To be honest I have never been the best when it comes to archiving one self. To give you an overview here’s a “vague” biography/description of projects I have been part of. Dates are not 100% confirmed in all cases but who cares anyway

DJing

I started DJing under the name of Booty Carrell around 2002, probably at Club2 in Munich. The name comes from a semi-lucid dream I had around eight in the morning between sleep and waking up. It stuck to me and a lot of people on the street call me by that name. It’s less common than Sebastian and who knows – maybe fits?

Anyhow: Playing records, presenting music to people is certainly what took me to most places. In 2010 I found my love for what I call “music from the second wave of musical globalization” – means I started playing and hoarding vinyl records from Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and all over the world but with strong focus on Asian music from the fading vinyl era (mostly 1970s). I put mixes on the web, some of them were well received globally and while this never made me a top paid DJ from the jet set of global club culture (too much to ask for with this kind of music) — I am very thankful I got to play in so many places all over the world. I am thankful for the warm reception, the information, the friendships this has caused. Up to now there have been tours and gigs in Turkey, Pakistan, Spain, Romania, all over Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Roskilde Festival Denmark, Austria, Thailand, England, Croatia and more sharing the decks with Doug Shipton, Andy Votel, Habibi Funk, Anika, Daniel Miller, Maft Sai, Chris Menist, Ladies on Records, Ernesto Chahoud, JJ Whitefield, Zozo, The Dude Of Stratosphear, Benjamin Fröhlich, Dompteur Mooner, Mahssa, DJ Fatou, Afrodermitis, Ion din Dorobanti, Khidja and many more.

I joined the B-Music crew around my favorite record label ever Finders Keepers in 2011. B-Music is also the name of my current series which brings global crate diggers to play at the Golden Pudel Club in Hamburg.

In general the music I play is based on research in specific topics and obsessions. That’s why DJing always opened gates into other territories of music intermediation.

Journalism

In 2005 I co-founded the Grimme Online Award nominated music editorial for ZEITonline, the online branch of German weekly Die Zeit. Until 2009 I wrote as a regular freelancer for them and later moved on to being a sporadic contributor of the paper issue. Most of the texts disappeared but here’s an index on some of these works.

I also contributed to Austrian subculture magazine SKUG and some bits to taz – Die Tageszeitung

From 2011 through 2016 I recorded several special interest feature shows to WDR3open: Freiraum (Studio für Akustische Kunst, Westdeutscher Rundfunk / Editor: Markus Heuger)

Since September 2010 and to this day I am happy to present my own bi-weekly radio show Groovie Shizzl for ByteFM Webradio.

Music and Vinyl Talks

One thing I always really enjoyed obviously is talking about music. Even in public. But I had no idea you could turn this into a format until Danish production crew and crate diggers extraordinaire Den Sorte Skole invited Doug Shipton and me to Copenhagen to do what they called a “vinyl talk” with the legendary record dealer Martin Pac. Due to Den Sorte Skole’s massive popularity in Denmark there was a huge crowd waiting for us to play obscure records and talk about them in a living room situation on a stage. Cheering after every snippet! We were blown away by this reception and the fun of it. So of course ever since I try to make hold of every opportunity to do a “vinyl talk”. At Groove City Recordstore in Hamburg we established a series called “Eine Kiste Platten und eine Kiste Bier mit Dir” co-hosted by DJ Mad, Mitra Kassai and me. I did some on specific topics like “Prerevolutionary Iranian Pop“, “Turkish Immigrant Music Production in Germany” at places like Les Disques Bongo Joe in Geneva, Resonanzraum Hamburg and Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg. Or sometimes artist interviews on stage for Operation Ton in Hamburg — it’s a good thing – let’s talk!

By far the most well received adventure in this field as been the series “Ich markk Vinyl” at the Markk museum in Hamburg. We arranged music talks around the vast vinyl archive of the museum and hundreds of people came. There’s also been an unexpected amount of media coverage ranging from NDR Fernsehen, Hamburger Abendblatt, Hamburg Guide to interviews with Deutschlandfunk Kultur. Props to my wonderful guests DJ Fatou, Coco Maria, Guy Dermosessian, Bogdan Orbita – each session has been precious and unforgettable!!

Works for Theatre and Film, Performance and Music Programmation

My first band Stockheinz Karlhausen we composed theatre music for an aspiring theatre director called Esther Hattenbach. That must’ve been in 1999 but I’m not sure. She was absolutely brilliant — thank’s for giving us a shot!

