Lebdi & Koneyn LIVE

Originally based around the idea of me being an instrumental backup to Lebdi's vocals, my friend Sanja Ivkov and I had three performances this summer in Belgrade basically within one week (of which two were in the same venue). Having just one mic plugged into a Korg Electribe SX groovebox was again a surprise to some but the combination worked just fine and at least in my humble opinion we've managed to deliver quite decent performances, combining somewhat tribal percussion-based sound with energetic vocals.


Thanks to Ves for the video (again)!

It worked especially well on the main event at 6th of September, since the venue (club Fest in Zemun, across the river from downtown Belgrade) had a massive soundsystem considering the size of the place - and also a big support from the numerous crowd who came to see the show that also featured amazing Tearpalm with Crocodile Tears and foreign guests Hippy Death Suite (Belgium) and E.U.E.R.P.I. from Bulgaria, with whom Sanja and I did one impro track on the spot. Visual support was provided by Marina Rajić who also does pretty much all the VJ-ing for frequent Tearpalm performances. The two other events that were centered around the one I've mentioned before were held in Panicroom Žica, where we got this nice spontaneous shot from:

Left to right: Marina Rajić, Sanja Ivkov (Lebdi), Yours truly (Koneyn), Marko Dabetić (Tearpalm) - photo by Scila Haribdić

For a few more videos from the last performance, make sure to visit Scila's YouTube channel.

Koneyn live at AUX, Arma17, Moscow

On March 17th I flew all the way to Moscow to perform at AUX event, in Russia's leading underground techno club Arma17. I've been invited a month prior to the evening by Nikita and Sergey from do/nothing - a small but very active organization with general taste in music not too much unlike that of our own Asino Elettronico label. Before going into anything else, I really need to address the way they handled the whole thing - with perfect professionalism and sincere hospitality.

Due to flight schedule I couldn't see much of the city, which is a big shame since it's absolutely fascinating in many ways, but the whole experience at Arma17, which is amazing in it's own right, was so overwhelmingly positive that I simply couldn't ask for anything more. The audience and all the people there also seemed really friendly and in good mood, simply there wasn't a way anything could go wrong.



I've also had the privilege of being in company of Andrés Marcos Revellado and Patrick Walker (Forward Strategy Group), who are not only great performers but really friendly and fun people to spend time with. Speaking of time, it has probably been the only possible negative factor to the whole experience. As I've mentioned earlier, we didn't have much of it to explore the city, but then again we also had to be awake and fully concentrated until our performances, which were due at very early hours of the next day (me starting at 4:30, Andrés at 5:30 and Patrick at around 5:00 in another room).

When it comes to the technical side of things, I went on a plane carrying nothing but a slightly bigger laptop bag with my recently bought Korg ESX inside. That came as a surprise to most of the people, whose setup was based always around a laptop.

The performance itself went quite well, I believe, almost without a glitch. Having only one groovebox might seem like a quite minimal choice, but I think it works out in a club pretty good. Still there are more possibilities to explore with it alone, I don't think I'll be needing anything else for a while.

Unfortunately I don't have many pictures from the evening, but you can find quite a few here:

- msk.nightparty.ru
- promodj.com
- timeout.ru
- vk.com

You won't see much of me (and half of other performers for that matter), but it's sufficient to get an idea of the great atmosphere over there.

The good news is that I have a pretty decent recording of the performance, straight from the mixer. That means I will quite probably release it as a live album - something what I have really wanted to do since I had started doing live shows. Stay tuned for that one.

Àsino Elettronico LIVE - CK13, Novi Sad

A few weeks ago I went to Novi Sad, some 80km north of Belgrade, to play live with Associative (ex Xiqhhyiecryn), Andrei Korre (Nemanja Lazic) and Abadroza, all together under our Àsino Elettronico LIVE label. We've been developing this concept for almost a year now and the basic idea is to present people with something that seems simple and obvious but is apparently lacking nowadays - completely live club performance. No DJ-ing of any sort, just "you, us and the machines", as the poster for the event had already declared.



Each of us would perform separately with his own set of equipment, 50 minutes to one hour on average. If you can read Serbian, I strongly recommend you visit a blog entry by our friend Ves, if you can't read it, at least enjoy her video takes which are (despite all the sound distortion) far more faithful to the energy felt there than our "official" sterile recordings by the club, which are by the way in mono (don't ask me why, I am as puzzled as you might be).





To be honest, by the end of the evening I had thought I screwed up the performance a bit too much and had the feeling my friends were far better in every way. Actually I still feel much of it is true, but according to others it wasn't really like that at all and mistakes weren't as obvious to others as they were to me at the time. Still, performances like that of Associative really gave me the insight of how proper live electronic music in a club should sound and feel:



Which is why I decided to literally scrap everything I did and prepare future performances from ground zero. I've learned that making things sound good in a room only unnecessary complicates the live situation. Many small details are lost anyway and it's really important to keep it simple and straight to the point, lively and intense.

