Sharing The Same Passion: 10 Years Of Wilde Agency

There’s something contemptuous about the word ‘industry’ when used to describe the various mechanisms by which this music world is driven. It’s a term that feels a bit calculated and commercial and is one that’s at odds with the values of creativity an authenticity that many people (including us) believe should be at the core of musical practice. However in many pockets of this ‘industry’ that we engage in you can’t help but have these worries thrown out of the window when you discover real people with real passion working within a framework more befitting to a family than a corporation. Last year for example we spoke with Toi.Toi.’s Isis Savalterra whose strong values lie in a belief of the people, the connections she has with them and above all the quality of music and within her ‘family’ from the regular party goers to her boys there is community before commerce. This happily is undoubtedly a sentiment shared elsewhere and Patrisha Weil‘s Wilde Agency is precisely one of these places. Wilde (German for Wild) is quite remarkable because this year it’s marking 10 years of operation and it’s a story is built on the strength of their long standing relationships with many of their artists - like Phonica founder Heidi and Get Physical’s DJ T. - growing their careers from the ground up. The artists on the roster have also formed a huge part of our story too. Check back to flyers from when we opened our doors and the back catalogue of our mix series and the names Tiefschwarz, M.A.N.D.Y. and DJ T are welcomely commonplace, so it’s natural that as part of their 10 Years Tour they’re coming to Room Two for a whole night of dancefloor curation. To echo the celebratory sentiment on the blog we contracted Berlin based photographer Dario-Jacopo Laganà to look inside the doors of the agency’s office while we spoke to the leading Wilde lady herself, to chronicle the story so far and learn there’s still more to come from this decade strong enterprise. Can you start by telling us a bit about your background what drew you into working as a booker in the music industry? Did you have to work your way up in less glamorous roles? It was in 1988 when I fell in love with electronic music at a club called Tor 3 in Düsseldorf, my hometown, and I listened to – D Mob’s We Call It Acid and Mars’ Pump Up The Volume for the first time. It continued at the club Ratinger Hof with Westbam's Monkey Say Monkey Do and The Roof Is On Fire, which literally set me on fire on the dance floor. Ever since then I was addicted to dancing to electronic music. Then at the beginning of the 90's I was travelling around the world with Sven Väth (my boyfriend at the time) and got to know all the leading clubs and promoters of the electronic movement. We then started to work on the first Cocoon events in 1996 where I learned a lot about the do's and don’ts of organizing events. Beside my work as actress I worked part time in a promotion agency for music videos. How did you come to then start Wilde and what made you want to start your own agency? In 2002 I met Philipp Jung & Patrick Bodmer from M.A.N.D.Y. who asked me to manage their bookings. As I knew lots of people in the industry it was quiet easy for me to get into it. Everything developed super fast, so it was clear that I had to give my work a professional presentation and it was my nickname "Patrisha Wilde" that gave the perfect headline to "Wilde" agency. That’s a strong start for sure, which other artists did you begin with? M.A.N.D.Y. was my first act. We had our first booking in London in 2004 where I met Heidi and you can say it was love at first sight. She was running Phonica Records with Simon Rigg and started her first steps into DJing. She gave me a mix CD and I just started to book her. Soon I became the booker of all of the Get Physical artists, such as DJ T., Booka Shade, Lopazz, Einzelkind and many more and I organised the first Get Physical label tour in 2004. What do you think unites all your artists and makes them fit in to Wilde? For me it's important to keep the identity and authenticity of each artist. Taking on an artist is not because of music only, it is about sharing the same energies, believing in their talent & potential. We're all sharing the same passion, love and discipline for our work and daily lives, 24/7. Did you find it hard to establish the company in what is a competitive world, what was the hardest thing about those early days? I'm in general not good at letting go of things, so for me it was quite sad when the first artists left Wilde and moved on to other agencies. Nowadays I'm more relaxed about it. Having established a wonderful team consisting of Julez, Daniel, Torsten, Stefanie, Jordan & Sammy, we focus on our own strategy of artist & brand development, focusing on our strengths with the goal of building and maintaining professional relationships with all our partners (promoters, artists, press etc.). This is in my opinion the foundation for a strong competitive brand. Besides our work inside the Wilde Agency, we also founded Booking United in Berlin - a community of six different agencies which exchange ideas and matters we're working on and trends we're facing. We're doing events with other agencies and joining forces instead of working against each other. From what you’ve said so far Wilde works beyond what you’d traditionally see as the strict role of a booker, and we can see in the photos here that in your office you have a lot of records that belong to Tiefschwarz’s label Souvenir and heaps of event flyers you’ve been involved in… We started with booking Get Physical events and booking nowadays Souvenir, Noir, Jackathon & Defected nights. We also do Wilde showcases. And for a while we’ve been doing that at festivals like Sonar, ADE, WMC or Watergate in Berlin and now our 10th Anniversary tour all around the world. We're also launching the Wilde Label which will present Wilde artists even more to promoters & fans. And we’ve also got a PR department now. With Souvenir & Tiefschwarz we’ve enjoyed a very long friendship and from 2008 a professional work relationship. We're joining forces by sharing the off ice, the label manager, the back office and accountant. It looks like a lot of the artists you have on board have been with you stick with you, is there quite a family feel to the operation? What do you think your artists get from working with you that they wouldn’t get elsewhere? Yes we're very lucky. We love to find young talented artists and build them up from scratch. A lot of artists we represent, started their career at Wilde and some of our artists have been with us for almost 10 years. We're working on artists careers, which means they give a very important part of their live in our hand. This is something you've to handle like a treasure; respectful and careful. We're sharing good times and bad times, which creates a strong personal bond. As well as talking about the challenges there must be so much you’re proud of and find rewarding, it must feel good to have arrived at this amazing point where you’ve been in operation for a decade, what for you are the most significant memories and highlights of this time? Julez - Daniel - Torsten - Stefanie - Jordan - Sammy! The team is what makes the difference. No matter what! We stick together, find solutions and learn out of every situation we're going through. DJ T. & Heidi who have stayed with us all these years, Tiefschwarz/ Souvenir who have supported Wilde in so many ways. The promoters who believe in us and support us in our work as agents. There must be so much that has changed over this time in the industry, what for you have been the most profound developments? Definitely the development of the internet, that enables us to work from even the most remote places in the world. The communication has become so incredible easy. Beside that the only constant is the change - this is something we have to accept and work with. You’ve mentioned the launch of the label, perfectly timed for the 10 year benchmark. Are you also going to be leading the A&R? Can you tell us a bit about that – what do you have lined up? Yes, launching the label was about time. All labels launching booking agencies, so us as booking agency launching a label makes absolute sense in my opinion. We're the perfect channel to forward an artist's music directly to the promoters to then generate bookings. For now we would like to release 4 EP's a year and one compilation, as we do now with the WILDE LIEBE comp. Release date is the 27th of January. For now we're focusing on Wilde artists by giving them the chance to use this platform. But we're open and see where the journey will takes us to. Sammy Gossens is the Wilde label manager and we're deciding all steps together. Photography by darioj laganà | www.norte.it to see more images from the shoot check out the gallery on Facebook here. Wilde will also release WILDE Liebe on 27th January for more information go here.