Tour Diary: Marc Romboy & Stephan Bodzin

Tour Diary: Marc Romboy & Stephan Bodzin

21 September, 2011 | 7.15AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: marc romboy, stephan bodzin, systematic, tour diary

Way back in March, Marc Romboy and Stephan Bodzin packed up their gear bags, said goodbye to their loved ones, and embarked upon the “Luna” tour, a massive undertaking (in celebration of their equally massive collaborative album, Luna) that took them from North America to Paris to Moscow to Israel and beyond.

Despite the exhaustion that comes with the late nights and missed flights, Romboy kept a detailed diary of the entire tour. (Granted, it took him several months to submit a draft, and it took your humble Beatportal editor another couple of months to edit it—but then, since one of the stops on the tour doubled as a Christmas party in April, the delays seem par for the course.)

Read on for Romboy’s account of their epic sojourn, from the persistence of sound-check nightmares to the triumph of his beloved Borussia Mönchengladbach. (The text is rounded out with photographs from additional parties at Kharkov’s Radmir Expo Hall and Stuttgart’s Rocker 33.) Bringing us up to the present moment, he wraps it up with a recap of last week’s unforgettable party at Berghain.

Electric Pickle, Miami, Florida - March 10, 2011

Welcome to Miami…

The second show of our tour takes place in Miami, Florida, during the Winter Music Conference! We have the great occasion to direct our own party at the Electric Pickle in downtown, which is out of the question one of the coolest venues there.

Our friends Sleepy & Boo from Basic NYC, Nicolas Masseyeff, and Andreas Henneberg support us during the night and although we have some little problems with the sound check and condition on stage, the party becomes a special and intimate happening, and we have the feeling that mainly Miami residents are joining us and not really spring-break people.

A big thank you to Imbar from Electric Pickle who helped us make our live show work, and to Max and Thorsten from Redbull TV who recorded us during our three-day stay there. Here you can see the documentary by them on Youtube:

Afterhour Circus, Montreal, Canada - March 11, 2011

It’s time to leave warm and sunny Florida in order to proceed to Montreal, the first Canadian stop of the tour. After a never-ending flight of almost four hours we pass through the immigration without any problems and meet Ali Dubfire at the exit of the terminal. Well, the competition is pretty tough tonight: Dubfire and also Sasha are playing in Montreal, but hey, it’s a large metropolitan city with plenty of party people who are hungry for phatt beats!

We directly drive to the Circus Afterhours venue and wow, what a great location this place is. The sound system is really HIFI alike and mind-blowing. The sound check takes us three hours; problems with the analogue machines who apparently don’t like the power condition of North America, and due to our tiredness we confound two different power cables so that the USB hub gets damaged, WTF!

Nevertheless we finally did it, with the help of the entire stuff of the club, who drove four times to a computer shop in order to purchase some items for us, thanx again for this.

The show is super great, a wonderful payoff for all the efforts and stress we have had! After the 90-minute live show we play another three-and-a-half-hour DJ set, sometimes hard, sometimes groovy and deep, a roller-coaster ride with a great end, Larry Heard’s “Sun Can’t Compare.” We see only smiling faces…

Footwork Bar, Toronto, Canada - March 12, 2011

Alright, it’s time for one of our favorite places on the globe, Toronto and its legendary club Footwork Bar, where we already played a couple of solo shows during the last years. This place means a lot to us as the parties always turned out to be intense and outstanding. Alex and the entire stuff are very friendly and supportive and the sound check is much better and less stressful than the day before.

It’s a pretty funny story that Alex has lived in the German town Essen for a long time, a while ago. You must know that there is one of the most influential and oldest record shops, called Important Records, and no surprise that we narrate us all the funny stories about this shop and its people. Yeah, the world is a village, we determine once again.

The show was simply mad, bananas, intangible!!! We arrive at one o’clock and the venue is so packed that even a little mouse cannot get in anymore. You will have a laugh now, but this is how we say it in Germany, sure thing that English native speaking people have a different expression for this, ha ha! Pure enthusiasm and devotion of everyone, the crowd and ourselves!

Again we add a B2B DJ set to the live show, which takes a couple of hours. We return to our hotel rooms, extremely weary but endlessly happy. We swear to each other not to leave our beds until one hour prior to pickup for the airport, but around noon we decide to make a little shopping tour and purchase some cool shirts and shoes. If you are in Toronto you’ll have to do this!

Rex, Paris, France - March 19, 2011

We have had three days to recover at home, and now it’s all about the Rex in Paris, the legendary place, our only show in France!

