Around the World in 80, ooo,ooo Decibels:

I don't know about you, but when I was in high school I would sit in class and daydream, often whisking myself away to a magical place in my mind. Sometimes I would imagine myself less fat and awkward. Other times I'd see myself flying all over the world meeting midgets and eating waffles in Belgium. I could also easily imagine Otto daydreaming as well. Russian chicks dancing naked to his music, a robot that plays Black Sabbath, and people feeling the Triangle of Bass. Who would ever imagine that what we were actually envisioning in our heads was the Gogbot Festival, a three day Multi Media Arts Mega Fest in Enschede, The Netherlands with our favorite superhero of sound, Otto von Schirach, headlining. This year's festival featured futuristic art that literally blew our minds.

Enjoying some down time between dinner and sound check, we wander around this massive art installation attached to an old church that seemed older than Christ himself. As our eyes feasted on the art powered scenery, we pass a stage with an odd performance and it's not surprising to me that Otto recognizes the lunatic on stage. Noticing the look of confusion on my face he says, "Nastie, this is so epic. We are watching Passenger of Shits under a giant cross." Crazed musicians, a five century old medieval church, interactive robotic works of art, we were flying high with no visit to the coffee shops needed. The festival is slammed like calle ocho during Calle Ocho.

It's thirty minutes to showtime and we are in our dressing room preparing our bodies and minds for what would later be described as debauchery personified. Dressed and ready to go, we pop in the dressing room next to ours to meet some special additions to our performance. Five tall slender Russian girls and a midget, they are the girls of neverporn.com, a Russian website. One part Suicide Girls, one part Cold War, all parts I wanna squeeze.

As we take the stage, Otto jumps right in with Miami's new anthem, "Flamingo," as Mr. Strange walks in the door. With him comes a piercing boom and a blinding white light. A glowing triangle appears and hovers over Otto. Unscathed, he instantly begins performing, "It's The End of the World," as a giant vortex appears and opens in the triangle without warning. We are all sucked in and transported to another dimension of time and Bass, where planets orbit around atmospheres of sound. I chase a midget on the stage, a half dozen Commie cuties shake what Stalin gave them, and once again Miami's masked marauder, Otto von Schirach, gloriously continues on his quest to save the galaxy from musical monotony.

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Around the World in 80, ooo,ooo Decibels:
Bermudas to Berlin, Otto Brings the Bass

By Notorious Nastie aka Nassie Shahoulian published Monday, Sep. 14 2009 @ 9:00AM

The year is 1945 and Berlin falls to the allied troops as World War II comes to an end. Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun have one last glass of apple juice as they depart for the big ol' Deutschland in the sky. I wonder what our old Führer would make of his dear beloved city, Berlin. How much different would it be from the visions of a secular Aryan race that where dancing around in his head? As our tour manager Gee slowed off the Autobahn and passed the sign marked Ausfahrt, I knew I would soon see that present day reality with my own eyes.

It was a sunny afternoon as we drove into Berlin on our way to sound check at Berghain Kantine. Street after street, mile after mile, graffiti-plagued buildings lined the city and came together reminding me of an old tattooed sailor. Each tattoo was a memory of the pleasures past and for Berlin, each piece of graffiti a testament to individual expression and freedom. I stared out my window in the back seat of our Škoda automobile, shocked and amazed, as I gazed upon a cornucopia of freaks, punks, goths, IDM heads, and weirdos of all kinds packing the sidewalks.

Billboards for shows cluttered this urban canvas, offering an endless supply of first-rate avant garde entertainment. That was the moment that all the pieces to the Otto puzzle began to come together more clearly than ever before. Berlin loves Otto von Schirach. Not surprising, with a town of full-fledged maniacs and social deviants, it's a counter-culture mecca. Proof of that love and admiration lined the streets in the form of posters, depicting a caricature of our Laptop Conquistador of Bass, along with the date, venue, and support acts.

We arrive at the venue to be greeted by a few die-hard fans who help with our large bags, with an eagerness to show support for Otto any way they can. Sound check, dinner and merch set up are quickly checked off the to-do list. Only ripping it on stage is left to accomplish. Sitting at the merch table, I wondered how a show on a Wednesday night with only Otto playing would draw in Berlin.

As people emerged from the street, I realized it would not be the riotous, fan-fueled madness I had witnessed in Erfurt the night before, yet in the blink of an eye, the club is packed. Fans sporting Otto garb are the minority tonight with the majority of the crowd all grouped together and encapsulated by one frightening word, industry.

Otto commented that he now knew what it must have felt like in the '80s for Klaus Nomi to play to the likes of David Bowie, Andy Warhol, and a sea of those in the record label industry. For Otto, David Bowie and Andy Warhol are replaced by Modeselektor, DJ Ned, Kid 606, Jason Forrest and Apparat. Gone are the cocaine-sniffing, disco record label reps of the '80s, replaced thankfully by label heads from BPitch Control, Ipecac, Tigerbeat6, Cock Rock Disco, and software developers from Native Instruments who produced Otto's sound library with Fixed Noise. Friends from the LittleBig booking agency, Stars and Heroes, Ralf from the Poodle performance artists, fantastic nobodies, and a hundred or so cans of mixed nuts round out the crowd as we take the stage. Otto drops songs like "Tea Bagging The Dead" and "Subatomic Disco Divas" with the same destructive power as the bombs dropped by Russia so many years before. For Otto, it was a regular occurrence having played Berlin over a dozen times in recent years, but for me it is quite the symbolic experience.

Marching through Berlin were a superhero, Otto, a crazed Cuban-German, and sidekick, Nastie, a fucked up Cuban Jew, spawned from the Bermuda Triangle and representing the M.I.A. with a laptop, an assortment of Circuit Bent gadgetry and a bag of merch. It was a comic book come to life. We are truly on a mission, a mission of musical madness.

original article published here click to visit and please leave a comment

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