INTERVIEW:

✹ Please present your current practice and interest.

I’m spending loads of time (and all my money, haha) with my little Eurorack system and generally in the studio. I really got into VCV Rack and I also have a guitar, a few weird instruments, and units in my box of tricks that I have plans with. I feel lucky that I dipped my toes into modular and over these last few years ago have become very much inspired by all of this. I have lots of ideas and things that I want to experiment with and turn into something more concrete. I think I’m the kinda person who is working out ideas in my head, so it often happens that I’m just in the middle of watching a film with my partner when I suddenly jump up and have to make notes about a new patch idea. Goodness me, that must be annoying, but he is very understanding and sweet.

If I’m not in this black hole, I love to spend time with fermentation, syrup/alcohol making, hanging in nature or going to an inspiring gig, or just spending time with my loved ones.

✹ Tell us something about the scene you are a part of.

I’m kind of part of two scenes here atm, although they are very much connected. One is the scene around OMOH and Persephone with the more alternative queer people who are more into interesting electronic dance music and the other scene is with people who are more into experimental music/other forms of art in general. It feels like OMOH is my big lovely family, and the experimental scene is a best friend or something, it is also a very very nice crowd with many lovely people, and with them, I have a huge connection through music as well. Whether I’m playing dance music or not, I’m definitely much more interested in the unusual and experimental side of everything.

✹ What do you think might be the biggest challenges presented after the election for your community?

Huh, nothing nice obviously. What is clearly there for the whole nightlife in a wider sense: there are fewer and fewer spaces for everyone, places closing because of lack of money and political maneuvers, or due to some dodgy legal case after a police raid or harassment.

What is a challenge for my community in my opinion: well, many things, and unfortunately very everyday life ones. For research and news and just stories, it is very apparent that there are much more hate crimes and discrimination/harassment since the government passed through this homo- and transphobic law. And what they are doing also makes people very anxious and scared, as they are very clearly provoking actions against LGBTQI people.

In this environment, one of the biggest challenges is to keep the community together, because people either invisiblize themselves or leave the country. Of course, both of these things I completely understand in this context.

✹ What are your survival strategies (personal/ communal) in the current political climate in Hungary?

Personally, I have less random parties and rather find more places where people include me where I can feel free, safe and very alive. Aware of this increasing toxicity, we at OMOH always organize a team, who tries to keep the space safe and also actively do harm reduction as well. We are also trying different ways, like putting posters all around the place. We also have a door person and do a kind of control over who we let in or not. Of course all of this is very challenging.

✹ About daily life strategies

To be honest, I am also planning to half-move abroad – at the moment I am trying to put one foot in Vienna, let’s see how it will go. It’s a bit hard to start there as a musician from zero (after 17 years of DJing and making music here), but I’m hopeful. So yepp, let’s see.

✹ What kind of support from the Western music scenes do you need, if any?

Money, haha! No, to be serious: book more artists from Hungary, and if you can make it here to say yes to a booking, do that! Even if you are a very successful musician here, from this scene, everyone has to take 2nd and 3rd jobs outside of the arts and music scene. This is because there is really no money in the scene here and what little there is, is divided very unequally and none of those processes went on here that happened in more progressive places. The biggest money that you can have here for a gig, even if you are one of the biggest DJs in this scene, is usually much less than a hundred euro.

Despite that, we have a blooming scene here with loads of great and talented musicians/DJs, but eastern European musicians are heavily underrepresented in the west – of if they have a moment, it is usually just a temporary fashion. From here, to become a known DJ or producer in the west is an unlikely thing if not impossible. So, coming to Budapest is also a great thing: there are many people here who don’t have the privilege to go and have a lovely party in Berlin, and for them, it means the world if the world is coming to us.