Ravers are the Experts: Career Advice from Unexpected Places

Rave culture is so fun and amazing, you never want to leave. So how do you stay inside the fun house forever? By turning raving into your career. Here’s how.

CAREER CHOICE: BECOME A DJ AND/OR START A RECORD COMPANY
This is the obvious choice. And many have succeeded. Even if we limit ourselves to those who have built successful international careers, there are too many friends of JUNgLEkalenderen to mention here.

But if I should pick just ONE (who has made a great career out of becoming a dj, starting a record company AND having tons of fun in the underground along the way) I would mention Emok aka Dalge, co-founder of Iboga, going strong since the 90s.

CAREER CHOICE: OPEN YOUR OWN TECHNO CLUB
There was a time when Copenhagen DIDN’T have several club nights to choose from every single weekend and when opening a regular techno club at a fixed location focusing on the underground was a really big deal, so to honor that, let’s focus on the opening of Culture Box in January 2005.

CAREER CHOICE: MAKE YOUR OWN FESTIVAL
For some people, a club is simply not spacious enough, so they make their own festival. And some of these festivals grow into global-scale phenomena and life-long projects, like Boom and Fusion and Ozora. These posts are filled with pics from those magical locations, so let’s enjoy a much rarer scan (of a festival that didn’t turn into a career but is still the stuff of legends):

CAREER CHOICE: WRITE ABOUT THE MUSIC
This is what I did. I have been writing about electronic music for many years, with great enthusiasm. I’ve been writing about many other things, too, but writing about the rave scene was always a personal pet topic for me. And the number of people actually writing about the scene has been very small – and it is much needed. So I have always felt I was on a mission.

To be fair, many sensible people would probably warn against ‘writing about music’ as a career for anyone these days – unless you are extremely dedicated and stubborn, because all the newspapers and magazines and all other media platforms that used to pay you for writing are struggling more than anyone could have imagined back in the day, or at least struggling to pay anyone writing about art and culture and music.

Currently, I write a lot less about music than I used to, at least on print, so I miss the music curation aspect of it. Which is one of the reasons why I started dj’ing. Which is a fun plot twist. Or a full circle moment. Or a time traveling trick, level 1000.

WHY TAKE CAREER ADVICE FROM RAVERS IN THE FIRST PLACE?
You might not associate rave culture with anything career related. This is a mistake, of course. As I have explained in a previous post (The 7 best things about being a raver), ravers a superhumans, optimized for the demands of modern life and the challenging tasks of the future.

To summarize:

1) Our burning passion for the music is a superfuel
It’s not just an inconvenient hobby that forever barricades us from ‘normal’ life. It endows us with the Endless Enthusiasm Superpower which is extremely useful in all aspects of life, because Endless Enthusiasm is the fuel for any real progression and the superfuel you need to solve any impossible task. 

2) We never ever give up.
Even if it rains.

3) We have endless stamina
No physical challenge is too much for real ravers. This comes from thousands of hours dancing into the dawn and way past all reasonable physical limits because the set is just so amazing and it’s your DUTY to dance to it and express it, because otherwise the magic will be lost, somehow.

Okay, so onwards with the career advice from more succesful oldskool ravers:

CAREER ADVICE FROM RUNE RK AND JOHANNES TORPE, ANNO 2005: FEED YOUR BRAIN AND DON’T GET TOO COMFORTABLE

In the October Issue of the CITADEL magazine in 2005, I interviewed Rune RK and Johannes Torpe, brothers and business partners.

At this point in time, Rune was dj’ing and producing, they were running the ArtiFarti record company together, and Johannes had had the international breakthrough designing the NASA nightclub in Boltens Gård (Johannes actually started out as a light designer and, after that, a graphics designer, making flyers, which is quite a rave’y way to start your career).

As per usual, the brothers had many other projects cooking, and in this section of the interview, we focus on their industrial design direction for Skype. The entire article is packed with career advice, but this section in particular (English translation below):

Translation:
“Over the past six months, the brothers have also served as so-called industrial design directors for Skype – the clever internet telephony service that was recently sold to eBay for 16 billion Danish kroner. When new products are developed, such as handheld phones or other gadgets for Skype’s current 54 million users, Rune and Johannes are among those deciding what they should look like.
So have all these projects made you fabulously rich?
Rune: “You can’t become fabulously rich in Denmark. It’s the world’s most efficiently run communist society.”
Johannes: “The people who really make serious money don’t live here.”
Rune: “But we could always move.”
Johannes: “Honestly, I’m just waiting for Rune to say, ‘Right – let’s get out of here.’”
Rune: “The Danish tax authorities are so aggressively authoritarian that you’re basically not allowed to make a living from creativity without getting punished from every possible angle. If they went after Mærsk McKinney-Møller the way they’ve gone after me…”
(Rune, in a bone-dry, squeaky tax-office voice):
“I don’t really understand this receipt… it’s a record?”
“Well, I’m a DJ. I play records for a living.”
“Yes, but you could also listen to it at home. That won’t do.”
“Well, you can also write at home with the ballpoint pen you’re holding – I assume you can’t deduct that either?”
“Oh no, that’s different!”
“There’s no flexibility. No room to breathe. No space for creativity. You can have a safe job with a fixed salary at Nordea, buy your B&O sound system, your Arne Jacobsen chairs, and your Citroën Berlingo, and live quietly and comfortably if that’s what you want. But if you want something else, there really isn’t much room for it in this society.”
Johannes: “Copenhagen is a small city. You end up knowing everyone in every possible way, and then it becomes comfortable. And comfort isn’t healthy.”
Rune: “And besides, hardly any of our business actually takes place in Denmark anyway.”
Is it possible that you might become overstimulated in bigger cities – and more creative in a ‘boring’ place like Copenhagen?
Rune: “Some people believe you have to isolate yourself completely and make sure nothing influences you if you want to be creative. I don’t believe that at all. The more stimulation you get, the more inspired you become. It’s really just about feeding your brain with impressions.”