Antoine, the organizer of the Skryptom parties, picks us up at Charles De Gaulle airport, and the car trip to the club takes us almost two hours, although you could drive this distance within 30 minutes without traffic. The sound check is full of different problems, especially the fact that we cannot connect our four iPads and three laptops, wireless drives us almost crazy. After a while we presume that the WI-FI net of the Rex cinema center next door could cause the problem, and we ask the technician to ask the cinema to switch off the WI-FI. The chance that they will agree is maybe 5%, but to our huge surprise they agree, and, believe it or not, it’s the reason for our connection troubles. Please check this movie here to see how happy we are as soon as everything works. A moment full of happiness and easement! Ah, by the way, the party was a killer, he he!

Arma 17, Moscow, Russia - March 20, 2011

No sleep, no relaxation, no choice. We can only stay at the wonderful Mama Shelter hotel for one more hour, before we have to proceed to Moscow, which we reach in the early evening. The great club Arma 17, a former industrial hall, has booked us for a special festival where our buddy Jin Choi from Berlin is also booked. The immigration takes a little while as we are waiting at the wrong queue first, but once we see the impressive venue we are happy again, simply great and professional treatment by the staff! The sound check progresses easily and quickly so that we finally get some sleep. The live show and following B2B DJ set make the people and us very happy, everything is top. Only the cold and snowy white weather makes us shiver, nothing else.

U Street Music Hall, Washington, DC - March 25, 2011

It’s a funny coincidence to play in Washington after having a show in Moscow before, something which maybe was impossible 25 years ago when the iron curtain between the USA and USRR was still existing. It’s Thursday and we enter the U Street Music Hall, a cute, mid-size club in the heart of America’s capitol. After giving up the plan to have dinner at the restaurant where Barak Obama frequently orders his XXL cheeseburger, we have to direct a long and painful sound check with many little annoying problems which, however, are not caused by the club. Our analogue synthesizer MFB Nanozwerg is not in the mood to play any tone, so we have to play without this essential machine, which adds a certain, warm sound to the entire setup of our show. What can we do? Nothing. Although the venue isn’t what we call packed, the show turns out nicely and people are having lots of fun. After the show we talk to many fellows and receive a lot of respectful and heartening words.

Rain Theatre, El Paso, USA - March 26, 2011

We cannot have a presentiment of how straining, crazy, but at the end, wonderful the day of March the 21st would become. After a delay of one hour of our flight from Washington to Houston we are happy that the plane is about to take off, finally. The plane speeds up with it’s incredible powerful nozzles and out of the blue, on second before take-off it slows down testily. The captain talks to us after 20 minutes of uncertainty and lets us know that there is a technical problem which might be fixed within the next two hours. Six hours later, we arrive in Houston, where we imploringly hope to get the two last seats in order to proceed to El Paso, where the venue with 1.000 people is sold out for a couple of weeks already. After an endless wait, we receive the last two tickets on the last flight to the town in Texas, close to the Mexican city Juarez. We arrive at 11 p.m., just look at each other and without talking any word we both know how exhausted we are. We enter the venue at midnight through the backstage entrance and the first thing we see, funnily enough, is a glass cabinet including many different cowboy boots in various colors and styles. What the hell is normally going on here? Western parties? Surreal. When we enter the stage the venue is already hot, packed and we feel how people are awaiting our show. It’s the first and, thank God, last time we have to build up our entire equipment and machines without any sound check and high time pressure. Yes, sure, every DJ always writes how fantastic the night is, but hey, there is no other expression than outstanding, intense and crazy! The crowd goes totally bananas and we are more than happy that this day comes to a happy end!

Global Warming, Tel Aviv, Israel - April 19, 2011

After cool shows in the Ukrainian city Kharkov, Freiburg, Basel, and Heidelberg, with wonderful moments and much less stressful traveling, we realize for the first time that the our project is already about to come to its end before it actually begins. Twelve days, including gigs in Israel, the Netherlands, Munich, Cologne, Mayday and London are waiting for us, and in a way it’s the final countdown. The outdoor festival Global Warming takes place outside of Tel Aviv, approximately 90 minutes by car, in a field in the middle of nowhere. We are very much looking forward to meet our friends D-Nox and Beckers, and the show in front of the full moon becomes a special meaning to us—which doesn’t really surprise when you call your album and tour “Luna.”

