German Swing

Oskar Offermann | Photo Credit: Eddy Kruse

In the bible for electronic music, ”˜Last Night a DJ Saved My Life’, authors Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton write that “Frankfurt’s dance scene was centred on Dorian Gray, a luxurious four-floored carpet-and-chrome club at the airport. It boasted the only Richard Long sound system (famously installed at legendary venues like New York’s Studio 54 and Paradise Garage) in Europe. Here, Luca Anzilotti and Michael Munzing [who would later form Snap! (”˜Rhythm is a Dancer’?)] DJed a rich mix of electronic music. Their group OFF (Organisation for Fun), which included a young Sven Vath, now a techno legend, had a massive hit with ”˜Electric Salsa’, a single that was influential in Chicago and which gave the swank moneyed city a claim to its own dance sound.”

Frankfurt might have staked its claim to a genre as early as 1986, but Oskar Offermann whose first club experience was at the iconic Dorian Gray, wrote his own script en route to the capital Berlin, which shaped the music he writes today. “My music is very melodic, classic deep house music in a Chicago way,” he says. “Sometimes, a little more driving, sometimes, a little more song-oriented.” That’s precisely what clubbers can expect at Bonobo, the suburban Mumbai restobar, this Sunday when Offermann DJs alongside the Bhavishyavani Future Soundz crew.

And songs are what he’s really quite into. Ask him to pick a tune each from the ”˜60s, ”˜70s and ”˜80s, and he goes with Jackson 5’s ”˜I Want You Back’ for the “beautifully crafted arrangement, and a stunning vocal performance by an 11-year-old,”; Jimmy Hendrix’s ”˜All Along The Watchtower’ (“I know it’s actually Dylan from the ”˜60s, but Hendrix made it unique and very ”˜70s and curiously, Dire Straits’s ”˜Sultans Of Swing’. “It’s an uptempo track, but still, the vibe is so chill,” he says. “It’s not very ”˜80s, but if you listen to the chorus effects on the guitar, you’re almost at The Cure’s ”˜Seventeen Seconds’ album, and that is very ’80s for me.”

Offermann’s ability to traverse genres as well as to pluck and pick out the best of multiple worlds has served him well. He’s also had a stint as a hip-hop producer and rapper in Frankfurt, with a weakness for German and American gangster rap. As the boss of the cheekily named White label (records that have no information on the label, commonly distributed as promos to select DJs), he’s overseen 30 releases since 2007. The music also gives him an opportunity to express his other passion: graphic design. Offermann studied communication design in Berlin while interning for Virgin records, and decided to combine his love for both. His White label has a paradoxical Faces series, which features portraits of the artists on the record, allowing fans to follow an artist’s progression physically, visually and aurally.

What the German is after the most however, is nature, his biggest influence. “Once in a while, I check out visual arts, and of course, I still watch movies,” he says. “But I hate straight lines – this is the only time when humans defeated nature and created perfection. The world we live in is pretty much built on this one geometric perfection. The music I work with is based on the same principle. This is why I need nature – to reconnect with my inner soul.” And Offermann is aware of the irony as he types out Rolling Stone India’s replies, “literally sitting in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in a cabin in the Sri Lankan mountains.”

He expects the gig in Mumbai to more than make up for the lack of numbers in his current position, along with trying out the local cuisine, since he also loves to cook. “I have been to many Indian restaurants all over the world, so I know some standards like curries, tandoori, biryani and breads, but I have never eaten in India,” he says. “So maybe I don’t know what the real India tastes like.” What’s the Offermann signature dish? “I’d say maybe a Mexican rice bowl with lots of fresh salad and homemade salsas,” he says. “That is something all my friends have eaten at least once.”

Oskar Offermann
September 14th, 2014 – 3 pm onwards
Bonobo, Mumbai

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