wordplay: Orangepeelmoses.com

image: Jason Walp

            “Live” can be an extremely misleading term in the realm of electronic music.  Watching someone stare at a laptop monitor isn’t automatically more interesting than watching a vinyl purist blend records.  For all we know, they could be surfing porn (with their entire set pre-programmed in advance).  German electro house sensation Booka Shade is a notable exception.  Top U.K. dance site Resident Advisor christened them “Best Live Act” for good reason.  Booka’s Arno Kammermeier and Walter Merziger have been performing with live instruments, under a variety of guises, for nearly two decades now.  On their pre-Coachella, Udder/Triad-facilitated stop this past Saturday, Kammermeier hammered on an electronic drum kit while Merziger commanded racks of keyboards and laptops.  The vibe was thick like butter…peanut butter, in fact.  Digits were raised.  Kammermeier never shied from heightening the already palpable energy by hyping an obviously compelling melody even further.  He’s like the Richard Simmons of dance music, interpreting their label’s Get Physical nom de plume with perpetual aerobic motion.  Underground dance music is often stereotyped as being too cold or unfeeling for the masses, seriously lacking in the emotional department.  Just because someone’s using a computer to produce music doesn’t mean it has to sound like the computer produced it.  Long live Booka Shade, and consider yourself glad they never took the boy band bandwagon advice proposed by one-time label EMI.                          

BookaShade.com