News from electronic record labels SOUNDZ and Slip N Slide, plus SOUNDZ Management

Globetrotting DJ/producer Mikkas, aka Djuma Soundsystem, reports back from his amazing travels in India in the first of a 3-part set of postcards as he seeks a change of scene after his grueling recent Danish court case…

As some of you might know, I lost a big law suit in the Danish court a little while back, with the original members of Djuma Soundsystem. The verdict was over 100,000 euros for using a guitar sample on our track ‘Les Djinns’. It was the first of its kind in Denmark and perhaps the toughest verdict the world has seen so far (maybe five times more than the track actually earned). A lot of people thought this sentence was ridiculous, and it’s time for the copyright law to be up for debate again. A benefit party was held for us, with huge support from the Danish music scene to raise money for our appeal. We were of course very touched by this and the 13,500 we got from the party enables us to appeal (which costs 20,000), so we will now run the case again. This time with a lawyer (as last time we couldn’t afford it) and represented ourselves. It might take up to a year before we have to meet in court again.

Sick of all this, I planned an Asia tour on the spot to get away. First stop Goa, India, with its long beautiful calm beaches. My plan was to use India as a hub, and jump back n fourth to Asia, the Middle East and even Mauritania. But it turned out that a new Indian visa law made this impossible, so apart from playing Bali NYE, I kind of got stuck in India. Honestly, this isn’t bad at all! The weather is close to perfect this time of year, and I’ve got to say I love the Indian people. They’re never polite, but almost always friendly. The might try to squeeze an extra buck out of you, but never harm you. My kind of people! You can go anywhere in India and it will stink, but never ever be boring.

So, on the way to Goa I had a stopover in Mumbai, and my good friend Debbie said “why don’t you stay the weekend and party with us in the big city?” As if one would ever turn down an offer like that, so that’s what happened… and the weekend turned into five days. Mumbai is hectic like any big Indian city, but still you can’t help smiling even though you are sitting in your rickshaw, stuck in a traffic jam, with horns honking all around you, in two hundred degrees, with a thousand bad and polluted smells being thrown at you. It’s like a sauna gas from hell, but it’s extremely reassuring of life! I told my mate “I’m kind of ashamed to say I love this, but if I ever get used to it, you have my permission to kick me as hard as you can in my nuts!”

I landed at four in the morning and went straight to my friend Kini’s house. Whenever I get the chance, I stay with people I know instead of hotels. Cheaper of course, but also a closer experience to how the local culture really is. Kini is a DJ as well and has started to produce too, so I got some of her new tracks when there. Check out her remix of ‘Foster the people’:

We checked out some clubs and the Mumbai scene seems to be in order! The Indians like it a tad too swanky for my taste, but then again I’m the kind of guy who prefers a dark black hole with nothing but good sound in it and this for sure is not the case in India. The first thing that strikes you is that the clubs around the country close crazy early, in Mumbai though they are allowed open until 1 or 3 in the morning. India seems to love crews, and the one that seems to be everywhere right now is BBC (Bay Beat Conspiracy). They were the ones to bring dubstep to India, and it’s no doubt that they succeeded. These days they mix it up quite a bit. They put on a night at the city’s internationally most well-respected club, Blue Frog, with themselves and Dub FX on the bill. It was a crazy packed line outside, even it being a week night and with an expensive cover charge. I only got in because I’ve played there before. Cool they still remembered me as it was three years ago since I played there last.

I sure remember Blue Frog, as back then the club was voted the 3rd best in the world, had a record label and a really awesome recording studio. It’s still hot shit, but only a club these days. When I played Blue Frog back then I learned the hard way that alcohol in India can be quite pricy! They paid really well plus gave me a fancy dinner with champagne and a bottle of vodka on the house and said I had to pay myself (with musician discount) for the rest of the night. I said “sure” and didn’t think much of it, and poured on all my friends the whole night. When it was time to settle the score and the vodka was deducted, I got 300 rupees for the whole night, which is less than five euros. It almost felt like being one of the Blues Brothers.

The coolest cats in Mumbai at the moment are some French guys that host Sundown at Aurus. It’s quite a posh Bollywood place, perfectly located by the beach with a backyard towards the sea. Aurus is placed in a part of town called Bandra, its sort of the bohemian part of Mumbai and the area with most clubs. They’re mostly into minimal and hosts great names like D’Julz, Peter Kruder, Umek, Pig and Dan, Konrad Black and Matthew Johnson to name a few. Every club night in Bandra ends up at Minipunjab – a kebab stand where you eat delicious rolls and scout for private after parties.

Tomorrow: Arrival in Goa where Mikkas gets thoroughly dOP’ed and ends up losing all his clothes on a beach…