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11/27/2005: "chelonis."

I'm going to try to move the discussion on this blog in a happier direction, so take your protein pills, put your helmets on, and let's go back to Berlin for a little adventure.

Over the summer I visited the Get Physical label offices, conveniently located about a ten-minute walk from my apartment. The offices are at the end of a tiny, nondescript street, off of a massive avenue called Schönhauser Allee. Near the end of your journey to their offices, you will most likely pass by this mural, which is the most electro mural I have ever seen!


It's electro! It's house! It's...electro-house!

I was heading there to meet and interview the mysterious Chelonis R. Jones for the mysterious German newspaper die tageszeitung. I get a bit lost on my way to the interview. Aha! I've found it! I get to the street and look for a sign. Surely there's a sign for the offices...



Hmm. I think this is the wrong sign. (I found that sign in San Francisco.)

Aha! This must be the place!



The Booka Shade crew opens the door. I hook a right and there's Chelonis R. Jones himself, looking sharp. Here's the short story with Chelonis: He paints and writes and makes records that you can dance to and brood to. He's a lovely guy. He's a little shy, and he speaks very quietly and deliberately and intelligently. Chelonis grew up in Los Angeles and New York, and he's been living in Europe for the past several years. The article I wrote about Chelonis is here, and yes it's in German I'm afraid. If you run it through Google Translator you get some hilariously amazing off-the-wall statements that I wish I'd written, like: "Because the electronic dance music of these days actually offers little area for feelings of the confusion unity, the fear or the in the long runness. Techno and House work within the quite close framework of a Four ton the floor Funktionalismus, for which it is perfectly sufficient, the party to rocken. To bring out the more amazingly that Jones found accomodation with GET Physical, a label, which understood in the past two years like hardly another, at the same time glitzernde and bolzende party TRACKS - for the Partylifestyle, which this music suggests, seems to Jones one too fragil." And just think--now Google is doing books too! Incredible!

Here's a picture of Chelonis. I have no idea who the other person is in the photo!



More to come...