FIBER Podcast 025 John Osborn

FIBER Podcast

We have arrived at #25 of the FIBER Podcast series, which calls for something special! Therefore, we are very proud to announce that we can celebrate this jubilee with a two-hour cut from an opening set, recorded live at a recent gig in Berlin, by no other than John Osborn.

“I carefully selected the tracks that I knew would work well for an almost empty floor right up to a full peak time floor. Starting off with deeper floating sounds, slowly sending out a few satellites to see what messages come back, giving me an idea of what route to take next and then eventually fire off the straight up stuff once I have the dancefloor ‘captivated’.”

Having been involved in the scene since 1993 Osborn has a lot of experience and knowledge that enable him to capture the audience with the right ammunition. So what are great influences on his music taste? “There are so many really it’s almost impossible to answer, but I will try, some prominent that spring to mind such as: Plus 8, Sabres of Paradise, DBX, Andrew Weatherall, Alex Knight, Steve Bicknell, Cosmic Records, Dance Mania, Mark Broom, A13, Mo Wax, through the modern stuff such as Workshop, Azuri, Deconstruct, All the NYC crew like Qu, Anthony Parasole, Joey Anderson and Levon. I have to stop this list now! It could literally go on for days haha! – I think you get the drift. I am generally turned on by ‘left-field-outsider rave’. Dance music for me has to be challenging and educating in some way, otherwise the music just becomes stagnant copies of the last big trend.”

The TANSTAAFL label boss naturally also mentions his partners in crime: Julian October Smith, Eric Cloutier and Bill Youngman. The label has been a challenging undertaking for John. “The label TANSTAAFL PLANETS is taking a lot of my time running this, but it is a very rewarding project when the vinyls come back and there is a physical thing in my hands for all the hard work (and money haha!). Running a vinyl record label in todays climate is basically economical suicide, so you really have to love it and be a little stupid I guess.” Forthcoming on the label are the releases by Bill Youngman (March 10) and John Daly.

Furthermore, there is a collaboration EP with Tallmen 785 coming out on Tom Diccico’s label Run Out Run. “it was the first time we ever worked together and under a quite harsh time restriction but the results we’re very pleasing indeed, so pleasing that Tom has requested another EP from us later in the year.” With upcoming DJ gigs in Tokyo and Shanghai (March), San Francisco and New York (May) and more solo work in the pipeline there is much to look out for in the future.

Satellites, planets.. Its clear that space is something that John likes to refer to. When it comes to visual inspiration John mentions visual artist and sculptor Rommelo Yu. “He did what I believe to be one of the best Berghain flyers ever and has a very intelligent mind with the ability to see such intricate & complex things in very simple mundane stuff.” Yu is also working on huge origami style pieces for his next exhibition. “I love how sculptors, for me at least, appear to have this resemblance to sound waves or some kind of ripple in the cosmos.”

For this podcast’s accompanying artwork John chose a photo of Sascha Kleis, who is a photographer for ECM records. “I truly adore the cover work and photography of the contemporary jazz label ECM. The pure enigmatic beauty of modern european traditions such as sans serif typo welded together with ethereal dream-like photography.” So let this exclusive ride of floating house bring you into an ethereal state and come back down when the shutters open and let the light pass through for the straight up dancefloor killers.

Photo: www.saschakleis.de