Bobby Beethoven: Music is the One Spell Humanity Hasn’t Totally Ruined Yet

I’m not living an environmentally conscious life. I eat factory-farmed animals. I’ve flown to the other side of the planet to DJ one event and flown directly back home. Survival is disgusting. An unapologetic deep-dive into Bobby Beethoven’s dj career

Bobby Beethoven: How an Obsessive DJ Builds a Cheap-Yet-Charming Career in Underground Electronic Music

It’s all cheap – I’m cheap. I cut my path pursuing beauty and trying to align my ugly ass with it. It has been chaotic, I guess, and the produce is like paper-thin, but the ride’s been cute. Wouldn’t change a thing. I have no musical talent, just an obsession.

Mid-Life Crisis Photography: Bobby Beethoven Rediscovers Surface-Level Beauty After 20 Years Away From the Camera

I’m currently having a mid-life crisis, which means I’m back on my photography bullshit that I dropped like 20-something years ago — just pure, pure, pure surface-addict beauty-hunter nonsense. Making an image with a camera is easy – like vacuuming, just hoovering beauty up off the surface of everything around me – in a way that’s like 10× more gratifying. Nobody at all gives a shit about the music I make, lol. When I release original music, it’s fucking crickets, but I post one dumb photo and my inbox is full of people asking when I’m publishing a book. All I can conjure sonically is grey-water chaos, so up until now I’ve had to farm all the beauty there.

Indie-Rock, Adbusters, and a Doomsday-Cult Childhood: Roots of a Rebel DJ Ethos – Bobby Beethoven

I’m old. I was a child learning about the world in the Nineties so the slightly bitchy indie-rock and Adbusters concept of independence is imprinted on me for better or worse. Also always had a screwy concept of social in vs. out because I was raised in an insular Christian doomsday cult where everything was always about that dichotomy of “us” and “them”. Us, the tiny persecuted in-group who knows the way vs. them, the droving hordes who are lost. If you know me personally at all this should explain almost everything that’s annoying about me. Being the loser actually means you’re the winner. Obsessed with independence but just want to be singing in a chorus or at least the bassist in a band.

Last DJ Standing Without Rekordbox: Defending Beat-Matching Skills in a Push-Button Age

I’m the last DJ on earth who doesn’t use rekordbox. I still listen to beat-match and I’m still kinda bad at it. Whatever… Twenty-something years later the girls still like it – sue me for being so authentic I guess. It’s weird there aren’t bad DJs anymore. We’re shipping more and more shit off to be handled by automation – idk, a train-wreck or two is nice if you ask me.

Career Sabotage 101: Tribal-House Mixes, Stupid Artist Names & Circuit-Party Misfires

A couple of years ago I tried to ruin my career by changing my name to the stupidest name I could think of and then released an earnest Circuit / Tribal-House mix. It didn’t work. Everyone over here loved it and the circuit queens (the girls I was actually calling to) hated it. I did not get to cross over into hooker/onlyfans/circuit-DJ life – though I’m still trying.

Why Artist Management Keeps Failing Me: Child-Like Chaos vs. Commercial Music Marketing according to Bobby Beethoven

Over the years I’ve had a few different people or agencies try to manage my “career” and at our first meetings I told them there was nothing to manage or market or direct. They were all sure I was wrong but then by like month 4 at the latest they all realized I knew what I was talking about. Anytime I’ve had to perform or produce in a commercial setting, whatever brand I’m working with doesn’t know how to deal with me because I’m basically a child. There have been moments when I’ve been like nah fuck this I’m gonna sell-out – I can be cheap if that’s what they want and then I try and I crash and burn crazy. There’s evidence, check the records.

Environmental Impact of Touring DJs: Factory-Farmed Meals, Long-Haul Flights & Ethical Minefields

I’m not living an environmentally conscious life. Socially decent maybe, but environmentally definitely not. I eat factory-farmed animals. I’ve flown to the other side of the planet to DJ one event, not even slept and flown directly back home. It’s disgusting. Survival is disgusting. Have you been to New York? Survival is gross. I don’t shop online though so that traffic is off my back at least. I’ve quit jobs or donated the full fee to related resistance causes when I find out there’s something fucked up about the funding or owners – but it’s a fucking mine-field, cause all money is blood money, and survival is disgusting. Oh no wait: who owns this magazine? Right: ask enough questions and you find out being naked in the woods eating termites is the only thing we’re ethically supposed to be doing.

Fleeting Connections on Tour: DJ Friendships That Evaporate Faster Than Condensation Trails

The connections built via performing and making music are fleeting. It might be worthwhile, but it’s like smoke: just evaporates when I board the next flight. I’ll meet someone at a show and have a fun night or feel a kinship or something and think that makes us cousins and they’re like “girl what? I just wanted you to sign this record I brought – no you can’t come back here to Kazakhstan and stay with my family next time”. Getting older and touring is crazy too. Everyone in this room is 19 – me and the weird guy that owns the club are the only adults. All I can do is try and be unproblematic.

Legendary Paris Club Night Gone Wrong: Palais de Tokyo, Black-Out E-Pill & A Decade-Long Bond

A night in Paris. Can’t remember the brand but my friend who booked me for the gig, Yasmine, gave me just a regular-ass E pill right before my set and that somehow made my lightweight ass black-out mid set and I cleared the floor at Palais de Tokyo – one thousand people just left the party. This night is how I was introduced to the best women in Paris. We apparently had fun that night, I don’t remember. I got 86’d from Le Barron? I feel very connected to these people still over a decade later.

Sound-System Standards: Why Your Club Needs to Rattle the Cage or Shut the Hell Up – Bobby Beethoven

A sound system that does not put you at risk of permanent hearing damage is not a good sound system. If it does not hold you and shake you – if it doesn’t rattle the cage, I don’t want it. If I can hear casual audience chatter in front of the booth, it’s not a good sound system. If it’s even physically possible to have a whole conversation in the middle of the dance floor, your engineers fucked up.

Taipei Jungle Techno: Temple Party, Funktion-One, Red Banners & Cocaine-Fuelled Dawn

I have a bad memory but something came to mind. This woman Nien in Taipei threw a party in a temple in the mountains outside the city – a legit temple in the middle of the actual jungle and she brought a Funktion One up there. I was the headliner like they made this beautiful giant red ribbon banner with my name in Chinese – but this local techno rich kid was pissed about that or something so I just let him play.

I don’t really think I played at all? I just was like outside in the rain looking for monkeys – mostly just remember everyone being so drunk and on so much cocaine and arguing for hours in Chinese as the sun came up.

Why DJing Looks Goofy Today and Will Look Even Goofier Tomorrow

DJing is embarrassing. It’s gonna look so funny to people in the future. The way it physically looks now is unforgivable – and the place it holds culturally. The pantomimed gestures signifying virtuosity. New clubs and festival stages emulating broadcast set-ups to signal people who think boiler room is what clubbing looks like they’re in the right place. I seriously can’t think of a goofier thing to have chosen as a main thing.

Music as Humanity’s Final Magic Trick: Loving the Decks Until No One Else Is Listening

Music is the only good thing humans do. Like all of our other little spells – science, art, the written word – it’s all extractive, destructive, prone to abuse. I don’t understand music technically, but to me it just feels like a magic trick. I was DJing in high school and I’m gonna be a DJ until I’m too old to stand behind the decks and absolutely no one but me wants to hear it. I love all of us here and as goofy as the clown show looks I wouldn’t trade my place in it here with y’all for anything.

Bobby Beethoven