glitterbug

As some of you might know, i am at the Dancity Festival in Foligno/ Italy. The first thing i noticed when i came in was that the Italians obviously used a picture of our beloved cat Pnina for some strange name tagging on kittens campaign in the airport:

Is it something about nameless cats not accepting borders? I have to work on my Italian i guess.

I am trying really hard to oppress the memory of the 2 hour car ride from the airport in Rome to Foligno… the scenery was (or better: would have been) breathtaking, sadly our driver had this strange desire to exceed the speed limits by at least 100 km/h. I was in the same car with some of the other artists that i would later on play with, the amazing Juju & Jordash and legendary Move D, and it was quite a bonding experience for all of us. Scared for life as Tracy Moffat would say…

But once we arrived, we met such wonderful and amazing and dedicated people that made us forget the car ride immediately. Thank you all in the Dancity organization for making this such a great festival experience for all of us!

Sadly, it was raining all day and evening, so the outdoors stage where us three were supposed to perform at was closed, and we had to move the performance to the indoors. And if that would have not been enough, Italians have no clue how to deal with rain in the summer, so there were less people in the audience as anticipated by the organizers. Such a pity, such a great line up! I hope that everybody that did not show up last night is banging their heads against the wall. Tonight is going to be amazing too, so i hope the crowd will come and that the weather will be a little nicer today. Look:

As always, i did not take many pictures of the venue or performances, i guess we were all pretty stressed about moving our equipment all the time… here is our poor little stage that drowned in the evil rain:

and the inside stage for the seated performances:

But this was our hotel garden:

and the scenic view from my roof top balcony (which even has a private Jahcoozi…):

While walking through this nice little town, we found a huge “Hello Kitty” store- and i totally need those suitcases:

Here is an example for a very special snack bar:

Activities took place all over the city, sometimes using locals as awkward decoration:

and yes, we also had a lot of coffee:

First of all, sorry for not writing for such a long time… it’s been a rather calm period, at least from the outside, i have mostly been in the studio, working on new materials (there is a new EP on c.sides coming in September, and: a new album in the making too), and Ronni Shendar and I have been busy rehearsing and working on our brand new show, that we will start touring with next week.

So, I am about to leave our beautiful cozy studio and to start to mingle with the real world again. I am sure that there will be a lot of amazing stories to be shared… Next week, we will start in Italy with the MUV Festival in Firence (Florence), after that I am very excited to be playing at the Dancity Festival, and in July i will be in Berlin and Beijing… thats right, i get to play in China!

So, stay tuned via the dates/gigs page and watch out for many new interviews, articles, videos and photos from all these amazing places, that I will start posting shortly. I can’t wait!!

As you might have noticed, not much happened here after my return from the last c.sides festival. But actually i have been quite busy in the studio. I am finishing up a new EP (most likely under the title “We Could”), probably released still before the summer break, and Mathias Schaffhäuser of Ware asked me to work on a remix for his last (and amazing!) album, “Unequal Equality”. Ah, and in addition i remixed myself for the last and final “Supershelter” release…

We are back in Tel Aviv. It was a little cloudy, but perfect 24°C, and the beach was so empty… because all the Tel Avivians must have thought that its such lousy weather out there…

Ach, and all the amazing street kittens:

Inge and me in Koblenz in 2004

Last evening Ronnis grandmother, Inge Ayalon (born Rosenbusch) died of a heart failure, at the age of 87. She fled Germany for the obvious reasons in 1938 and settled with her parents in Haifa. She was one of the most amazing people I have met in my life, and will be horribly missed by everybody that had the luck to meet this funny, witty, sharp, amazing (and a billion things more) woman.

the view from our Tel Aviv balcony

I landed safely in Tel Aviv yesterday, and as anticipated, all is calm and beautiful, and if i would not know better, i would have no clue that there is a war going on only 150 km away from here. Which makes it a little easier and way more complicated to be here at the same time. Not thinking of the war, it’s pampering 20 degree Celsius weather here (aaah! thinking of the snowy cold in Germany right now…), and way warmer when sitting in the sun. I just had a freshly squeezed pomegranate juice. Nice little burekas for breakfast. Our neighbors had a techno party last night… meaning: it’s all normal here. And not normal at the same time. Which is really hard to explain to somebody that has not been here before. This place is so amazing and beautiful and has so much to offer, yet is breaking your heart all the time.

As some of you out there might know, i will leave Cologne for Tel Aviv tomorrow for the next edition of the c.sides festival. There might be fewer post around these parts due to beautiful 20 hour workdays that are awaiting me for the next four weeks- but you can follow our activities on our production blog. Wish us and everybody in the region a lot of luck- we might need it. A lot actually.

Here is a little video of the 2006 edition of c.sides, back in the days still in Jerusalem: