why im doing this i love when people dancing and find a way to express them self, or to shake all doubts and krämpfe away. for that moment im spinning records. various wonderful dancemusic. no limits. the other thing is: i love when you are alone at home with all your life-stories in your head and listen the music you really close to. your dancefloor can be intimate, your home sowieso. what im doing now im working on new songs. some of them are quiet ok. im trying to find the right words to tell a story so beautiful like a sunrise in istanbul. if i got it, i will check a record label in abroad for releasing my new stuff. who is kalabrese? Kalabrese is one of the more glittering characters in Zurichs music scene and mingling at the frontline as dj, producer and as club owner. Through his very own style as a producer he caused a stir outside of Switzerland. Kalabrese Debut Album "Rumpelzirkus"is a great piece of music. It rumbles and works the funk organically and song oriented and recevied good reviews in the independent dance-scene all around the world. For the last two years, Kalabrese and his Rumpelorchestra toured through clubs and festivals (e.g. Sonar 08 and Mutek 07, transmediale berlin, electrowave florence, bukarest) all around the world. At the moment, Kalabrese focusse in the album production and is on the road for some dj gigs. He did some remixes for artists and labels like; tosca, crosstown rebels, dOP, drumpoet community, filewhile, luke solomon and the excellent "elleli" witch was licensed for the famous house label innervision and found his way in many many dj-cases and charts. Album-Review Groove Magazin Der mit roter Farbe beschmierte Mann auf dem Cover ist kein blutrünstiger Massenmörder, sondern Kalabrese aus Zürich, und dass der uns nur Gutes will, wird gleich bei den ersten Tönen von „Rumpelzirkus" klar. Denn da fühlt man sich gleich von Anfang an wohl, der Groove schnappt sich zuerst den Großen Zeh, der wippt mit und noch bevor Kalabrese mit ursympathischen Texten mit Schweizer Färbung punkten kann, ist der Rest des Körpers auch schon am schwingen. Und das geht so weiter, jedes der elf Stücke auf „Rumpelzirkus“ ist ein Treffer, ob es jetzt der klassische Clubtrack ist wie z.B. „Not The Same Shoes" mit Kate Wax als Gast an der Stimme oder Tracks, die rüberkommen wie eine tolle Jam-Session im Club um die Ecke, den es nur in den eigenen Wunschvorstellungen gibt, wie z. B. „Deep" oder „Auf Dem Hof". Kalabrese weiß offensichtlich genau, was er macht. Sein Können spielt er aus und nutzt es als Freiraum für viel Verspieltheit. Dieses Rumspielen ist einfach extrem ansteckend, man will beim Hören von diesem Album tanzen, albern sein und auf Coolness spucken. Dieses Album will man zum Essen mit Freunden hören, im Auto auf dem Weg in den Club und dann auch dort die Freude raus lassen und sie zu teilen. Musikalisch gesehen bewegt sich „Rumpelzirkus" irgendwo zwischen zeitgemäß und zeitlos, zwischen Funk und House, zwischen Ballade und Clubhymne. Vieles auf diesem Album hat handgemachten Charakter, womit aber auf keinen Fall Dilletantismus gemeint ist – sondern eher Charakter. Wenn bei „Hou Anthem" am offenen Fenster die Polizei vorbeifährt oder es bei „Auf dem Hof" im Hintergrund irgendwo so klingt, als hätte jemand eine hängengeblieben Kopie von „Carwash" aufliegen, fügt sich das schön in den Rumpelzirkus ein und hat Anteil an dem, was dieses Album so besonders macht. Das sehr gelungene „Hafenlied" zeigt, was es ausmacht, wenn ein Track mal eben nicht so instrumentiert und produziert ist, wie es gerade alle machen. Die Grooves von Kalabrese gehen irgendwie tiefer als der Durchschnitt, das ausgelöste Glücksgefühl strahlt in den Tag hinein. Auf dem Technofloor findet dieses Album nicht unbedingt statt, vielleicht noch am ehesten mit „Not The Same Shoes", dafür aber im Houseclub um so mehr, zum Aufbau, zur Peaktime und zum Runterkommen. Vergleiche mit anderen Produzenten wären hier fehl am Platz. Dieses Album hat viel Eigenes, gleichzeitig kann man die Stücke gefühlsmäßig mit all dem messen, was uns über Jahre ans Herz gewachsen ist. Truely Felt Housemusic eben. Wenn House im Jahr 2007 so kommt wie dieses Album, können wir glücklich sein. La Suisse: Douze Points! - Review: Achim Brandenburg Album-Review Pitchfork Kalabrese might be minimal house musics first great defector since Matthew Herbert; hes certainly its most inventive upsetter since Isolée went all disco-schizo with We Are Monster. Now forget I mentioned both those names, much less "minimal house music," because Rumpelzirkus, Kalabreses beguiling debut album, absolutely deserves to be heard on its own terms. The record opens with a platitude wrapped in a cliché, as a Jamaican-accented voice-- certainly not Kalabreses-- deadpans, "Wheres the future? Its not the past, its not the present. Its…the future." You can take your finger off the eject button, though. This isnt some European roots-reggae travesty; thats just Kalabreses off-kilter sense of humor. Living up to the latter half of its name, Rumpelzirkus carries about it an air of the carnivalesque, or at least the tongue-in-cheek, that verges on the outright bizarre. (What else are we to make of a song like "Aufm Klo", that begins with Kalabrese, sounding a bit like Bob Dylan as filtered through a vocoder, singing, "I got pain in my ass…"?) Beyond that tongue-in-cheek intro, theres actually next to no reggae here, beyond the obvious genetic trace of dub that enlivens all electronic music. Theres just as little overt futurism, if by futurism you mean the streamlined forms and