I’m so glad you made it!
My name is Niklas, I live in Berlin, and you might know me as “DJ Fucks Himself” depending on how you came across this page. I love music, and I also love reading and writing about music.
On this blog, I want to create an archive of texts dedicated to specific records that have had an impact on me. My goal is to use these texts to not only dive into what makes these records special on a musical level, what their relationship is to certain genres and movements and whatever, but to talk about what makes them special to me. Where did I play it out first? Who showed it to me? What godforsaken Berlin flea market did I find it at while still awake after some mediocre party?
Ideally, I’d love this blog to be part anecdotes, part passionate pleas to hit play on that YouTube-embed, part reflections on the “scene” and part incentive for me to stalk some 90s producers on LinkedIn or wherever they are now. And if you’re one of the 30 people worldwide to whom that sounds like a good time, I’m really psyched to have you on board.
Before diving in further, let me address the question on everyone’s mind: “A blog? What is it, 2011?”
No, it’s not 2011 unfortunately
In short: Sure, why not! I know that in 2011 I was definitely spending way more time reading about music than I do now. I love the medium. I believe there is too little music writing around nowadays, especially about things that aren’t “current thing”. And I feel like writing little subjective texts about records is the best way for me to engage with other nerds who love this kind of stuff, even if it’s just 10 other people. And for me it sure beats “Hey Guys”-ing my way through some vertical video content – though please don’t call me a hypocrite if I still do that.
I used to write about music for a few magazines back in the 2010’s when I had aspirations to make a living as a music journalist. Sadly, that didn’t work out due to my lack of organisation and dedication (smoking tons of hash every day probably didn’t help). Once I faced the fact that I was not going to be hired for one of the 20-ish culture journalism jobs left in the country I withdrew not only from the writing, but also partially from what had instilled that vision in the first place: reading exciting texts about exciting music.
It’s not like it was a conscious decision, more that I felt freed from the burden of an ambition that forced me to keep up with the most recent Miley Cyrus thinkpieces. With record digging becoming more of a focus because of DJ gigs picking up, and my own music production, event organising and label work taking more and more time towards the end of that decade, I left the music longread by the wayside and rarely looked back. Until last year, when at a posh Hamburg wine bar, I was recommended the fine dining blog trois etoiles.
On paper this wasn’t supposed to be too exciting for me. I like nice food and good restaurants as much as the next guy, but I was never curious or wealthy enough to really dip my toes deep into the world of Michelin stars and snobby reviews — and yet I became fully obsessed with this bougie review blog about Michelin-starred restaurants. For a full weekend I was fully caught up in reading about food I’d likely never taste or afford, but that wasn’t the point. The point was discovering this treasure trove of text that passionately divulged all this highly specific information while staying strictly subjective.
It threw me back to a world in which I spent each day devouring nerdy Blogspot posts and forum threads on highly obscure 70s records. The experience of getting fully sucked into a blog of all things lit a certain fire in me again, and it gave me hope for the medium in general. If I could become obsessed with reading hundreds of restaurant reviews, maybe at some point in the future someone would enjoy stumbling over my texts – especially given that there really isn’t an infinite amount of writing about the kinds of music I like on the internet – and spend a weekend slurping up my texts about obscure records?
Around the same time another big inspiration entered the picture: I became an avid reader of Joe Delon’s newsletter. To be honest, I had not been familiar with his work as a DJ or curator or his label Welt Discos, but I think someone shared his mention of a certain release on Twitter or IG, and I just entered my email address and became a follower, because why not, I already have 13.101 unread emails currently, might as well add some more to the pile. I can’t put my finger on what it is, but I became completely enamoured with his approach to writing about music and DJing.
The first thing that caught me was his honesty. I think I have become so used to the Instagram way of “wow guys what was that thanks so much for that incredible energy”-ing your way through even the shittiest experiences, that Delon transparently talking about the highs as well as the lows of existing in that field, even mentioning his own failings, is incredibly refreshing. On a related note, he writes about all of these amazing gigs he gets to play in such a humble and plain way that it demystifies them at the same time as reminding you what’s really great about nightlife: Listening to sick tracks on a good system with all of your friends at once. Making new friends. Delicious cocktails. The tech actually working as expected. And yet, no matter how hard Delon tries through his humble demeanor, he can’t downplay how knowledgeable he is about music.
Not only have I stolen so many great tracks from his newsletter, but through his descriptions of other people’s sets, or him mentioning a track that appears to be buzzing at the moment, I get the feeling that I know what’s actually happening in his corner of music world. If I can rip off his schtick only a little bit and give some people a similar feeling, I’ll have happily achieved what I wanted to achieve with this.
Other honorable Mentions
The Blogosphere ca. 2008-2015: In the heyday of Blogspot, Rapidshare, Megaupload and forums I spent every day browsing obscure blogs to download rips of rare library records, oddball jazz and forgotten funk — and also to read what people had to say about it. There were so many of them, and I have forgotten most. Aquarium Drunkard comes to mind, Voodoo Funk, or the librarymusicthemes forum. Most of these pages are lost to memory. I’d love to stumble over some of them with defunct zippyshare links and angry fights in the comments.
Opium Hum and his Hyper Real Radio Telegram group: Michail has always been an inspiration and a supporter, but witnessing him withstand the constant onslaught of new music releases in dozens of genres of (not only electronic) music is a thing to behold. His analysis is always on point, and his tight teasers manage to get me excited for things that I’d never thought I’d be excited about.
“Techno Twitter”: Whether it’s corny DJ discourse, hyperlocal promoter beef, exciting new releases, or simply laughing together about the corny mainstream that we all don’t want to be a part of – it’s all possible on X, the everything app. I have lurked on the sidelines for around a decade and am hoping that this project will inspire me to take the leap into posting waters (follow here to exert some pressure), but it has been great to see a less polished side to a lot of artists I admire over there. Call it the Elon-effect but after years of a pretty solid algo, I now keep getting shown US EDM Brostep discourse. I even had to learn what they mean by “Riddim”. That’s almost as bad as being shown fascists all the time now, right?
Substack: Following my infatuation with Joe Delon’s music writing I tried to seek out more independent music writers and got lucky on substack, of course. From writings by established voices like Call Super or Nono Gigsta (who I think has moved away from the platform now), to established writers such as Shawn Reynaldo to nerds like Vincent Jenewein to ambitious projects like Untitled909 or Tone Glow, the scope of which far exceed anything I expected on that platform. Finding out about the vastness of music writing on Substack is intimidating, but also shows that people still care, that they are still out there wanting to read and write about oddball music.
Tris: Without my dear friend Tris, whose Substack you should follow right here, you wouldn’t be reading these pages. Thanks for all the support, motivation, criticism and drinks.
If you’d like to stay on track with future posts, just subscribe to my newsletter or check my socials, where I will do my best to bury this thing I really care about.
this DJ Blogs Himself 