№ 140 - Arthur

For more than a decade, he has been a key figure at the shop, filtering quality vinyl for a store that shapes the Techno and House scene. Currently, he is taking a small leave, gathering creativity for his other multiple ventures.

As a DJ, he tours the world alongside friends like Mark Ernestus or PLO Man, creating unique atmospheres with his special sensitivity for timing, bass, and energy that consistently propels the dancefloor forward.

As a curator, he oversees the musical content of Wuppertal’s new super club, Open Ground, which has set crisp global standards in club sound since its opening in 2023. “It feels a bit like social engineering or a type of vibes supervising,” Arthur uncovers about his position at the matchless club, which is nestled six meters beneath in a refurbished WWII bunker close to Wuppertal’s main train station.

Arthur's contribution to The EDWIN Music Channel brings a fresh, contemporary look at South Africa’s compelling music genre Amapiano, a feverish hybrid of styles like Kwaito, Deep-House, qom, Jazz, Soul, and Lounge music, powered by percussive basslines. Or as Arthur describes it in the accompanying interview to his mix, “Amapiano is the new ultimate Sound-System music for me. Discovering it feels so exciting, like listening the first time to music again. I hear elements and arrangements that leave me completely speechless in terms of creativity and improvement.”

Q. Hello Arthur, can you tell us a bit about your musical background? What were some of your earliest influences?  How did you first discover electronic music, and what drew you to it?

A. Ouf, let me think. Probably through my dad, he was into records and a music lover, but my first conscious memory is through my uncle from Ukraine in the early 90s, when I was seven. At this time, he was doing some mysterious car import export tours :) And always when he was visiting for a few days, he dropped off blank 6h VHS cassettes (if I remember right, that was the max length) and asked me to record MTV overnight for him, so he could watch it when back in Ukraine. One day, he showed me how to record tapes from the radio, and we did a tape together from a chart show with our favourite parts.  I started to spend endless hours in front of the radio doing mixtapes. My stepdad has a Russian art school degree in music and visual arts, so he encouraged me to play those mixes loud in the car.  In our small apartment was always music playing, my stepdad playing keyboard in the kitchen when we had parties at home, or my mum playing Russian music and dancing to it on a chair, or I played my tapes, haha. I got addicted to music and went as a kid to the library and ripped all Michael Jackson & Prince CDs I could find.

Q. Was there a specific moment or party where you thought: “Yes, I want to be a DJ”?

A. I started to go out regularly early, with 13/14. It was the first time in a real club. We sneaked under the week out of the house while our parents slept and came back before they had to go to work. My best friend’s older sister sneaked us into clubs, and I was fascinated by this colourful night side of life with their bright, shiny characters that I wouldn’t possible to see during the day. It changed my life, and I became a club kid.

Our main interests were dancing and clothes; we didn’t care about DJing, there was zero interest. To have internet at home was getting more affordable, Napster and other illegal download platforms were around, so we would check each week for tunes and, in the same checking instrumentals, trying to find all possible little info about producers and digging for exclusive mixtapes. We are talking about late 90s / early 2000s mainstream US HipHop & R&B, Timbaland, Neptunes, etc., but also more underground stuff. One night we were out in the club dancing, and I wasn’t into what the DJ was playing because it held me back from dancing, and I started. From that point, to paid attention to what the DJ was doing and imagined what I would play instead. I realised that scratching, beat juggling, and blending work only with records. My parents left Russia and Lithuania with almost nothing; buying records was not an option, as it was way too expensive.

I was downloading music illegally, getting into instrumentals. I was burning CDs and always carrying them with me, so people in school started to ask me to give them tunes. I started to go to the local record stores, and I realised that with records, the access and the way of selecting is different, and from this point I got hooked and wanted really to learn to play records.

