FvF Mixtape #137: Hade - Friends of Friends / Freunde von Freunden (FvF)

FvF Mixtape #137: Hade

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Odd Music can be refreshing in times of all electronic club nights. The weird has found a home within the community HADE taps into.

Gewölbe is a Cologne spot well-known for its techno reputation. A genre-mix isn’t something the regular crowd would expect. With series like “Time To:” and “Palms”, Henrik Büren, aka HADE, has established more eclectic events there that work outside the usual 4/4 kick scheme. Something, that could only work with a community eager to experience the more odd sides of music.

  • How did you get into music?

    My parents are musicians, music teachers, and singers so this was an early pathway for me into music. Every day was about music, whether it was their concerts, lessons, the songs their pupils wanted to play, or the mixtapes my dad recorded for our road trips. My parents are mostly rock, pop, and classical listeners, though, so I had to dig on my own when I finished browsing through their collection. But I found some really great stuff in there that I still hold dearly.

  • What was your first musical Revelation?

    When I got my very first keyboard in 1991, a Yamaha PSR-70, and found that I could recreate the sounds that I’d heard on my parents’ records. My father had a home studio with an Atari ST1040 that I used for my own first steps, too, and sometimes he’d take me to his buddy’s bigger studio where I first saw an MPC60, which I was drawn to immediately. Another big influence were the Steve Mason shows on the UK radio station BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Service), which I listened to on the weekends in the mid-1990s.

Tracklist

    • 1 Maria Monti – Il Pavone
    • 2 Apostolis – Sadeness
    • 3 Dr. Phibes – Vachillia
    • 4 Curt Cress – Moon Walk
    • 5 DJ Stefan Egger – Karmapas
    • 6 Yasuaki Shimizu – Blue Suits
    • 7 Saraba – Wande Muso
    • 8 Trinidad Rio – Soca Shango
    • 9 H.A.N.D. 03 – A2
    • 10 Suzanne Menzel – I Feel It Starts Again
    • 11 Milan Pilar – Reconciliation
    • 12 Jean-Michel Herve – Andean’s Shepherd
    • 13 Tony Carey – No. 8
    • 14 Georg Danzer – Es ist so schön ein Schwein zu sein
    • 15 Corky McClerkin – Searchin’ For The Soul

“I’d say that as a music lover and digger you have to be open minded to a lot of genres.”

  • What do you love most about record digging?

    For me, the thrill is finding a great record that is either rare and has been on my want list for a very long time, or is still unknown to me but packed with some nice jams. Often all it takes is one great tune on a record for me to fall in love with it. But, of course, this doesn’t happen every time. Digging for records is like searching for truffles and it comes with a price: you have to go through a lot of bad stuff before finding that one good record. I mostly look for the experimental, local, odd and obscure, private press, or artsy stuff first. Sometimes you’ll find an obscure or rare record in the rock and pop bin that doesn’t belong there because the shop owner didn’t know what to do with it. I’d say that as a music lover and digger you have to be open-minded to a lot of genres to really find great, yet still unearthed, music. Talking about beloved records with like-minded people is important to me, too. So, together with my buddy Owns, I started a radio show on Duesseldorf’s Callshop Radio. It’s called Finds /w Fiends and we invite people to talk about and play their recent finds.

  • As a party and events host in Cologne, what is the most memorable event you hosted and why?

    I have to admit that I only started hosting parties in 2016, so I’m still pretty new to this compared to other colleagues who have been doing this for ten years or more. My buddy, the DJ Phil Morris, already had a club night at Gewölbe, but he wanted to go into a different musical direction, so he reached out to me and together we created Time To:. Since then we’ve had many really great nights but the one that stands out the most for me was the first time we had Hunee over who played a really beautifully wild and genre-spanning ride from 90-140 BPM and back again. The club was packed to the brim and there wasn’t one moment where the guests didn’t dance or have a good time.

Henrik’s first instrument, a Yamaha PSR-70 was a door opener into music for him.
  • Let us in a bit on the music scene in Cologne. What’s interesting there now? Where should people who are interested in music go?

    Unfortunately Cologne, like any other big city, isn’t safe from institutions and club legends having to close down due to gentrification. And over the last ten years that I’ve been living here we’ve lost a lot of great clubs, bars, and spaces. But thankfully there are still many good people around with their hearts in the right places that keep on doing the right thing. If you’re looking for interesting music, here are a few names you should have on your list: Acéphale, Gold+Beton, dublab.de, Cologne Sessions and great record stores like Groove Attack, A Musik or Black Diamond Records. Another good thing is that Duesseldorf is only a 30 minute trip away from Cologne and, thanks to now-closed digging scene fixtures like Salon Des Amateurs and Cologne’s venue Stecken, both cities have grown together more and more when it comes to an ‘anything goes’ approach to DJing.

  • Why did you choose the tracks in your playlist?

    The tracks I picked for this mix are a blend of current finds, rediscoveries and long-time favorites. I wanted to paint a picture that describes best what music we like to play at Time To: or Palms, and also to have a ‘listen-at-home-mix’ for the cold days. It’s a bit of everything ranging from Italian Prog Rock, New Beat, and Japanese Downtempo over German-produced Afro-Synthpop, to Austrian Boogie and rare Soul-Jazz.

HADE hosts a radio broadcast called “Finds w/ Fiends” on Düsseldorf’s Callshop Radio. It’s about the passion of digging and exchanging thoughts on recent vinyl finds with like-minded people. Check out more playlists compiled exclusively for FvF in our Mixtape section.

Text: Fabian Ebeling
Photography: Henrik Büren

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