Get Physical with Booka Shade

The international dance-floor domination of German electrohouse duo Booka Shade, as well as that of the record label they cofounded, Get Physical, came serendipitously. "The plan was not to have a plan," Arno Kammermeier, half of the twosome, says of Get Physical's heady early days. It was around the turn of the millennium, and Kammermeier and production partner Walter Merziger had spent years as cogs in their native Germany's major-label record biz, twiddling the knobs on Top 40 pop fare. (Under the pseudonym Perky Park, they even created an authorized remix of Aqua's inescapable 1997 Euro dance hit "Barbie Girl.")

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Bicentennial Park

1075 Biscayne Blvd.
Miami, FL 33132

Category: Music Venues

Region: Downtown/Overtown

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Booka Shade: Ultra Music Festival, Day Two: With The Prodigy, Paul van Dyk, Armin van Buuren, Above & Beyond, and others. Saturday, March 28. Bicentennial Park, 1075 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. Gates open at 1 p.m. Tickets cost $99.95 to $350. ultramusicfestival.com. At Embrace and Safe Presents Get Physical Miami 2009: With M.A.N.D.Y., Italo Boyz, and Audiofly. Saturday, March 28. Kukaramakara Club, 60 NE 11th St., Miami. Doors open at 10 p.m. Tickets cost $25 in advance, $30 at the door. Ages 21+ with ID. safemusic.us

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More About

• Arno Kammermeier
• Booka Shade
• The B-52's (Band)
• Walter Merziger
• Aqua (Band)

But their real musical passions had always been more eclectic and underground. They first started in the 1980s, as so many others, as a synth-pop duo. Called Planet Claire, after the B-52's song of the same name, the group delivered a sound that was steeped in the dance-rock crossover of Depeche Mode and company. "From there," says Kammermeier, "it was a small step towards club music, which we fell in love with around 1992."

While making paper in their day gigs, by the middle of the 1990s they began releasing original dance tracks. Heavily influenced by the earliest trance (before that genre tag was a four-letter word), their sound was dubby, repetitive, and hypnotic, but clearly marked by a melodic sensibility creeping in from pop. Their first releases as Booka Shade came out on a small Dutch label called Touche, followed by tracks on Sven Vath's Frankfurt-based imprint Eye Q.

And along the way, Booka Shade befriended fellow Germans DJ T and duo M.A.N.D.Y. All were fed up with the stagnant nature of dance music after the late '90s boom — thus was born Get Physical. "I always have really fond memories of this time, because musically it was very interesting at the time. In 2002 approximately, there was a lot of change in the music, a lot of new sounds were coming up," Kammermeier says.

The label's earliest releases — DJ T's "Free Mind," Booka Shade and M.A.N.D.Y.'s joint "Body Language," Booka Shade's "Mandarine Girl" — came to define the Get Physical sound. Based on a four-four somewhere between house and techno, the tracks were plated with forceful bass and brain-sticking, twangy synth lines. High-energy but subtle, it was a wake-up call for dance-floor denizens mired in minimal's sparse clicks, and with its in-your-face joy snared an unlikely swath of rock fans.

This has only been helped by Booka Shade's shows, which are live in every sense and take place in rock venues more than dance clubs. Merziger mans keyboards, synthesizers, and a vocoder, while Kammermeier works the electronic drums and other effects. "There's a lot happening onstage," Kammermeier says. "If you only have a stereo backing track, and you just mime over it, it's completely boring. You can just as well stay home."

Booka Shade will bring its live show to the second day of Ultra Music Festival and then later that night will head to Charcoal Studios to play the annual Get Physical get-down. There they'll coheadline with M.A.N.D.Y. in a double-tag-team DJ set. "We have these computers with Traktor, and we want to sync those machines and do something like a Ping-Pong, back-to-back DJ thing," Kammermeier says. "I believe it's going to be very entertaining, either because it works really well or something fucks up completely."

At miaminewtimes.com: Read the full Q&A with Arno Kammermeier.

Email music@miaminewtimes.com