News

Catching up with M.A.N.D.Y.

M.A.N.D.Y. by Llars Borges Musical duo M.A.N.D.Y are going back to the drawing board. For the first time in ten years, Philip Jung and Patrick Bodmer have decided solo gigs - without compromise - just don’t compare to the fun of playing together. As the faces behind venerable German label, Get Physical, they’ve notched up excellent production alongside Booka Shade with the definitive ‘Body Language’ and ‘O Superman.’ As DJs they’ve corralled their mixing skills on ‘At the Controls’ and ‘Renaissance: The Mix Collection,’ of course, ‘fabric 38’ and the upcoming 10th edition of ‘Body Language’ mix series which has seen previous installments from Matthew Dear, Modeselektor and former label founder DJ T. As the pair go full throttle into their European tour to celebrate the landmark release, we caught up with Philip ahead of his flight to Miami for WMC to find out more on the magic behind their mix CD’s, the troubled times of Get Physical and why he compares its last 8 years to a Monty Python movie… You're about to embark on a string of Get Physical shows for your European tour. From WMC in Miami to fabric next month. How are you looking forward to them? These parties take lots of time and effort but we’re happy how it all turned out and that we got it all going. The WMC boat party with DJ T., Audiofly and Jamie Jones will be one to remember without doubt! And it’s great to see all your close friends from around the world and get to hang out properly together. What are your vices when on tour? What can’t you live without… Earplugs and eye shades are the most important thing and of course some music is always needed! A nice book helps too... Which artists and labels are you most looking forward to checking out at WMC and which tracks do you predict to be big at the conference? These days it’s hard to predict. Back in the day you would be sent a couple of white labels before the conference and you knew straight away which of those were gonna be a hit. With the digital revolution and the enormous amount of releases each week, it's hard to keep up with it all even if you are professional. So far, I’ve not heard that stand out track! At the WMC, I will be checking out my friends Cityfox - they’re very fresh and without fail put on the best parties. I haven’t seen the whole program yet but know there will also be some nice villa parties which are always most special ones. You have just mixed the 10th edition of ‘Body Language.’ This is the second time you have appeared on the series since 2005. Tell us about your decision to do the mix and why this is to be a standout release for 2011? As we did the first installment, we thought it was a good time to do the 10th edition. We started by spending months collecting tracks and then go onto trying out a million combinations to find the best ways to link them. This is a crucial time where many other artists are writing albums and for us, these mix compilations are something very special where we invest all our dedication and love for the label. This is a very important release especially as the first one sold over 10,000 copies. What is it you enjoy most about doing mix CDs? Patrick and I feel the same way about music and intensity. When we play together, there are these particular nights where we share a magical moment and look at each other and just feel that this moment is a very special one. It's this feeling we want to create on a mix CD. This can be very hard when you only have 80 minutes to play with, what we create has to reflect our style and that special feeling. This is the biggest challenge and sometimes it drives us mad but now the whole painful process is over we are very happy with result. How does the dynamic of DJing together work? Is it always positive? Of course not, it's sometimes very hard, especially if you only have a 1 or 2 hour set at a festival. Sometimes one of us will be coming off a plane from Argentina and the other from Asia and we then have to immediately find a groove together when we get on stage, it can be really hard sometimes, but most of the time we get there somehow! For clubs we need a 3 hour set, minimum, and in that situation I think we’re stronger together when we have a bit more time to get into it. In any collaboration there has got to be differences, discussions and compromise. How do you work on these together? Those 3 words are actually the most important words to us and it also comes down to a love and hate thing. If you do everything together for so long, it’s crucial to keep yourself open to criticism all the time, otherwise it just won’t work. We still learn from each other a lot which is great! Is Get Physical’s label outlook the same today as it was when you started? Why do you think it's important to keep it going? As you probably know Get Physical has gone through a bit of a rough patch recently, DJ T. and the Booka boys left the label at the end of last year and since then we haven't released anything. It was a tough time for us all and to run a company like Get Physical with just 6 people is very hard. Saying that, the boys left on good terms and we are still working on projects together, we just did a new song with Booka Shade which is called ‘Home’ and it's an exclusive track for the Body Language compilation. Also, DJ T. is releasing his album ‘The Pleasure Principle’ on Get Physical just now, so we're very happy about the situation. Plus with the album releases of Noze and Audiofly and a couple of good singles lined up, I think we can look forward to a good year ahead! Can you share some of your all time favourite Get Physical stories with us? I can assure you that in the last 8 years we have pretty much experienced everything imaginable. When I look back at everything that’s gone on I can’t help thinking it should be a Monthy Python movie… Tell us about your big and breaking plans for the rest of 2011? Patrick and I are planning a very exciting audio video live show with an English company which is called Immersive. They do amazing stuff and what we are planning is a whole new way of working, so we are very excited to see if it works out the way we hope and we’ve changed our booking agency for the first time in 10 years. There’s lots of work to be done. We want to play together much more, the single gigs are fun as well but at the end of the day we feel we belong together. We’re on our own booking agency that we’ve set up which is even more exciting. We book Noze, Catz N 'Dogz, Someone Else, Siopis and a couple of other people from our roster and we hope to help these guys with their careers, which is also a good thing for Get Physical. And finally…what was the last dream you had? The one that I always seem to remember was the one where I dated Madonna - we were a cute couple, at least in my opinion…
Tags
No items found.