Juju & Jordash were the first artist to put out a record on Dekmantel. Their record was the start of long relationship with the Amsterdam-based label, having released three albums with them and played at their festival and parties across the world.
Gal Aner and Jordan Czamanski, known professionally as Juju & Jordash, have known each other since the mid-90s through a shared love of jazz. They have been making music together since 2004 when they both moved to Amsterdam. Their jazz-influenced style of house music set the tone for all of Dekmantel’s releases, something a little off centre, something a little different, something no one else is doing in underground dance music. It was a bold choice for the first Dekmantel release but it worked. “We just couldn’t imagine that no one else wanted to release this. So we thought, ‘maybe we should release it.’ That’s actually when we first thought of doing a label,” label owners Thomas Martojo and Casper Tielrooij told Resident Advisor.
Since their initial EP, their relationship has continued strong and they’re coming together at Good Room on May 7 (Tickets available here) for the Red Bull Music Academy party with Dekmantel and The Bunker. We asked Gal and Jordan to pick out five of their favorite Dekmantel memories ahead of the party.
Gal Aner…
“Arriving at the Dekmantel Festival site for the first time on the first year. The guys have been throwing big parties in various locations before, but when i saw the main ufo area , the different stages, crazy speaker stacks and so on i remember thinking to myself – wow this is a new era for them and such a big accomplishment. The festival still managed to maintain a family vibe and back to back amazing programming everywhere you go, which is really rare and hard to do on such large scale.
“Our first meeting in the studio. At first it came as a surprise to Casper and Thomas from Dekmantel that we were based in the Netherlands! they knew our releases on Psychostasia and Aestethic Audio (both from Detroit) and were pretty sure we’re from the US. Only when they invited us to play in one of their parties in the Hague (back in the EARLY days) they realized we came from Amsterdam. After that party we invited them to come one day and check some new tunes in the studio. The musical connection was immediate, and Casper, after an hour of listening to different tunes offered to release an album of all this material , which was pretty crazy as they didn’t yet have a label at the time. This became our debut LP ”Juju & Jordash” and the first release on the Dekmantel label.
Jordan Czamanski…
Hearing Joey Anderson’s 1974 released on Dekmantel being played by Joey Anderson at Dude club in Milan a couple years ago before it was released. I was like duuuude…
The First Dekmantel Festival hectic Boiler Room setup. We just finished playing the lovely forest stage with Move D (as Magic Mountain High) and we had to within one hour tear down the setup, transport it to the other side of the festival site in a little dune buggy type vehicle, and rebuild the whole thing in the Boiler Room area while San Proper was DJing. So no soundcheck or anything.
Because our live shows are improvised we usually take a couple hours to soundcheck – it’s the most important part of the show for us, this time we had to tune the synths quickly in headphones and just go for it. Ended up working out fine but Lady Luck was by our side
Seeing pizza with pineapple and what I believe was a turd, on a menu of a pre gig Italian restaurant in Nijmegen back in the early days. Delizioso. We were actually reminiscing about it a few weeks ago.
Juju & Jordash are playing at the Red Bull Music Academy’s The Bunker x Dekmantel party with Joey Anderson, Palms Trax, Dekmantel Soundsystem, Bryan Kasenic, Antenes and Clay Wilson. Tickets available here.
