Hailing straight outta the third vertex of the Bermuda Triangle (Miami), Otto Von Schirach has been stirring up spiritual frenzy on the dance floor since he started DJing middle school dances and house parties at the age of 12. And the half-German half-Cuban Schirach—AKA the Sultan of Sucio, AKA Supermeng—has been crafting a twisted genre-less miasma of tropical disco and
He now graces the leading underground venues of the world. You’ve seen him around town dressed like a glorious alien from plant papaya, dropping beats and tossing his blow-up doll into eager audiences. Schirach is also working on a new full-length album for Berlin-based Monkeytown Records.
"I had this really bad acid trip where I went outside to smoke up in the car and I didn’t fit in the driver’s seat."
tweet this
The man is an enigma, and there are too many questions swirling around this golden-toothed DJ to possibly get to the bottom of in one sitting. So we sat down with Schirach to tackle the one that’s been baffling us the most.
What’s up with the fruit?
New Times: What fruits are you jamming on right now?
Otto Von Schirach: Mangos and avocados, also two giant bags of starfruit from the neighborhood. I have an abundance of those, and I’m getting a jackfruit soon. Wheatgrass too. It’s avocado season in Miami and I have too many right now. There’s a tree next door, my family has a tree—so if you want avocados, let me know.
Thanks. Too many?
I can’t physically eat that many avocados. Anything else I can eat a bunch of, but for some reason I can’t eat too many avocados.
Why not?
Miami avocados are huge. There are all types, but the ones I have in my yard are the big ones. I feel slow and sluggish and my stomach blows up if I have too many. I start getting a lot of gas and I start farting like every two seconds—like a fart machine.
Maybe it’s all the good fat?
Maybe. Have you ever tried eating ten avocados in one day?
Nah, I think maybe two at most.
Yea, I’ll have like 50 avocados—so many that I can’t even give enough away, so I’ll get creative and start making puddings and smoothies or eat it with a salad or just it ‘em raw.
Are you a total raw vegan? How strict are you?
To some
But you try to stick to living foods? As in freshly picked fruits and vegetables?
Yeah, exactly — fresh and local. I try to eat as much food from the neighborhood as possible.
The fruit gods have blessed me with this guy named Nuña. He’s this little old man off 36th Street who pushes carts around. When I moved into this house five years ago I connected with him when he came to get avocados from next door to sell. I asked him if he knew of any other fruits in the neighborhood and he was like “Yea, I know everything.” The next day he brought me a shopping cart full of sapodillas, then two shopping carts full of coconuts that he picked from around the Design District.
That’s awesome.
And it’s really all from the neighborhood. He gets me limes, lemons, papayas, bananas, starfruit, mamey, guanabana—mangos in abundance. He’s given me at least a thousand mangos.
Damn, Nuña comin’ through.
He shows me where the trees are too.
Where else do you get your fruits?
In Miami, the LNB
How did you first get into the living food lifestyle?
I bought a 1961 Mercury Comet when I was eighteen. My father helped me pick it out. We spent a year fixing the engine and getting it to run in tip-top shape. At the time, I was fat as fuck. I was like a football player/wrestler that smoked a lot of
What did you eat while you were growing up?
It was Cuban as fuck. But my grandmother was also health conscious so there was always mamey and chickpeas and
How does your diet affect you?
Food is medicine. It allows me to live my lifestyle of staying up all night making crazy music and touring a lot, and it lets me grow older and not feel so fucked.
Your wheatgrass game is strong too, right?
Yeah, I’m growing like five trays a week right now. I put it in everything. I’ll put it in salads, smoothies, and juice it. I’ll put it in sushi too.
Doesn’t that make you feel too hyphy? Whenever I have just a little bit of wheatgrass I feel like I’m on speed.
Yea, it’s awesome.
What’s the most mystical experience you’ve ever had related to food?
The Wilson avocados that come from next door to me — or Catalinas as Nuña calls them — the seeds look like aliens. When I first moved in here I had this connection with the tree. These seeds were all different and looked like weird alien dudes. I bonded with them and the tree, and I felt that the tree knew that I was in love with it and mesmerized by its beauty and ability to create these really interesting seeds. I started planting the seeds with Nuña. We put them everywhere—near the highway, empty fields, in my yard.
So now these little alien
Now that I have all these avocados, I’m blessing them with crystals, and some of them are right next to me in the studio. There’ll be a basket of mangos or jackfruit, and before I eat them, they’ll get blessed by music—blasted by bass while they’re getting ripe.
You’re feeding it bass!
[Laughs] Yeah, I feed it bass—then they feed me.