William Strong
Rotterdam
FAQ: About that weird, unfriendly & ominous music I irregularly inflict on dancefloors, and how to quickly empty yours:
Fictional question-asker: "Are you a DJ?"
Me: "No, I sculpt unsafe sounds."
Testimonial from a friend who likes dubstep:
"Strongarming music into your brain since 2004 (c) - the whole shebang BANG BANG BANG BANG wheeaaaaoooooo EEEE IIII1111einz!"
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FAQ:
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YOUR LIBERAL USE OF IRONY HAS TURNED ME ON. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS TRAFFIC ACCIDENT HAPPENING IN MY SPEAKERS THAT YOU CALL "MUSIC"?
My weapon of choice is hard-as-nails, corrosive-as-fuck industrialized techno, played at 133ish BPM (that's totally a genre, I swear).
Sometimes, I switch it up with hot, sweaty, sexy-but-slightly-twisted psychedelic techno with an old-school bent (also totally a genre).
I have occasionally been known to take mercy on less masochistically-inclined dancefloors by playing some friendly neighborhood dark (minimal) techno.
Over the years, several people have ended up with severe, irreversible brain-damage when, at 8am in the morning, I played a mash-up of drones, (dark) ambient, field recordings and the sounds of transformers fucking. I reserve this for special occasions, as it reduces the pool of intelligent conversationalists at a given event.
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CAN YOU PLAY THIS ONE TRACK THAT I REALLY LIKE?
No, I don't have any happy-happy joy-joy music with me. I leave it home specifically because I enjoy saying "no" to people like you.
No, I won't play that one track that you have on your virus-infested USB stick. I don't know what you've been docking that with, and it's going to ruin the flow of the set. Feel free to play it to me AFTER I'm done and if I like it, I might use it in my next set.
Don't ask me to play dubstep. One of these days I'm going to put that on a t-shirt and wear it to DJ gigs.
Rule of thumb: if by some sort of divine intervention all 22 fans of my style of music have converged onto a single location from all the corners of the known multiverse, and they're all dancing except for you -- it doesn't really matter what you're about to request. It's going to suck. Don't do it.
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THIS ALL SOUNDS REALLY AWESOME AND UNDERGROUND. WILL YOU PLAY AT MY BIRTHDAY PARTY WHERE 10 PEOPLE WILL COME?
Are you absolutely sure you want to traumatize your innocent, unsuspecting dancefloor-goers? Then sure, I'll come. I only play unpaid gigs (excepting travel expenses). Two reasons:
- *Personally speaking*, I don't enjoy DJing nearly as much when money changes hands. For me, it's a form of self-expression and autopsychotherapy.
- A significant amount of my favorite tracks, I got for free through netlabels, SoundCloud, as free promos or from producer friends. Charging money for playing sets doesn't feel right to me.
I use my own Samsung netbook and Hercules RMX midi controller, which take about 3 minutes to set up, tops. It runs on battery power for about 6 hours of quality Traktor time. The one thing I really, really need to play on your kick-ass sound system is a connector point for the familiar red-and-white RCA plugs. If you have a non-kick-ass sound system, I do bring my own converters for 3.5" jack-plugs.
W.Störung’s tracks
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