In 2002 for and with Felix Kubin I coproduced a 13 hour live music program called “Lucid Dreams – Sleepwalking The 21st Century” at a rather disatrous edition of the Festival Nuit Blanche in Paris. That night the mayor got stabbbed (and survived), we had a proper riot in the building and the backstage got raided, the sound engineer canceled his appearance and had to be replaced by Felix himself but however: Matt Wand, Alejandra & Aeron, Mariola Brillowska, John Hegre and Felix managed to play fantastic shows.

In 2003 or 2004 my friend Meeuw and I curated a room for the Festival I.D.E.A.L. in Nantes, France. We had Brezel Göring, A*Class, Dennis Tyfus, Finnish Spoken Punk artist Paska and ATC on the bill. What feels unreal about it is that (nowadays) super well established sound artist and music mastering luminary Rashad Becker was driving the van with grace. We ran out of gas near Oberhausen on the way back.

Starting in 2006 I programmed a monthly concert series at the Golden Pudel Club, Hamburg. The series was called “Salzburg Touchscreen” and it saw a great great variety of performers in a range from harsh Noise to Psychedelic Pop, Jazz, Outernational, Electronica, Steampunk and even an 18 piece brass band from Providence. Concerts included Blevin Blectum, Kevin Blechdom, Graham Mushnik, The What Cheer Brigade, Ariel Pink, Tex & Erobique, L’Orchestre du Montplaisant, The Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra, Kunt, The Woima Collective, Thomas Truax, Miss Hawaii and many more.

In 2008 we venturesomely wrote, directed and performed a piece called Amanda Amende und Pia No at Muenchner Kammerspiele. With “We” I mean our friends Pollyester, Dompteur Mooner and our band Augsburger Tafelconfect. The excellent Oliver Mallison was the only actor/professional theatre performer in the crew. To this day I don’t know how he handled four musicians trying to set up a professional theatre production. It was Dada heaven for us.

At the same time in 2008 I “wrote” and performed a live score for a theatre piece for director Nina Mattenklotz (Woyzeck I think). The performance took place at Kampnagel, Hamburg.

On top of that at the same time in 2008 I participated in the program “Toi-Même” for the Festival Banlieues Bleues in Pantin, Paris directed by Noël Akchoté and produced by Stefan Winter and Mariko Takahashi. It was about eating, drinking and collaborating and featured such a range of artists: Brad Jones, Han Bennink, Red, Andrew Sharpley, Jean-Louis Costes, Kevin Blechdom, Fritz Ostermayer, Laetitia Shériff, Otto Lechner, John Giorno,

In 2011 social choreographer/human puppet master Claudia Plöchinger commissioned Viktor Marek and me to “write” and perform the score for her piece „Verkehr – ein choreografisches Planspiel“ that took place in Kampnagel Hamburg. One of the musical pieces made it onto the B-side of our “legendary” single Check The Horse!

In 2012 I performed and chose the music for Heute Volkstanzen – a dance piece that was performed in Hamburg and Leipzig.

From 2013-2016 I was responsible for the music and performed as sidekick to Manuel Muerte in his “Der Schwebende Diwan” talk shows (Kampnagel, Hamburg).

For the 2013 edition of the Überjazz Festival in Hamburg I curated the “B-Music” program. It included the first concerts on german soil of Jean-Claude Vannier (with Band and Ensemble Resonanz String Quartet) and Bruno Spoerri (with Andy Votel). Also on the bill: The Woima Collective, Chris Menist and Anthony Joseph. The Vannier concert was a proper festival production, it hadn’t happened before and had to put the musicians together which meant lots of rehearsals, get togethers and even more new ideas. Very exciting. Thank you, Heiko Jahnke, for having our backs on this.

By far the most crucial moment though was programming the music for the New Hamburg Festival directed by Björn Bicker, Malte Jelden and Michael Graessner commissioned by Deutsches Schauspielhaus in 2014. It took place in a predomintaly immigrant district of Hamburg, the Veddel and we wanted to work as much as we could with local people rather than just importing our cultural offerings. For the music we hired the core of the band L’Orchestre du Mont Plaisant (whom I knew well from the Pudel) to come to Hamburg for seven weeks and work in the tightest rehearsal schedule known to man to present local talent in a range from Turkish to West African Music via Romani styles and Sinti Jazz to Japanese Post Punk. We produced about eight concert premieres and two theatrical scores and it all worked out so well. The most beautiful aspect though is that a lot the projects took off into the future: Derya Yıldırım and Grup Şimşek are touring the world and are about to drop their debut album in 2019. Furthermore Derya is regularely playing with the Ensemble Resonanz (Elbphilharmonie 2019), Albanian lute player Hava Bekteshi founded an amazing band with Love Songs. Bulgarian violin genius youngster Alex Xtra-Ta has ever since played countless combinations with Marino Formenti, Ensemble Resonanz, Jacques Palminger, Benjamin Brunn .. and lava is still afloat out of this creative volcano that erupted in October 2014

