This one's out today - with big thanks to Patrick Pulsinger and the people at Sydney's Hypnotic Room Special Edition imprint.
Patrick harks from Austria, and being Australian myself, I always had a special affinity for the breed since we're continually mistaken for one another when we travel overseas, despite the variant native language and wildly different lengths of history. Besides, one of my favorite films is The Third Man, shot in late '40s Vienna.
My own interest in Patrick Pulsinger, however, has different origins.
From 1994 I had a radio show on community station 3PBS FM in Melbourne. It was called 'Cyberdada', and it was my other baby aside from my record label IF?, and in 1995 the most-played record on the show - amidst awesome 12-inches and tapes of stuff from Relief, Axis, Tresor, Trope, Sativae, Mosquito, Ninja Tune, Force Inc. (and IF?) - was actually a double-CD from Austrian label, Cheap Records.
The title? 90 Minutes in the Eyes of iO. It was produced by label bosses Patrick Pulsinger and Erdem Tunakan, with mates.
The release quite literally decked me, and Pulsinger has continued on as a mainstay influence in my own musical reference palette ever since, via the Austrian producer's own output (on labels like Disko B, Compost, Studio !K7, R&S, and International DJ Gigolo), as well as some of his brilliant remixes of people like DJ Hell, Chicks On Speed, Tosca, Tanzmusik and Ken Ishii. He certainly seems to have an eerie knack for a shnazzy remix.
Which brings us up-to-scratch - and my own somewhat cantankerous Funk Gadget project persona.
There's a Funk Gadget track I recently did called 'Blah Blah', which owes a great deal to the inimitable Paul Birken, and when it came to choosing a remixer for the track, Pulsinger's name was at the very top of the list.
Why? Because the man continues to do my head in, in completely cool Pulsingerian ways, a decade and a half after I first heard his mischief.
"I had a good feeling about the track and an instant idea for a remix," he says now, after having finished off the grand master challenge (it was released yesterday through Hypnotic Room Special Edition on July 10).
"Since the original has a good, funky rhythm track, I tried to keep that and give it a more four-to-the-floor approach. The klonky stuff is all cut-up from the original; I just added a Juno and a Moog Bass, and here you are. I was aiming at people who go out to clubs, listen, dance, enjoy a big bass, a drink, a smoke, nice company, are nice to animals, love peace - that sort of thing!"