Also, at this time, I was into Rap & R&B beats, I got into Detroit Rap like Slum Village, got obsessed with J Dilla, and through that I found on Soulseek stuff like Moodymann, Theo Parrish, and funnily at the same time Dance Mania stuff like DJ Funk & Paul Johnson, and New York house. It was confusing, I started to check out the House floor of the club we used to go to, the Hip-hop, R&B & Dancehall floor we used to check started to sound boring to me, I couldn’t stand it anymore, mainstream US stuff wasn’t interesting anymore for me. I started to check out literally everything I could listen to. I got an internship at a local indie radio station. One day they asked to me to do playlists. The chief editor asked me to work for them as a radio editor because he enjoyed my playlists so much. I got an office there with access to the archive, got new promos each week, and was exploring a lot of underground music there. The DJing came around the same time, I must have been 17 when I had my first DJ gig. I got Serato sometime after, got more into it, and got a residency where I could play regularly.

Q. Do you think of DJing more as storytelling, curation, or performance - or something else entirely?

A. Hard to say, I can’t really answer this question. DJing is to me a quite personal try of a journey to make a connection and share something yet unspoken. It’s also a personal thing about how to handle situations; it has something to do with style and expression and who you are.

Q. What’s your relationship with physical formats versus digital ones?

A.  In the end only thing that matters is what comes out of the speakers, so def not a purist in these terms. Records as a medium to collect is great, but files are not. For me, with files, less is more. CDs and tapes as a format at home, I’m also enjoying. I love playing records a lot, the physical and visual aspect of it, but in the same time I also enjoy the technical advantages of digital DJing. It really depends a lot on what genre and direction I want to go. House, Disco, or Reggae, I play strictly records. I don’t need the technical innovations of digital DJing for those kinds of genres. The magic happens here for me with records. For any current productions like Amapiano or Techno, I really like to play digital. My records and music are sorted in three categories: Dance music, Dub/Reggae, and not dance, which is mainly drones / experimental music / any beatless related music.

Q. Are there any genres or tempos you're especially excited about right now?

A.  Amapiano. First time I heard of it was during lockdown times, winter 2020/21, Vigro Deep’s “Rise Of a Babyboy” album was my entrance, and Charisse C. In a current seven-minute Amapiano production, I hear more Techno than in any 36 h Berlin Techno rave in 2025. Don’t get me wrong, there is, like, in any genre, relevant development happening, but sometimes I’m sitting there listening to some new Techno releases and I’m like okay hmmhhmm, that sounds like this or like that that was released in this year X-Y-C already by artist X-Y-C. Do we really need this? Is this your vision? Is this any inspiration for anybody? Does this thrill me? I hear elements and arrangements in current South African Amapiano music that are completely leaving me speechless in terms of creativity and improvement.  

Amapiano is the new ultimate Sound System music for me, there is countless amazing stuff coming out each week. Discovering it feels so exciting, like listening the first time to music again. I love House music, I love any bass-related music. Amapiano is bringing a lot of elements under one roof that I like without being repetitive or retro. Also, it’s so diverse, it’s a wide spectrum inside the genre. I started to play Amapiano publicly out on a proper sound system last March at Open Ground, and that felt very eye-opening to me. In May & June, I played some shows with Mark Ernestus & PLO Man in the US, and the feedback from those gigs manifested for me where to go. Not only the dancers’ reactions but also the conversations I had with Mark, Torsten, Markus, Sascha & PLO Man made their impact clear to me.

Q. Together with DJ Carl Luis, you initiated the Duty Free Merger party series. Are you still involved?

A. To be correct, the party started as Duty Free in 2016, named after Carl’s radio show on Cashmere Radio. Carl and I share a big passion for Jamaican & UK Dancehall & Dub, and there was no place to go where we and our friends could enjoy it, to hear dub in a fitting atmosphere. So, we started the party as a platform, we took care of details like the colour of light and decorated the venue with plants, and had fruits or other specials. The Idea was to create a room sharing a welcoming experience on all levels and open up the frame of those more conservative Reggae parties happening around in Berlin, and also be open with musical borders without getting random. Tapes was our first guest at Acud macht Neu; besides DJing, he played a tabla-centred live set. We decided to take a break in 2019, and the need to do it came back in 2021, so the party was reactivated as Duty Free Merger in a new constellation with Vera Dvale as our first guest playing a drone set at West Germany venue. I haven’t been involved since November 2024. Right now, I don’t plan to get back into being part of a party series in Berlin again, but I still have some ideas for the future. Let’s see...

