Tusya Plus!

Nope. It's hard for Georgians to get a Russian visa.
How did you spend your honeymoon?
What, don't you read the bilvarnia pressa?
You're one of the few musicians with a firm political stance. How does that play out on the dancefloor? Is it important to you that the audience (the one you address your music to) shares your convictions?
Do I even have anything like that? Frankly, I couldn't care less about that rubbish. Making music isn't like swapping business cards with your genres listed on them. I don't want journalists to be bored with me, so I try to talk about something else. Well, here's a political statement for you: I've heard that Aslan Abashidze is releasing candy called "I'll be back" in Moscow. Funny. Putin ought to release his own candy too... Something like "The Rising Sun", given that he's got his eye on China.
Your last performance in Moscow was awash with symbolism — bursts of machine-gun fire, the Soviet Union anthem and so on. You simply shocked the audience. I'm curious how you usually prepare for a performance, how you construct its dramatic component, whether you put some particular idea into it?
People didn't hear that the USSR anthem was being sung along in German in real time. The translation was done by the music critic Andrei Gorokhov, and Tusya Beridze played it from her laptop while we were all drinking vodka in the kitchen. Andrei isn't used to drinking vodka in the kitchen, so his version came out as sharp as barbed wire. His eyes turned into bullets, and all you could hear was "wir", "unsere", "keine
grenze", "weiter", "vorwrts"... I recorded that moment of unity onto a mini-disc, the whole thing fuelled by alcohol... Yes, that set was special, intense, it spoke of love and hatred...
Have you considered performing in Chechnya?
And what does Chechnya even amount to now? Are there any Chechens left anywhere besides the Caucasus mountains? There are only about 500,000 people left there. In Tbilisi you can come across traumatized Chechen children in Belgian designer clothes... (that's getting ahead of your next question)
My friend told me that in Tbilisi everyone walks around in clothes by Belgian designers. Tusya's album is called "Georgia as a Spiritual Tokyo". Is it really like that?
Your friend is a joker... This winter the gas supply was cut off in Georgia, and to keep from freezing to death people piled on every scrap of clothing they could find. Apparently someone dubbed this Georgia's "winter Belgian collection". What is Georgia? Mongol Georgia, Turkish Georgia, Russian Georgia, Persian Georgia, Georgia, Kartli, Iberia, Eastern Georgia, Western Georgia, Ossetia, Abkhazia, Lower Georgia, Middle Georgia, Southern Georgia, Bush's Georgia, pipeline Georgia, or "Georgia in my head"... It's a kind of projection screen, but with khachapuri and very sweet, friendly people who are just as foolish as everywhere else and are trying somehow to arrange their miserable lives, all while sharing with you what's most precious to them. Most of them are poor from a Western point of view, but rich within the concept of "spiritual Tokyo".
Seen from Russia, it seems that Thomas Brinkmann is the intellectual leader of minimal techno in Germany. You're practically a saint. A celestial being! What is your status really?
47 years old, married, no children, and no leader at all. The leader of minimal techno is Kompakt. I merely envy them.
Can you tell us about that installation made of pink cotton buds hanging on the wall in your studio?
They're pink and blue, for boys and girls. There are about 5000 of them, no more, because nobody's going to pay for a really big construction of cotton buds. These things are used to torment small children in civilized countries. I needed to rid myself of that traumatic experience. The thing can be interpreted in different ways.
Tell us about the last track on "Lucky Hands". What was the idea? To demonstrate the rhythmic kinship between your music and early jazz?
No, that track was mixed together by Marco Palmieri out of a little Django Reinhardt tune and a few extra drum loops... We're vile little thieves who, out of love for Django, stole a few of his classic pieces.
Here you're a cult figure, so I invited a few Moscow DJs to ask you questions. So:
DJ Anton Kubikov (SCSI-9 - Kompakt): What monitors do you use in the studio?
Bullfrog and the like, from Berlin, just like Ricardo Villalobos, Richie Hawtin, Marcus Schmickler, Luciano... Even Michael Mayer recently caught on that these things by "Heiner basil martion" rule...
What did you find in the Russian band "Kino" (last time you played a remix of them at "Mio")?
Viktor Tsoi... Thanks to Tusya I listen to a lot of Russian music. When I heard that piece, I asked her who it was and said I wanted to make a remix for my next Moscow performance. Unfortunately, we here know very little about Russian culture beyond the famous names from the past or the loud ones from the present. When I was last in Moscow, I was helped to find films like "Mimino". I bought about 10 DVDs of cartoons and other things that Russians grew up on before the fall of the Iron Curtain. I have a great deal to learn... I played Viktor Tsoi as a mark of respect.
DJ Sanchez (club "Propaganda"): What about self-criticism? What gives you confidence in what you do?
I give myself confidence, and then I give myself doubt, but by then it's too late and the thing is already done.
Are you striving to discover your own sound, or do you simply transfer your emotional experience and thoughts into music?
You eat, and part of the food becomes shit, and part becomes part of you. There's this thing in the body called the brain, and it makes you happy or unhappy. Sometimes you sense with it that your shit came out pretty good. About 300 grams a day? (In wealthy countries you produce double the norm.) That's about 110 kg a year. That's more than you weigh... And over a lifetime it comes to around 7,000 kg of genuine shit. Compared with the other things that come out of you, that's a lot of shit. If all the Chinese released their annual quota of shit in Switzerland, or Georgia — which is the same thing, since both have mountains and Belgian designer clothes — you'd get 1,500,000,000,000,000 kg +10% of shit between the mountains. It's a powerful abstract image, which I recommend picturing before you go asking about transferring anything into anything.
DJ Helga (club "Shanti"): She adores your album "Tokio 1" and would like to know whether your tracks were released on vinyl. If so, she'd be grateful if you could bring her "Mit Zucker"?
No, they weren't released on vinyl...
DJ Anrilov (www.fragmentmusic.net): What's your attitude to netlabels? Do you think the future of electronic music lies with them? Would you be willing to release a non-commercial album on some netlabel?
Why non-commercial? On Russian websites you can find masses of everything for free... In the end only the netlabels make money... See Napster and so on. All this "non-commercial" shit is nonsense, but I don't attach much importance to it...
DJ Vanilla: What about the next Georgian albums?
In the future, expect Georgian wedding songs from nikakoi, and right now tba empty /
stupied is selling like hot cakes.