steely timbres that have electrified the electronic-music imaginary since Kraftwerk and Cybotron. Rumpelzirkus is a bit of a head-scratcher: Is it a click-house album aimed at listeners who prefer real live instruments or a lush comedown reverie for real live clubkids? Really, its both of those things and more. Most of the albums cuts ride a bumptious 4/4 beat, which wont be surprising given the albums distribution via Kompakt and Kalabreses own discography. (Perlon published his best known single, and various of his tracks have appeared on James Holdens At the Controls session, the Four:Twenty labels Circoloco at DC10 Ibiza showcase, and Akufen and Tyrants respective Fabric mix CDs.) But this is hardly your bog-standard oonce-oonce. Most of Kalabreses beats are made not with drum machines or soft synths but clattery samples swathed in natural reverb: sticks on rims, pots and pans, creaky bedsprings, drunken handclaps. Hes not afraid of a fat analog kick or fizzy, filtered white-noise hi-hats, but the machine aesthetic never dominates-- especially once we move out of the percussive layers. With the exception of a few growling analog synthesizers, electric and acoustic instruments dominate-- low-slung electric bass, kalimbas, glockenspiels, tambourines, horns, and acoustic guitar-- giving rise to the specter of folk-house, or maybe, just maybe, something we might call struminal. But ultimately its not what Kalabrese puts in his music thats important, but his sophisticated compositional sensibility. At their best, Kalabreses songs draw simultaneously from dance music and pop songwriting, fusing a rare sort of architectonic strength with a tender, unabashedly sentimental sense of narrative. In keeping with all good dance music, there is no real division between the rhythmic and melodic registers. On "Deep", for instance, a lone acoustic guitar figure taps out a gleaming ostinato pattern that the beat warily circles like a side-stepping spider. On "Heartbreak Hotel", hand drums, spindly guitar lines, Moogy squeals, and groaning vocal harmonies string together a kind of pointillistic approximation of a country ballad. "Not the Same Shoes" starts off almost like a parody of a minimal house track, complete with a baritone voice supplying an eighth-note boom-boom-boom pattern, before blooming into a gravelly duet with the Swiss laptop chanteuse Kate Wax. He-said/she-said verses make a play for radio-readiness as vines of bright analog synthesizer go climbing like morning glory through the tracks percussive lattice. (Its a remarkably similar strategy to that used by LCD Soundsystems "Someone Great".) On the very best songs, Kalabrese extends his ambitions beyond the horizontal, proving himself to be a remarkably talented songwriter, full stop. "Hide", featuring the rosin-throated Guillermo Sohrya, goes so far as to suggest José González acoustic mood pieces as fleshed out with Afrobeat-inflected guitar licks, swirling Hammond organs, jittery synthesizer blips and a woozy barroom guitar solo. Cozy as a duvet, its most immediate reference point might be Yo La Tengos "Autumn Sweater"-- but better written, better produced, and better suited for tugging heartstrings to the point of unraveling. Its a shame that Valentines Day is behind us, because "Hide" is the lovers mixtape closer of the year. Rumpelzirkus greatest asset might just be its sense of surprise, rolling as magically haphazard as a jam band in top form. Just listen to the way "Oisi Zuekunft", the albums oddball opener, evolves unexpectedly from a grab-bag of po-faced phrases and sly musical jokes into a slow-burning groove: the last third of the song squeezes the horns into a bellows that stokes the funk and blows away any stray trace of irony. (Just as almost every individual track displays a remarkable sense of development, the whole album is marked by a masterful sense of flow: given that the 11 cuts were initially released on three 12-inch E.P.s, Rumpelzirkus makes for an uncannily cohesive longplayer.) The same trick inflates the closing "Body Tight" from its anemic percussive opening into a billowing sentimental singalong. Rumpelzirkuss title, it turns out, has less to do with circuses than with the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin (or in German, Rumpelstilzchen): Kalabrese takes straw and spins it into gold. - Review: Philip Sherburne most of my music you will find on i-tunes stores or on beatport. thanks a lot for the media support, especially philip sherburne who pushed me into pitchfork mag and in the list "of the best dance lps of Wire Mag. Recent Releases Kalabrese - CD Rumpelzirkus - Stattmusik / Kompakt Kalabrese - 118 - Phictiv (OUT NOW!) Kalabrese - Chicken Fried Rice - Perlon (OUT NOW!) Recent Remixes by Kalabrese -el ciclo del enfermo-tango crash (nice try rec. ch) -another bites in the dog-school of zuversicht (pudelprodukte hamburg) -panorama-tuccillo (delusions of grandeur, london) -oysters in may-tosca (g-stone, vienna) -sure rägä-big zis (nation music word and sound, ch) -ultrasound-luke solomon (little creatures, london) -dein verlangen-dop (eklo, paris) -inferno jack-butane (crosstownrebels 50) -elleli- madioko and rafika -walking home- crowdpleaser&Ly Sander (drumpoet) -luvely- the tape vs. rqm (filewile bern,mouthwatering rec) -reclap- soulphiction (sonarkollektiv 190) -jabaluu- goldsteinvariationen (station 17 rec. hamburg) -am strand- gogomandy (muve rec) Booking Contacts Worldwide: directly to me; sacha@kalabrese.com or to my friend karsten@haeusner.net Italy: Werk Booking contact Antonio Boldrini