The entire article is filled with career advice, and I would highly recommend listening to the words of Rune and Johannes anno 2005, considering their career trajectories since then. Below is the beginning of the article – ending with Johannes saying:

Johannes: “People are too passive. They wait for others to make the first move. They stare at their phones, waiting for the call. That gets you nowhere. You have to approach people yourself and say: “Let’s do this.”
You’ll get nine ‘nos’ and one ‘yes’. And that one yes is enough.”
Is that how things worked out for you?
Johannes: “There’s still a very long way to go before I can lean back and feel satisfied. I always want to move forward and experience new things. Don’t you know that feeling, when your whole body is simmering with the need for something new? Something has to happen. You just have to keep going – forward, forward, forward.”

CAREER ADVICE FROM THE ROLODEX
In another CITADEL magazine from October, but this time, the October 2006 edition, we find some similar career advice from the headliner at the upcoming DNBZone party: John Rolodex.

He says: “If you’re completely satisfied with what you’re doing and where you are, you probably aren’t working hard enough”.

On that note, let’s enjoy some pics from the Rolodex DNBZone party at Culture Box, October 2006:

And on that note, let’s move on to more Vitus and more career advice:

CAREER ADVICE: HOW TO DRESS (FEATURING VITUS AND CHRISZKA)
Always wear clothes that can go straight from the dancefloor to any other occasion. Yup, this is not easy, but it’s doable.

Here’s the set I played on the evening, if you need some tunes:
https://soundcloud.com/chriszka/chriszka-at-drum-bass-klubbens-easter-rave-at-culture-box-darkside-tunes-from-1993-to-2024

MORE CAREER ADVICE: NEVER STOP GEEKING OUT TO THE MAX
Speaking of talking about psytrance on Go’Morgen Danmark, here’s some more career advice from the oldskool ravers: Never stop geeking out to the max. Someone needs your wisdom.

CAREER ADVICE FROM TRENTEMØLLER: STAY GROUNDED
Here’s some advice from another fellow synth enthusiast: In the October 2006 issue of CITADEL, Peter Albrechtsen spoke to Trentemøller who deals with the weirdness of screaming fans and bodyguards by keeping his feet firmly on the ground and slowing down: “I come from the countryside, and I’m pretty grounded.“

Here’s the article in full (in Danish):

As you can see, another career advice from Trentemøller is living in a cold climate: “I’d like to move somewhere for about half a year, and Simpson and I have talked about buying some land in Thailand. But with the heat in Brazil or Thailand, I’d become lazy. I like the atmosphere in the Nordic countries, with rain and wind. Autumn is my favorite season.”

CAREER ADVICE FROM THE BURNING MAN
Let’s go somewhere warmer, fast! Here’s some excellent career advice from The Burning Man posse anno 2006:

Here’s a pic of Martin, Tatjana and Lotte at Burning Man, ready for business. I interviewed Martin and Tatjana in the fall 2006 after their trip, and Tatjana said this about her festival experience:

“You can do whatever you want. And you’re surrounded by people who are doing the same thing – or something even more crazy. I found that to be a valuable learning experience. You genuinely become a more open-minded person by expanding your boundaries in that way. My goal in going to Burning Man was to broaden my outlook on life, and it really did shift something. It should be a human duty, really: To make sure you’re thoroughly shaken out of your everyday context for at least one week a year, or, if nothing else, just once in your life, so you can be reminded that everything could be put together in a completely different way.”

SOME GREAT (ANTI)-CAREER ADVICE FROM SON KITE
I interviewed the Swedish trance duo Son Kite in 2014, and it is still one of my favorite interviews ever. We talked for hours, and I ended up writing two articles because there was so much material.

The first article was for Weekendavisena, about digital sound and streaming: (“Den store maskines illusion”)
The second article is this one, packed with great (anti)-career advice: Dancing is a very important ritual.

Here are three excerpts:
“Many people have lost their connection to why we are here and what we are doing here as human beings. Hunting for money, fame and achievements is what we learn in school, and it’s very easy to just get lost in this hunt without even being aware of why we are not happy doing it. That’s why it’s so important to get into the dance ritual and let the the stress out”, Marcus says.

“When Son Kite took off we were playing at underground parties all over the world. Then we started Minilogue which became very popular on the techno and house scene, and we began playing with superstar dj’s like Sven Väth and Richie Hawtin and got to see all these huge clubs in Ibiza and big festivals all over the world. Obviously I really enjoyed it to begin with. But I lost myself in it. The ego was building up, hunting the money and the fame, and I lost the connection to why I was doing it in the first place. It took me a while to realize this. It was a real eye opener,” says Marcus.

“It’s very difficult to stand in front of an audience of 20.000 people who wants this nervous energy and not be seduced into giving it to them. But we really believe that the task of a good dj is to help the crowd let go of that restlessness and the ego and get into the trance”, says Marcus.

Do you crave more phots? Dive in:
More suits, ties and dresses: Blasts from the Past: The Well-dressed raver
More endless enthusiasm: How to be a Raver: Hands in the Air
Want to be discreet? Read How to be a Junglist: Camouflage

Find all seasons of the calendar here: JUngLEkalenderen.

Here are a few links to some of my writing about underground rave culture:
1) My article about Fusion Festival
2) My article on Son Kite and the illusions of digital efficiency: Den store maskines illusion
3) My article on Boom 2012: Inner Travels