In case you are wondering, I've used the following equipment:
- Korg Kaoss Pad 3 for loop sets
- Korg X3R synth module with Behringer UMX25 for a bit of a keyboard action
- Behringer Xenyx 802 to mix it all together

There was one thing that, apart from musical style itself, separated me from others is the way I had to bridge annoyingly long gaps between tracks. The gaps are due to the loading time on Kaoss Pad, which takes one minute on average - quite too much to leave it in silence. So the only plausible solution was to playback prepared ambiental passages from an mp3 player. It did fit well but in effect it would cool down any excitement in crowd each and every time.

This shouldn't be a problem anymore since a new concept is on it's way (and one crucial new piece of equipment is already here ;). Quite possibly a new name also, for a sound that should be quite different.

Abadroza & Koneyn - Live at Porub #6 (Rex, Belgrade)

Earlier this year I have been invited to perform live by Borjan Grujić, a young designer behind Porub. Porub is an event that serves as a platform for local experimental/alternative artists involved in audio and visual media and it's commonly organized several times during one year. I've been there in the audience several times myself and that's how we got in contact in the first place. We've discussed getting together for one of the Porub evenings long time ago, yet I wasn't prepared in terms of technical issues and more important available material that could be done live. Luckily my dear friend Abadroza from our Asino Elettronico label stepped in without hesitation so we could make something together especially for this night.



Edited version of video showing the second half of the performance


The idea for us was also to finally break the ice and go out public, since none of us have had any experience in playing music live up until that moment. Abadroza threw aside his PC long time ago before I did even consider such a thing, so him being the beat master on his Korg EMX-1 was a no fail situation. I, on the other hand, challenged myself by acting out as a keyboardist with my new pet machine - old Korg X3R synth module controlled by a compact Behringer 25-key MIDI keyboard. I also filled up my Kaoss Pad 3 with a few vocal samples just to spice up what would have been an overly instrumental set.



Some were curious about "that VCR look-a-like black box" (Korg X3R)

You can catch a glimpse of the atmosphere from the video posted here - it was really a great evening altogether, both for us and I'd daringly say for the audience as well. The giveaway CDs we've prepared and left in front of us were gone in matter of seconds right after we had finished, which leads me to think we did a good job on promoting the label as well. I may have made a few ugly sounding mistakes while playing keys and we've lost focus a bit here and there, but in the end it was really a live performance that is rarely seen (at least here) in electronic music and it got praise by virtually everyone who talked to us afterwards. What was the most important aspect of it for me personally is the fact the whole experience gave me a lot of motivation and confidence to push this "live performance" thing further with my own project. Surely I will miss head-nodding and knob-twiddling shoulder to shoulder with Abadroza, but there are some serious plans for all of us on the label to tour locally together so the fun sharing moments will always be there.


Special thanks to Ves for being there to support us and taking care to record the video.

August update:

Complete and unedited recording of the performance by Ves, as well as a report in Serbian and extracted mp3 file, here on her blog entry.

SHARE Conference - sound logo

SHARE Conference is a new kind of festival created by the State of Exit Foundation. For the first time in the region, a host of internationally acclaimed internet and social activism experts, new media artists and renowned musicians will be present in one place at the same time. The festival has two main program units: the innovatie SHARE by Day education platform and intensive SHARE by Night with Tuborg parties. Belgrade will thus become the hot spot for sharing knowledge, ideas and fun at performances, lectures, workshops and exhibitions featuring representatives from Google, Harvard, MIT, Obama's marketing team and the likes. Dom Omladine with its 3 halls is the festival's main venue, and another 8 clubs will host around 700 regional opinion-makers, as well as 15,000 local and international visitors. A single wristband will grant access to more than 100 events of the festival.

Just as we found out there will be no Dis-Patch festival in Belgrade from this year on, which is quite sad news, we got ourselves some kind of substitute in form of SHARE Conference. While it may not be as revolutionary and new as their advertising team suggests, it certainly bring quite a few big names into the game - Carl Craig, Murcof, Alex Smoke, Tricky, Josh Wink and MJ Cole, to name a few. It's just something that small independent festival like Dis-Patch wouldn't be able to handle, possibly due to lack of financial support that otherwise stands behind EXIT team, who runs this show.

Everything is on a whole different level now. So are the entry fees. Which is quite understandable, but still not easily affordable.

I got myself a lucky way in, though. There was a small competition that required from producers and sound designers to create an under-10-seconds "sound logo" for the conference. One of mine got into the selected few, so I will receive the wristband which allows me to be there day and night.

Here is the entry that has been selected:

Dive in Share by Koneyn