-minded musicos, Walker threw epic open air parties in exotic locations, inviting artists such as Bruno Pronsato, Bodycode, Lee Curtiss, and Mikael Stavöstrand. Walker also played live sets all over the West Coast, from the Decibel Festival in Seattle to Burning Man and numerous West Coast clubs and festivals.
In 2008 Walker relocated to Berlin where he began to release music with his friend Patrik Skoog, aka Agaric, on We Are, and on Produkt Schallplatten, with the likes of Santos Resiak, Alland Byallo and Sebastian Herre. In February 2010, Walker completed a techno rite-of-passage with the release of “The Discoball Miner” ep on Unfoundsound, which has been played by the likes of Jeremy P. Caulfield, Mark Henning and Ed Davenport. You can catch Walker’s live sets in Berlin at Bar 25, Arena and Farbfernseher.
2010 will continue to be a busy year for Walker, with four more releases on D.O.C., We Are, Thema and Thema Spatial. Look out for D.O.C. 033 Mule the B3 EP out on vinyl and digital July 14th. Reviewed in the June issue of De:Bug and already blowing up dance floors in Berlin and beyond. Download “The Discoball Miner” ep on Unfoundsound http://bit.ly/unfound47
Walker Live at Farbfernseher March 31st 2010 http://bit.ly/walker_liveset31_3_10
Agaric aka Patrik Skoog is one of Sweden’s hottest exports right now – with Johanna Knutsson & Axel Boman! If you are following the nordic scene, he is definitely one to keep an eye on, since he is appearing more often on the surface of internet ;) Bend the Light is already the 19th release from the WE ARE label,
and I am sure there is loads more in the pipeline ;)
Patrik Skoog isn’t only one of the youngest veteran techno and house producers from Sweden, he’s also one of the most interesting and inspired.Though incredibly versatile, the sustained energy in his sets and productions are equally exceptional.In the last two years, Agaric established the Club Tracks 10” series on his label We Are. Besides his own stellar productions, collaborations with close friends Shonky, Walker Barnard, Ed Davenport, Beaner have also graced the We Are series.
International support came from leading DJs like Richie Hawtin, Seth Troxler, Loco Dice, Ben Klock, Luciano, Joris Voorn, Magda, Laurent Garnier, Sven Väth, and Adam Beyer. Above all, his productions were championed by Josh Wink, who went on to sign his album debut to his Ovum imprint.
After more than 100 vinyl releases, Patrik Skoog can look back at quite a history:
His harder Techno project Headroom on his label Native Diffusion, releases on Synewave, Loop, and many more long forgotten underground labels in the 90s and early 2000s left his first mark for those who know.
From 2005 on, he evolved into his deeper Agaric project, with releases on his internationally celebrated We Are label, Adam Beyer’s Drumcode, Truesoul & Mad Eye, Raum…Musik, Sunset Diskos, Nummer, Kontra Musik, Treibstoff and Liebe Detail.
As a technical DJ with a magical sense for momentum and selection, he’s been playing worldwide for more than 10 years, while his equally as stellar Live sets are one of the few that can rock a crowd throughout its duration. Relocating to Berlin in 2007, he quickly established himself as a celebrated constant inspiration, be it for extended Bar25 after hour sets, or club nights in Watergate, Arena, and Berghain’s Panoramabar.
Agaric’s mature, yet free floating approach to club music culture promises not only sweaty nights (and days) on the floor, but also peace of mind and revelation for the searching soul.
If you want to know how their set will sound like:
http://soundcloud.com/agaric/agaric-walker-barnard-bend-the
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