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The decision to make a live-album from his last booking in Munich’s Harry Klein Club came to Richard Bartz immediately after his performance: “A live-gig like that doesn’t come around every day. The people were crazy. They always wanted more. So I just played wilder and wilder. At the end it was obvious to me: that was so unusual, it has to be released.” And now it’s finally arrived, five years after Richard Bartz very successful first live-album on Cocoon Recordings (“live at amnesia”), in the form of a collaboration between Kurbel and Harry Klein Records – the new label that will be releasing a series of 12″s – entitled “Richard Bartz Live at Harry Klein – Visuals by BettyMü”. The unique selling point: it’s a DVDplus. One side of the disc can be played in a normal CD player; flip it over, and you’ve got a DVD video of the full session, including BettyMü’s visuals and exciting bonus material.

The bonus material is in large part taken from the new tracks from the techno and house producer Richard Bartz. 12 of the 15 songs are previously unreleased. Bartz has remained true to his roots – still providing his fans with the same style that they love him for; he is the master of analogue techno. Bartz doesn’t use any digital sounds – he considers himself to be the “analogue bastion against the army of digital music” – in other words, all those people who make dance music on a laptop without any care or love. Bartz has a whole factory of old and new synthesisers which produce sounds in a modular system. Through his unique production style, he creates his signature roughness, deep but at the same time warm. “I like it, when you can here the electricity flowing through the machines”. That’s a great way to sum up Bartz’s aesthetic. Bartz uses these same effects in his live performances, but lets them run over a computer purely as a matter of simplicity. The sound that Bartz produces is through-and-through old-school, jacking house music. “Naturally I’m primarily influenced by the dirty Chicago sound. That, for me, is perfect dance music. If I produce a song, I’ve always got the right dance moves in my head”. On the DVDplus one appreciates the impressive way in which Bartz builds his sets – by the end of the set there’s a crazy acid-mashup pumping out of the speakers.

“The album is an identical reproduction of the evening. On one side you see the public going crazy, on the other I have worked with BettyMü (who did the visuals on the evening) to push the tempo.” Actually Bartz’s music is only one part of this unique release. Just as important is the visual set from the Munich media-artist BettyMü. Here you see a wide slice of the new art-form of club-visuals: concrete images (a white mouse falling through space is the “leitmotiv” of the performance) mix with abstract animations. The effect is the same as the music: nervous, jaggy, animated and rhythmic. But Bartz considers BettyMü to be much more than just an illustrator for his music: “On this night we communicated our media. I played my music, Betty reacted with the appropriate visuals, and I then played music that repsonded to her visuals”, he explains. On the DVD, BettyMü’s video material is combined with Bartz’s performance: you see Bartz at his decks, Betty at her computers, and of course the public in full flow.

Just like you would expect on a DVD production, “Richard Bartz live at Harry Klein” is packed with bonus material. A one-to-one interview with Bayerischer-Rundfunk reporter Roderich Fabian takes a look back at the high points of his career. But perhaps more exciting for fans of Bartz is his “synth-workshop” – a trip inside his studio with Bartz himself, where he explains the inner workings of his favourite synthesizers, many of which are historic pieces. Richard explains how he turns electricity into music with a hands-on demonstration and a journey into the world of modular sounds. If you weren’t sure about the difference between sine and saw-wave sound forms, now’s your chance to find out – and to discover just how much work is put into each production.

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