With the core of New Hamburg in 2016 we represented Germany for the Biennale Architettura in Venice. We set up “The Veddel Embassy” in the Chiesa della Misericordia for one week. 80 people from the Veddel including the kids football club, members of the Islamic community and inimitable characters traveled to Venice for this and we presented concerts every night. This was again directed by Björn Bicker, Malte Jelden and Michael Graessner and funded by the Goethe Institute. Here’s a film on this massive operation.

In 2017 Goethe Institue Thailand invited me to host a South East Asian DJ Conference in the wake of the Urban String East Asia Tour of Ensemble Resonanz. Reports are available in English and German

In 2018 with Mohammad Poori I curated the music lead of the second New Hamburg Festival: Soli Polis.

Also in 2018 with Derya Yıldırım and Grup Şimşek we returned to Biennale Architettura in Venice for another Goethe Institute project with author Björn Bicker and director Malte Jelden: “Truth And Reconciliation Concert Hearing One: Islamophobia” is the name of the result. A film about it is in the making and I will post that.

From September 2020 I’ll be taking care of music at Münchner Kammerspiele joining the artistic direction team of its new director Barbara Mundel on a five year term as Music Director and Dramaturg.

Music Education

since 2009 I am part of Klangradar 3000 in my hometown Hamburg. Klangradar is an organization that sends composers to school classes. Within three months time those composers advise school kids with alternative playing and composition techniques and helps them set up their own contemporary experimental composition that will be played on stage linked to a regular concert. I am very proud I helped realize about eight of those concerts to this day and I can’t wait for the next.

Between 2010-2015 I was commissioned by the Körber-Stiftung to explore the possibilities of a concert foyer in a course program spanning five years. Courses were held at the HAW Hamburg with Prof. Almut Schneider and her students. The results were shown as part of ePhil, a contemporary electronics series set up by Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. For the first five years of the series the Elbphilharmonie was not yet set up. Those concerts were held at the Körberforum Hamburg.

From 2010 until 2020 I’ve been working as buyer/music counselor at Groove City Recordstore in Hamburg.

another educational project I am involved in is Karolonia — Stadtlabor für temporäre Weltverbesserung – a project of Hamburg’s Kulturagenten. For the initial edition 2018 we produced a radio show with school kids recorded live in the Groove City Recordstore.

Bands/Music Projects

Between 1999 and 2001 I was part of the short lived Improv-Quintet Stockheinz Karlhausen. That was fun and I hope everybody’s doing well!

In 2003 Jürgen Hall and I founded Augsburger Tafelconfect – an electronics/table top guitar Improvisation unit that happened to play lots of shows around Europe (sometimes visually accompanied by the immensely talented BaronesseA). We released an EP and a 7inch and failed to release our actually finished album. With Burkhard Friedrich and Sascha Demand we ran our own Improv concert series Gegen den Strom at the Golden Pudel Salon Hamburg and played with Johannes Bauer, John Russell, Eddie Prévost, Lol Coxhill and many others. By 2009 we felt the story of Augsburger Tafelconfect had been explored to the fullest and we quit the band.

In July 2020 Derya Yıldırım, Tobias Levin and myself composed and recorded the music for “Gülden’s Schwester”, a radio play by Björn Bicker and produced for Bayern 2 Hörspiel. It was awarded Hörspiel Of The Month by the Deutsche Akademie für darstellende Künste the same month.

Music Business

A short stint on the business side of things should not be completely ignored. From about 2001 until mid 2002 probably I worked as assistant of the management of the record company Winter&Winter in Munich, Germany.

In 2002 I joined music publishers edition Stora and fueled by friendship and ambition we tried to surf the biz in between being a publisher, label, artist association, mail order and countryside commune. We haven’t been successful at everything (during my time especially not the publishing which was supposed to be the main income) but we have tried everything and I’m so thankful to the crew.