Excess baggage kings, Booka Shade will be making no sudden 'movements' (pun intended) when they fly into Miami with their hundred kilos of equipment for their live sets at the WMC.

As previously announced on RA, Booka Shade will be embarking on an extensive tour across Europe and the US, including two WMC dates, in support of their new album 'Movements', one of which will be at the Revolver party at The Pawn Shop.

For the new 'Movements' tour, the guys will have a new technical set-up as Walter Merziger from Booka Shade explains, "The major difference is that we work now with Ableton as a sequencer which allows us to make quick changes within the arrangements and the whole set list. This afternoon we sat down in the hotel we're staying at in France and changed the whole show that we´re going to play tonight. We couldn´t have done that in the past. Additionally we have more controllers to torture our audio files and synths."

The duo will also be introducing a new visual element to their live show courtesy of the virtual VJ software Easy-Ease, made by Swedish video artists Fubbi Karlsson and Måns Nyman.

Says Booka Shade's Arno Kammermayer, "Another major update is a new system to run the visuals we use for the show live in sync. In the past we had pre-produced complete films, which made quick changes in the music impossible because the film wouldn't fit anymore.What we have now is wireless-controlled, self-sustained virtual VJ software called Easy-Ease. Fubbi created the visuals for the first tour, too, and now he's come up with this monstrous software that we can feed with files. It's very exciting and I hope we can use it for the shows we play in the US."

Besides the new album (released in May), next month also sees the release of Booka Shade's 'Night Falls EP', the highly-anticipated follow up to the hugely successful 'Mandarine EP'. Given the enormous success of that EP and in particular the track 'Mandarine Girl', how do the duo feel about this new release?

"We worked on the album for the last 8 months or longer, so we're very happy that the first 12" will be out soon and we can start touring again. We deliberately didn't choose a 'big dancefloor anthem' as a follow up to 'Mandarine Girl', but decided to go for a very atmospheric track," says Merziger. "'Night Falls' somehow sets the atmosphere for the whole 'Movements' album. The B-sides are extremely clubby, especially 'trespass 06'."

According to Kammermeyer, the Booka Shade set at the Revolver party in Miami will include both tracks from the new album and unreleased material, "We'll play 'Pong Pang' for sure. It always brings a big grin on dancers' faces because it's just such a funny and positive track. Then we have three unreleased tracks that could be B-sides for future releases taken off the 'Movements' album. They work very well live and it's always a good thing to try out new tracks but that's top secret, don't tell anybody (smiles)."

Booka Shade will perform a live set at Revolver at The Pawn Shop on March 24th, 2006. 2 Comments