Dubfire

Oliver Huntemann Looks Back on 5 Years of Ideal Audio

Darren Ressler Leave a Comment

Oliver Huntemann

When Hamburg’s Oliver Huntemann united with kindred techno spirit Dubfire in 2008 for “Dios” issued on his newly launched Ideal Audio, the breakthrough minimal collaboration scratched the surface of the sonic terrain his imprint would go on to explore. Five years later Ideal Audio have an array of choice tracks to its credit, and in the wake of countless musical trends and fads has remained true to its roots and sound. This month the venerable technocrat takes a much deserved victory lap in the form of Oliver Huntemann presents 5ünf – Five Years Ideal Audio compilation, a two-part affair featuring Future tracks from Joran van Pol, dubspeeka, Extrawelt and Hatzler, and a second part dubbed Past continuously mixed by André Winter featuring deep, minimal cuts by Andreas Henneberg, The Glitz and Sebastian Radlmeier. We caught up with Huntemann and asked him to share his five favorite moments of running Ideal Audio over the past half decade.

Oliver Hunteman’s 5 Favorite Moments from 5 Years of Ideal Audio

1. The release of Ideal catalogue number one “Dios” by Dubfire and myself. Just started and such a success.

2. Recording of my PLAY! 04 mix compilation in Melbourne. Crazy party at Roxanne Parlour during the Future Music Festival Australia tour.

3. Finding out that obviously nobody in the music industry has used Ideal as a name for a label before. I couldn’t believe that, and I still can’t. Lucky me!

4. Our 5ünf record release party at Uebel & Gefährlich in Hamburg. Ten hours full of energy in my hometown and great DJ sets from dubspeeka and Joran van Pol.

5. Working on the 5ünf – Five Years Ideal Audio release. It took a while but I had a intense good time in 2013 while discussing, planning and creating the CD together with all our artists and the label staff.

Photek, RJD2, Nero Raise the Roof at Together Festival

Dave Wedge Leave a Comment

The weeklong Together festival took another step forward with a dizzying week of concerts, parties, workshops and film showings that drew an estimated 20,000 fans to dozens of venues across Boston and Cambridge.

With an impressive lineup that included Photek, Dubfire, Nero, Starkey, Poirier and RJD2 (pictured above), to name a few, the festival — now in its third year — forged several new partnerships with top EDM labels that bodes well for the event moving forward. Tastemaking labels !K7 and Ninja Tune threw showcases while Astralwerks used the festival for its New England premier of The Chemical Brothers’ acclaimed new concert film, Don’t Think.

“Execution, attendance and affiliations (with labels) put us at a whole new level in the pantheon of music festivals,” organizer David Day said. “We’re starting to reach a Sonor or Mutek and we want to be in that conversation of great city festivals. We want to pride ourselves on doing really innovative stuff. We want to be an international festival and we’re a year away from that.”

Organizers estimate that more than 12,000 fans attended parties and concerts at more than 30 venues, while thousands streamed in and out of the Together headquarters all week to attend technology panels, participate in workshops, grab free swag and watch more than 70 local, national and international DJs spinning sets that were livestreamed globally.

Together also shifted its headquarters across the Charles River to Central Square in Boston’s sister city of Cambridge, where officials welcomed the event with open arms and pledged even broader support next year.

Among the highlights were Kill the Noise and Feed Me at Royale, Joe Nice and Kahn at ThinkTank, Poirier and Mala at Good Life, New Orleans’ Big Freedia at Brighton Music Hall and Photek at Machine.

“Hearing his incredible breadth of knowledge in the mix was awesome,” Day said of Photek, whose set was completely packed. “He dropped a couple classics, dropped some brand, new bass music stuff and kind of got it on. That was a great night.”

The Together Center was open for 10 days and the event wrapped up Sunday with a closing party headlined by RJD2. After catching up on some sleep, Day said he’s already thinking about ideas to expand for next year.

“We’re really excited to keep going,” he said.

Image by MGMphoto