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We met in 2017 at the event Tryscal Techno Night in Haarlem and from the first moment on we couldn’t stop talking. We had quite some laughs and not much later I interviewed Maikel van Orsouw a.k.a. Kipa about his first gig. “There were no strong restrictions on alcohol consumption yet.”
“So suddenly you are chatting with DJMag.nl and not much further into the conversation that is full of intersections and parallel roads, from parties to artists, I am asked about the first time. By now I’ve reached an age where I don’t choke easily anymore, but for a first meeting, such as at a fun techno party, it seemed a bit blunt.” (laughs)
Spinning black discs
“It soon became clear that this was about my first-time spinning. And spinning, in my case, is quite literal with spinning, usually black discs made of vinyl. How did that work out? What can I say about it? The time is long gone when vinyl was the only option to play with – next to a pitch-controlled cassette deck or your 8-bit sampler with ditto drum computer.”
Vain
“I’m not going to mention a date or year of my first gig. I’m too vain for that. What I will say is that there were no strong restrictions on alcohol consumption yet. Not that it mattered very much, since everything was so ‘illegal’ that nothing was looked at.”
Illegal party
“Anyway, first time spinning meant I got to open at an illegal party. It was also the invention of breakbeats and drum&bass. Which I am the inventor of!” (laughs)
The beginning of breakbeat
“After fifteen minutes I was offered a bottle of beer from under the DJ booth. I accepted this and in the same movement the bottle thundered on one of the wheels of steel. That’s where breakbeat started, which can hardly be otherwise, since after a deafening noise the audience cheered and applauded enormously.”
Wet vinyl
“After I had gratefully received all the praise from about sixty or seventy people, I coldly put on another record, so that I could immediately check the battered turntable. This one still worked perfectly. The vinyl had gotten wet, so the needle skipped here and there.”
Dry mouth
“After this beautiful break in the rather clumsy set, I finished a bad set with a dry mouth and stiff with fear. Still, I got a nice round of applause afterwards and several people said: ‘Oh, that can happen to the best’. At a young age after the beer incident, I felt especially insecure and certainly not the best. Not at that time.”
“Now I’m a bit further and I organize my own parties with Technostate.inc. Usually I also take care of the technology which I want to arrange as well as possible for the artists. Their gear, recordings and space in the booth. And well, anyone who knows me knows that I yell at other DJs in the DJ booth: ‘No liquids near the gear!’ So I did learn something from that first time.” (laughs)
This interview with Kipa is originally published in December 2017 on DJMag.nl.