Q. You work at Hardwax in Berlin. How did your connection with the legendary record store begin, and what is/was your position?

A.  I was a regular customer there for years before I started to work, and I didn’t know anybody there. In 2014, I was focused on starting my art studies, but felt insecure about taking this path. One day, while buying records, I just asked if there were any free positions and that I was interested in working there. A few months later, I got a phone call to meet Mark Ernestus for a talk. After our one-hour talk, Mark said I can start tomorrow. I started to work there ten years ago in 2015, doing mail-order, and later getting asked to do the Reggae buying. Then got asked to become one of the two main buyers after Torsten’s time. So, since 2020, my main job at Hard Wax is selecting and buying records!

Q. You’re also the booker at Open Ground Club in Wuppertal. What’s your vision for the club?

A. That’s a longer conversation on its own. Actually, I’m not the booker in these terms, I’m the curator, or how do you say head of music? Which is not only selecting artists or defining and integrating music styles, but it also feels a bit like social engineering or a type of vibes supervision. There are a lot of different layers of the vision, mainly it’s about creating an experience with what you have and making something visible that is not there yet. It’s interesting to get people out of their comfort zone to explore music that they may not be aware of, yet… I like the idea of scenes from the past, like 70s/80s New-York, where I lot of different scenes used to happen very close to each other, and grow from that exchange, that’s a huge inspiration. I hope we can make a whole own scene grow here in Wuppertal for NRW.

Q. Where do you see your DJing or curatorial work going in the next few years?

A. Since March, I’ve been taking a time out for almost all of my duties at Hard Wax to be more able to tour around and play more gigs. Right now, I’m working on an Amapiano-focused showcase with Tikiman for Atonal and an extended b2b with Calibre at Sun & Bass. Also playing with PLO Man, Soffio’s season closing, a very fun small dance situation at the beach in Fregene, close to Rome. A small Asia tour is in the pipeline, can’t wait to play Open in Tokyo for Lil’ Mofo & OG Militant. The recent years, I think I got mainly recognised for playing Dub & Reggae, which I love, and I got so deep into. I’m also deep into House, I used to play mainly House, had all-night long sessions running with/ artists like Vainqueur or Soundstream, which I miss doing. And at the same time, I’m deep into Techno or what I would call „Dread Techno“, a term I’m using for music that is in between the Bermuda Triangle of reduced Drum & Bass, Dubstep, and stepping, hypnotic Techno cuts. But that’s also the crux of being musically versatile and somehow the product of a record shop environment.

Q. Do you have any aspirations to produce music, run a label, or start a residency?

A.  I hope to find residencies where I can tell this story with no compromise. Running a label is a dream of mine for which I’m trying to find time, too. I’m working on DJ edits and own dubs, versions, that’s for me as a DJ, the logical step into producing, I love working with vocalists live, let’s see where this will lead to. My priority for the next years is mainly to be a DJ & producer in a dialogue with the dancefloor/studio while still following my curatorial work for Hard Wax & Open Ground, which is a lot of fun.

N°140 Arthur Tracklist:

1 FaroQii MuziQ, M&N Projects, Djy Ora, PBI Musiq - GSK

2 Busta 929, Djy Vino, DJY Star.Kay, Don 707 - Sho

3 KayGee The Vibe, FaroQii MuziQ, Junior Da Djy - Junior Boys

4 Druza, FaroQii MuziQ, Kwanda MusiQ - Harmless

5 Kwanda MusiQ, Saucy Khuu, Bee Lunatic - Lashi Boots

6 Njabzin Daking, FaroQii MuziQ, Kwanda MusiQ - New Cartel 

7 Nandipha808, DJY Star.Kay, Deep Kvy - Hr12

8 Djy Godfather, Sk MusiQ, TD Kay, Quanzzy Style, Ziggy Rsa - Brizong Nkabii Yam

9 Kayvin_Jazz, MystroGee8O8, Bukzin Keyz - MjiuS

10 TrpmuziQ - Birthday Boi (intro)

11 W4DE, malume.hypeman, Musical Jazz - Tesoro

12 Djy Biza, DJY Star.Kay, Pholoso Dollar, Dlala Sauce - Sghubu