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Charlie Whizz & Chris Kick
Charlie Whizz was born on the 14th of October 1976, Chris
Kick on the 23rd of January in 1977. Both lived in the same
small town, called “Hameln” (greetings to Pied
Piper), near Hannover in the North of Germany. They both left
for Hamburg in the mid 90s. Hameln was not a very good place
for musical inspiration. In the early 90s most German clubs
in the county side only played crappy commercial dance floor
like Dr Alban, Snap, Captain Hollywood and some David Hassel
off rubbish. Exceptions were Milk! In Mannheim and several
underground clubs in Berlin, too few to get the hype going
properly.
Both knew each other since they were toddlers, as they were
neighbours being best friends over all those years. From 1982
till 1990 Charlie’s parents forced him to take part
in piano lessons by a family friend who was the organ player
at the local church, so the lessons weren’t much fun.
Chris finished his apprenticeship and became cook and chef.
Charlie was doing an apprenticeship as a bank clerk and left
this branch as fast as he could.
In the late 80s Charlie moved from his school in Hameln to
a boarding school 100 (or 40?) miles away from home. So the
friendship to his schoolmate Chris suffered somewhat for 3
years. In 1991, he made a trip to England with his class to
Eastbourne near Brighton. There was a club called “Elite”,
and looking back in time, visiting this club was one of the
most important moments of his life. He saw a foreign dancing
crowd with white gloves in a full up-light atmosphere dancing
to foreign rhythms with an unbelievable never-heard-before
sound system, “I can still feel this deep kicking bass
in my belly, as if it was yesterday”. On stage played
a live PA “can’t remember the name but today I
am proper sure who it was when I analyse the style of my first
productions from these days, laughing”.
From this moment on he fell in love with the electronic music
scene in the UK. The style of music and the whole harmonic
atmosphere without posers and tarts was a whole new experience..
“Still puts a smile on my face”. “It was
so different from German clubs..”.
When he returned to Germany, he felt there was a big hole
in his life. The UK was such a long way away, (Ryan Air was
not invented yet, smile). He bought his first MKIIs and a
small mixer and started mixing his first hardcore tunes imported
from the UK, it was so difficult to get that kind of music
then, because you didn’t have the money, connections
or alternatives to vinyl. A time without mp3s, internet, UMTS,
whatever… “I can’t remember but I don’t
think e-mail was developed for private users”. On the
other hand, it was an exciting time. When you listened to
a DJ set at a party and you fell in love with a special tune,
you had to try to see the same DJ again somewhere and hope
he would play the tune again…
Later, you had the chance to record some of the music when
listening to radio shows like “Steve Mason’s Experience”
on BFBS, a radio show broadcasted in Germany for the British
Forces. Mason’s show on Saturday nights presented the
freshest cuts from the island and some top tunes of the world,
they broadcasted sets of Carl Cox, Top Buzz, Hype etc., and
played a top ten of the rave and dance charts with all the
best current tunes which had just come out on vinyl.
But, where have all these inventive, creative sets with mad
scratching and cutting sessions that used to drive us nuts,
gone? Today, many “star“ DJs play the same stuff
because everybody has access to the same shit, it takes only
a few clicks to get a rare tune and it’s all available
on the market. “For that reason Whizzkick saved their
tunes for live gigs: if somebody wants to listen to our music
he will have to come and see us live..” Now, after making
the decision to drop out some tunes on vinyl, we will still
save some of our tunes just for the stage and never bring
them out… some wicked ones like Whizzkick’s “Looking
out my window” amen-remix (feat. Evenson Allen Ratpack)
or “Sandstorms to max” –remix. If you wanna
hear these, you must come and see us on stage.
Their musical routes are influenced by late 80s Hip Hop,
Depeche Mode, even Rock’n Roll – the sound of
Charlie’s Harley driving Dad, the man who introduced
him to decades of rock and the psychedelic years - quite similar
to our generation: another musical revolution with wide open
doors for rushing emotions like Pink Floyd. But those beats
were almost all the same and the technology revolution in
the 80s gave everything a new shape, especially the possibilities
of beats editing, cutting, filtering, effecting, the next
generation of music was born… “and we wanted to
take part in it”.
In Germany you didn’t get a chance to buy breakbeat
stuff from Britain, no access to the internet in those days
and a phone call to England was an expensive adventure…
Meanwhile, in Germany there was a new hype about a sound called
“Rave” (German Rave that is, which was fast melodic
4tothefloor stuff, sometimes with a little breakbeat in the
background, around 160 – 170 bpm). That was a little
more like this UK hardcore style (okay… 30 bpm faster,
which is a fucking lot), but the rave scene in Germany rose
incredibly and the music developed its own soul. A lot of
energy and rushin’ breakdowns in it. “So, we finally
had something different to the boring progressive house &
techno music which was huge in Germany in those years”.
At last, there was a sound called “gabber”, the
very special vibe from the Cloggies. “We really enjoyed
partying to that music and travelled a couple of times to
some Dutch hardcore events, huge atmosphere”…
Charlie: “I loved almost any kind of music, especially
the hard distorted sounds of gabber/hardcore, but could only
get this special rush with UK hardcore, dominating break beats
on anthemic hoover sounds, uplifting piano breakdowns…
and this deep bass in your face, making breathing impossible.
That was our thing - our rhythm, heart and soul, the destination.
We didn’t need anything but music, raves and good people
around us. Love, peace, and harmony - anybody of you who remembers
will know what that meant in those days, it was the only law
for the party generation. Hated these posh wankers on parties
who only came to pose and fuck up…”
Charlie bought his first equipment in 1989, a Kawai K4 Synthesizer.
He started to play in a band as a keyboarder. Later he bought
a PC and program called X-Tracker, a really cheap sequencing
software, that was around in 1992. So he found a new style
with his mate Daniel “Smurf”, the first steps
into electronic music… a project called “Ruff&Tuff”
was born. Some time after finishing the first 8 tracks, Charlie
& Smurf had their first live PA. They performed at the
famous “Strictly Breakbeats” Events in the legendary
halls of the Hanomag venue in Hanover, a place twice the size
of both venues of the Sanctuary in Milton Keynes together.
The biggest raves from 1992 -1998 in Hanover took place in
that venue, after 2000 it was closed. History in the making,
too…
After the first PA’s, Charlie knew that a PC with one
keyboard is not enough to come up with a good sound. He needed
some more equipment for cutting up breakbeats and working
with samples..
When travelling from rave to rave in 1992-1994, he met his
old friend Chris again and both started having a great time
at parties. Partying all over Germany, and later the UK they
came up with the idea of a new live PA. Whizzkick was born.
Both raided their bank accounts and bought the first studio
equipment, a Tascam DAT Machine, 2 studio monitors, a Behringer
MX2642 MixingDesk and some perepheries.
They started to job around the clock but that was not enough:
“Our biggest dream was to get an emulator e-4 K, a hell
of sampler in those times, and a hell of a price to buy: 8000,00
DM (2.800,00 GBP).
So Chris used his last savings, and Charlie asked his Dad
for support, and after pleading and begging for some months,
working nearly every day and night in a video shop in Hameln,
they earned enough money to make this dream come true. An
emulator e4k. that was “state of the art” keyboard
sampler with an unbelievable 128 MB of RAM and a 1 GB ROM
hard disc, what a laugh.. nowadays, you can not even run one
software synthesizer with these features. Times are changing…
so fast, that is now easy to make quality music with little
money and no connections. Which is good, because music makes
people come together.
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