As always... As ALWAYS... When something bad happens, something good will come out of it. The 'bad' is what we are all in: COVID19 aka Corona which results in a lot of fear and drama. The 'good' is the entertainers going virtual, from comedians, to musicians. Many under the old models of performing at a festival gone virtual.

Some take on new adventures, like Speedy J and Steve Rachmad!

Both icons in the world of techno, both from the Netherlands. Who knows the scene a bit, knows Speedy J (artist name of Jochem Paap) is the one who almost always perform live, ie using soft- and hardware to create the sounds, music and sets, instead of mixing tracks stored on vinyl, CD or USB. When miss Corona came to all of us, Speedy J decided to launch a Sunday evening project with sound studio STOOR. The aim: Create music with another artist, using hardware only, and up the game by streaming this in realtime, ie no recordings, no editing, nothing of that sort.

Being a big fan of master Rachmad, I jumped so high I was - almost - able to touch the moon when the information reached me Steve was invite by Jochem to join him on one of his Sunday evening adventures.

A dream came True!

Well, multiple dreams to be honest. Since the 90s I'm a fan of Speedy J as well and I consider him one of the best in live acts. Steve never ever played a live act before, but he said: YES!

WOOHOO!

D-Day: last Sunday (August 2nd 2020)

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^{taken from the Facebook page of Steve Rachmad (source)}

What an Amazing trip!

The performance was simply incredible! Now you may think: "@edje is biased and exaggerating". Maybe.... but maybe not :)

Live acts are usually not longer than one to one and half hours since many many many artists who go live, can't keep the tension up for a long time, the set becoming boring quickly. But not when Steve and Jochem joined forces. For almost three hours they rocked the world!

And you know what?

It was Steve's first time ever, he didn't prepare anything, he simply brought his gear to the STOOR studio and started jamming with Speedy.

And you know what?

Steve mentioned on his Facebook page (here) he considers to go live more often...

Still afterbuzzing from my session with Jochem Speedy J at STOOR Sunday. For the ones who asked, yes this was my very 1st time live. I totally stepped out of my comfort zone by saying yes when Jochem asked me for this. We did everything totally on the fly. Nothing was prepared or preprogrammed. No computer was used just sequencers with midi, sync, cv, some machines and our fantasy at that moment. It was so much fun that I might even do this again sometime!