For DJ Roman Flügel, his work is everything and something that he would never compromise. Romuald Karmakar’s new documentary takes a look at five pioneers of electronic music for whom work is their raison d’etre.
The film commences with a still life of electronic equipment in which we find ourselves looking for several minutes at a wide shot of cables, consoles, amplifiers, keyboards and ‘controllers’ as Ricardo Villalobos – who was the subject of Karmakar’s 2009 film – will later call the flashing switchboards in the background. In between eloquent thoughts from the musicians in interviews, quiet observations of them at work at their DJ home, and images of sweating masses at raves, a selective image gradually and very quietly emerges of a music scene in transition.
Ata describes the current music scene as a vast, densely woven carpet, the end of which is out of sight. It is a scene which, since the 1990s has differentiated and evolved into something far more complex and hard to grasp. Karmakar does not attempt to provide a seamless historical survey, rather he allows his images and his protagonists to speak for themselves.