Huize Maas, Groningen, The Netherlands - April 21, 2011

Besides El Paso, there is no other show where you can find more posts on Twitter and Facebook. People in Groningen seem to like our music a lot, because the venue is already sold out a couple of weeks before the date. There is another reason why it’s a special date—because 15 of our friends who work at the Mönchengladbach nightclub Die Nacht (Hello and thanx to Babak for making this possible!) are also attending in Groningen because they celebrate their Xmas staff party with a little delay. Our warm up DJ is Martin aka Harde Baas, a crazy but polite fellow, who, believe it or not, has a tattoo of Stephan’s “Liebe ist...” album artwork on his arm. He delivers a tasteful three-hour set to the audience before we begin. After 90 minutes live, more than three hours B2B DJ set, and countless extra songs, we close the venue at some point of time in the early morning.

Harry Klein, Munich, Germany - April 23, 2011

We have very much looked forward to this date because it has always been a huge pleasure for both of us to spin at “Harry,” from our point of view, one of the bests clubs on the globe. After a cool and quick sound check without any problems, and the news that Marc’s football club Borussia Moenchengladbach has beaten Borussia Dortmund, we have dinner with Peter, the owner, and Benna, the booker and resident DJ. Traditional Bavarian cuisine, delicious! Harry Klein has changed its location one year ago and is now based in the city centre, not far away from the main station. The acoustic condition is “par excellence” because the club is built inside a so-called “room in room” concept, so that the music cannot be heard outside the club. When you are standing still on the dance floor you realize that it’s vibrating like during an earthquake, really weird but funny! Almost superfluous to mention how great the night develops, that is to say more than awesome!

Mayday, Dortmund, Germany - April 30, 2011

Time is running like crazy, the weekend with the two last shows is waiting for us. After a car ride from the airport of Düsseldorf (a great one by the way) to Dortmund, including many traffic jams, we arrive only one hour before the doors are opening. Pooh, what a stress today. However, the sound check including our traditional “sound check beer” goes swiftly, and, great news, the soccer club Borussia Mönchengladbach wins once again. The impossible and unexpected thing will happen one week later: they will stay in the first league.

Back to Mayday. This party is the oldest techno festival in Germany; we call it the mother of techno parties. It was December 14, 1991 (yes, this is not a mistake) when we were standing in front of the doors of the first part of this rave. It took place in Berlin, the East part, a location called Halle Weissensee, which is not existing anymore. On the lineup you could find people like Sven Väth, Jeff Mills, The Hypnotist (R.I.P.), Dave Angel and of course the founder Of Mayday, Westbam! Our friends and us were one of the first people entering this party back in 1991, and it’s needless to mention how much it means to us to play a show at its 20th anniversary!

Our 60 minutes playing time feels like a couple of minutes, and we are very happy but also tired, to be honest. It’s a nice feeling that our wives Luna and Natascha are with us. The people are screaming “Zugabe,” and we would love to play another track which we prepared for especially this kind of occasion, but the timetable is accurate and the organizers explain us that we cannot do this. What a pity....

Fabric, London, UK - May 1, 2011

The time has come! Time to say goodbye. But of course only when it comes to our sweet unique little “Luna” tour! Are there many greater and better clubs than Fabric London to close one’s tour? Of course not… Jacob, Peter and Comac from Wet Yourself have invited us to play at their party together with Miss Kittin! This show in room 2 becomes one of the best gigs during the tour. Many friends have come to the club and we play much smoother and deeper than we did at Mayday. We can really feel the vibe, how much the roughly 500 people are into the sounds and rhythms, and it luckily becomes a wonderful finale we will never forget! The night ends at the backstage area with all DJs and friends and plenty of relaxed nonsense “bla bla” talk. The show is over, so it’s time for a new show…

Postscript: Berghain, Berlin, Germany – September 10, 2011

We have actually decided to keep the “Luna” tour unique and limited when it comes to the time period, but just at the end of the tour, a request from Berlin’s techno Mecca Berghain arrived, so that clinched it for us to play one bonus concert. To make something special of it, we planned to play a hybrid show of our actual live setup and a B2B DJ set in between. When we arrive at the venue, the queue in front of the door seems to be endless, and inside it’s already packed. The sound system, although it’s a former industrial hall, is pretty warm, powerful and HI-FI alike, so that you can easily remove your earplugs without getting ear-damaged. The show is simply mind-blowing, one of our very best concerts when it comes to our performance, but in fact the vibe is thanks to the entire audience and the venue itself. Really an atmosphere you cannot describe with writing or talking, you simply have to experience this club yourself…

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