Pacotek: dealing with Techno in Israel

Von Janette

Wir bei Beatpunk sind dem Staat auf der Tasche liegende, viel reisende, multilingual begabte, gut aussehende, junge Menschen am Puls der Zeit. Um das nocheinmal zu unterstreichen, hat Janette während eines Israel-Aufenthaltes ein Interview mit Anna vom angesagtesten Partylabel Jerusalems geführt. Wer der englischen Sprache nicht mächtig ist, hat jetzt leider nicht viel mehr zu lesen.

Beatpunk (Janette): What does Pacotek mean and specifically, what does it mean to you?
Anna: Pacotek is me and Tzachi. We both dj as Anna and Soussana, Soussana is Tzachi’s second name. So it’s Anna and Soussana.

Pacotek today is an electronic music party line which includes visual arts and dance floor music. But in the future it will be a label: a Jerusalem Label. That is our main goal since we started with Pacotek and that is what we are working on now.

Tzachi has a real big underground background. He began with his friends in the early nineties with Techno-Raves. I organized underground events, too with a friend of mine. One day we all met and started to make parties together. After a while most people of the collective got tired of it and only me and Tzachi left. We decided to do our thing now and we were really enthusiastic.

So it was mostly about the music itself and not the style of music. The sound of the tracks and their energy are important. Some parties are gentle, others are more bombing and hard. But it has to be good, like everywhere I guess we only do things we like…

The name Pacotek itself has no real meaning, but that doesn’t matter. We were searching for a name and one day when Tzachi and I started arranging events there was a German artist, Glitterbug (Till Rohman), who now organizes C-SIDE with Ronni Shendar, we connected to him with Ronni’s help and he sent us a demo to play at the party at the one of his first visits to Israel. We really liked it and he played at our party. All this happened before Pacotek existed. Next time Glitterbug came to Israel with Metope and Jake Fairly. We had big luck with a lineup like this at our first party. Metope wasn’t as famous as he was when he came to Israel for the second time. We needed good PR to inform newspapers and people about our new party line and our special guests. Someone came up with Pacotek.

This party was the most important event in our music development. Both artists played really great music – hard to explain: cologne techno, electronic rock’n’roll … just a great energy with not so high BPM like we used too (me and Tzachi were playing hard techno in these days).

Since when are you a DJ?
I am a DJ since four years now. As I said, I was organizing events before but I was always scared that it might be too expensive to be a DJ and didn’t want to work with CDs. Vinyl is not that popular here in Israel, DJs often use CDs or hard disks. But one day I took twenty or only fifteen records of a friend and old turntables. It worked and I thought that I could start like that. It didn’t take me long that I started buying records… So money in the end wasn’t a problem and there was definitely not enough happening. Most parties I liked at that time were techno parties. But in Jerusalem and even in Tel Aviv events like this happened very rarely. So my friends and I, we decided that we had to do something of our own. It was not that I wanted to make music, it was more about realizing parties in Jerusalem because what could be found was not enough.

Was it ever a topic, that you are a woman that is a DJ?
I don’t know. I never paid attention. This is what I wanted to do, so I did it. But I know that there are only a few women here djing. But in Europe you have so many good female DJs.

Where do you buy your records?
In Israel there are very few opportunities where one could buy records. So the most records I use to buy online. You always have to pay for shipping. That makes it all even more expensive. When I go to Europe, which is not that often I buy a lot of records there.

Can you explain what it is like to organize events in Israel, concerning the size of the country, the fear of terrorist attacks and the youth culture here in Israel.
For the clubs itself is different, because you need a lot of security (checking of bags and visitors). Before I started Pacotek I made a party in parking lot, with no real bar. I and friend of mine found a guy that had a Sound System and asked him to bring it there. We brought a table and called some DJs we loved, that was all. It was very easy. But on the other hand one was always scared that police might come. In the beginning we organised events in clubs or abandoned fabrics, parking lots, bunkers. We brought high quality soundsystems and made serious visual work and played at the party itself. It was very stressful, because police could come every second and we couldn’t concentrate during the set and it was bothering our development as DJs.

But even with the clubs today, I guess it works like everywhere else. We ask for a certain date and promise a quantity of people and then they agree or not. That is definitely more relaxing.

The Quality of music increased and also the parties itself did. People started coming because of the music and not only for raving in a cool locations. They wanted to dance and to listen to the music we like. I really like the club culture but in Israel it has not really developed yet. There are many places in Tel Aviv, even very big clubs, but it is kind of »Ibiza Style« there, you know? Sometimes they invite good musicians and the feeling is very good there. There are really a few nice clubs which are making good nights and hosting good artists from time to time.

For trance music you have huge Raves. If somebody in Israel knows something about dance floor music then they do know about Trance. After the first Pacotek party we started to play less hard techno and slowly-slowly we started to combine different kinds of music: deep house tracks, melodic techno, minimal techno … it doesn’t matter what, but people who used to come to our parties and to listen to techno, where coming to the big raves at all the crazy locations we did it and listened to ~128 BPM music… sometimes melancholic, but still groovy and sometimes just to slower techno. Some of them really hated our changing (even we did it really step by step, it wasn’t a sudden change) and they couldn’t get the fact that the rave is going with positive and definitely not industrial music. They came to the DJ-stage and asked us to stop with this »pussy« music and put on something more hardcore. There were a few people like that, anyway we continued playing the songs we liked and feel right at the moment.

How did you discover Minimal or other new styles of electronic music, how do you stay online concerning new styles and records?
Glitterbug played at our 1st party and many times after. He is playing very sensitive and driving music: mixed styles, a lot of melodies, strong base lines.

I asked him about his records and he recommended some websites and labels where I could buy stuff like that. I did so and recognized that the music I liked was not only to be found in the techno sections but in other sections. So I kind of had to upgrade my horizon. We started to like it and we mixed it with Techno. Some people wanted harder techno… I did not think about it. I was floating with the music.

As I could see on your homepage and the recent events you put up there is visible connection to german artists like Lawrence, Metope, Dan Bell, Cassy, Shinedoe, Glitterbug and more. How did this develop?
A big part of Israel’s present quality electronic music is related to Glitterbug. He helped us to bring here artists from Substatic, who became our good friends and artists from Areal Records, too. With Cassy, for example, everything was like a miracle, we wrote her an email, telling her that we could not pay much, but we really want to host her in Israel for a DJ-set. Of course, we told her about artists we hosted before… so they could tell her that we are OK. Then Cassy helped us to invited Dan Bell!

Our connection to spanish artists came into being with the big help of Mia (Substaic Rec). She told us when she was in Israel: »I know two amazing girls –young DJs from Spain: DJs Ylia and Yorka. You will like them«. She new exactly what we are looking for in music and we contacted those girls. They were more than great! Some of our guests-artists we hosted already twice and some are coming back here soon.

The tracks you buy are mostly coming from Europe?
Yes, from Spain, Germany, but also USA. I listen to the tracks online for example. Tzachi sometimes goes to US. In Israel you can hardly find this kind of music. In Jerusalem there is the Uganda, a café and record/comic-shop and there are some other places in Tel Aviv, but you cannot compare this to Europe.
That’s why we want to have a label. That is really important to us. We make our own tracks, but we still didn’t release them on vinyl. Now we are looking for a distribution. It would be no problem to find distribution which will help us to spread records in Israel, but we want to introduce Jerusalem Music to the World. Some of Jerusalem artists already release music on European labels. It is great, but we have to have a label based in Jerusalem, which will try to introduce the 1st vinyl from Jerusalem to wide crowd.

How relevant is art for your work, checking out your homepage I saw some pretty amazing posters you made for your parties.
Art is very important. Before we did Pacotek I made Flyers and Posters collage style, asked friends to type and to print something and I cut it out and glued it together and made Xerox copies. I couldn’t handle any programmes on the computer these days. Some when I asked a friend for programmes and to explain me how things work. After three or four tries it worked out better and better. Now you cannot compare them with each other, which is funny because the idea is still the same. The information has to be clear. The poster has to be seen from far away and to be catchy, contrast, but not cheap. Most of the times we use black and white. We don’t like unnecessary information. It is very minimalist and fits to the music: even not so minimalist music still doesn’t have any unnecessary sounds. Sometimes Tzachi and me, we do experiments and try to light humoristic things with images. The rest of the time we use Arial Fonts only. All the posters are to be seen on the homepage, a development is definitely visible. We really like the graphic idea of Russian constructivism and Bauhaus.

The C‑ Sides Fest is a Festival for music, politics, art and culture in Jerusalem. It took place for two times in Israel and once in Berlin. What is your connection to the C-Sides fest?
The first fest was in 2005. Glitterbug and Ronni are doing everything almost by themselves. They are really good friends of us. If they wouldn’t do something like this, I guess nobody would do a festival like this. It is not only about partying; it is much related to art, politics and culture. It is such a positive thing. In Jerusalem it is unique. I never was at an event like this not in Israel and not in Europe. All the artists who came were not only great musicians, but very nice friendly people.

Do people react in certain way when they get to know that you are a DJ from Israel?
When we were in Europe last time, sometimes someone was reacting to the fact that we are tourists from Israel. Sometimes there were positive reactions, sometimes not – during the last summer, while the Lebanon War – for example. Even if people are open minded, they believe in the media. They believe in the one sided news. They forget that everything has its side. And nobody wants his family to be killed, not by a racket neither by a terror act. People listen to different kinds of media, even here opinions differ. There are varieties of chances. Music is a good chance to connect people, but it is not a decision. At C-SIDES it was amazing, after the Lebanon Attacks all the artists came and I really had huge respect for everyone that came. This festival was so great, people were dancing after this war, this tension all the time and during this short time everybody was relaxed. At this time I thought, wow… after such a hard time people were dancing with closed eyes to the great music. Nobody else would ever organise event like this in Israel, especially in Jerusalem. Tel Aviv is a kind of bubble, where people are really running away from what is happening in Israel. It is more like »Europe wannabe«. Jerusalem is more authentic and strange city, where organising a festival like C.SIDES is a super brave and enthusiastic thing. The showing up of the artists was a good sign, that it is going further. I expected nobody to come; I thought they might be too afraid. But these people are the coolest people ever!

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1. PACOTEK « commander master chief 11.10.2007 / 9:37 am

   […] Belästigten stellt das Jerusalemer Party-Projekt Pacotek dar, das von der deutschen Blogwelt (u.a. hier) bereits konsensfähig gehypt worden ist. Anna und Soussana, die beiden BetreiberInnen, sind nun […]