We’ve been waiting years for the opportunity to get Ion Ludwig to San Francisco and its finally happening but not without a cool twist of fate of course. Things happen for a reason. Read on.
(pls join ‘going or interested’ on our FB invite or buy a ticket thru our Resident Advisor invite.)
Ion Ludwig is definitely one of the most talented underground dance music composers of our era. That last sentence may seem like an ordinary cliche statement to just a dance music blog promoting an upcoming show, however it is not. Its substantiated by the fact that Ion Ludwig has mastered the live set domain to a degree which few artists are even capable of.
There are actually various things that set him apart from the rest but we are just going to focus on his main superpower as a live set performer. He has the uncanny ability to play endless hours of original material live and it never sounds the same. He has developed a system of playing his orignal tracks and stems and perform them in limitless ways like a dj set. His folder of original material is like his dj crate, with the latest material on top and years worth of tracks underneath.
He has apparently already produced enough music to release for the rest of his life, according to a rare XLR8R interview. It is customary for him to spend 10+ hours daily in the studio producing material. He grew up in a little ordinary Dutch countryside town and studied music and various musical instruments (spanish guitar and african percussion apparently peaked his interest) since he was 9 years old. When he discovered Techno he pretty much decided that he wanted to make his own version of that, and it never ever stopped. Somewhere along the way I read that when he goes into a gig he has a way to program his mind to perform as if he was in his studio and just let the creativity loose… um, like wow!
Ion Ludwig’s sound is an elegant balance between techno and minimal, its not quite one or the other although his original influences may have been minimal music. He can often be found playing the festival circuits along Radhoo, Ricardo Villalobos and the such. He is highly applauded amongst this category of artists. His performance at Sunwaves last year left such a huge impression on everyone that I still hear about from certain people. He has 30+ releases and thousands of unreleased material some of which he shares only with certain artists of that caliber. He is currently releasing on his own Ugold impring while he is also very well recognized for his work on Perlon.
His live recordings of 3+ hour sets reveal a dramatic build up of lush percussion and basslines and suddenly an Arabic Spanish like guitar sample perfectly sneaks in there and yet building into another powerful crescendo. Its truly unique.
THE TWIST TO THIS STORY that pertains to this SF debut gig is even better.. We are obviously SUPER happy to host such an artist at our intimate venue. We came together with our friends at Diacritic Collective to bring you this show because they also champion this sound. At Housepitality we love all kinds of techno and house but if you look back thru our years of bookings its apparent that we LOVE that og minimal German techno. From past guests like Margaret Dygas to Portable Bodycode to Sammy Dee, its obvious. We wanted to bring this to you on a weekend to make it accessible to those of you who usually can’t make our usual midweek cult.
I am not even to the best part of this story. That same night, Dec 8th, our brother and housepit veteran resident Victor Vega is throwing an underground with Butane and our homie Louiv who also champions this sound. But what does this mean anyway? I caught up with our friend and past headliner Butane in LA in late October. We realized that his upcoming SF underground gig is going to be the same night as our show with Ludwig. He was excited. Butane actually released Ion’s first record on his Alphahouse label when they were roommates in Berlin. He definitely agreed that “that guy can play live for hours, he’s amazing.” They haven’t seen each other in years either so this is a reunion of sorts for some reason or another, that’s the way its supposed to be. Not to mention our bro Luis Delgado aka Louiv who is also a huge Ion Ludwig fan is happily caught up in the middle of all this. We will all definitely be going out to dinner to say the least. So due to all this cosmic synchronicity we are combining all these efforts and we are offering $5 discount to the Butane after show. Probably a wristband or stamp.
When you tune into a sound, the sound finds you. That is pretty much the story of my life and the way this night is playing out is exactly what this is all about.
SO, the entire cast behind this night is quite amazing and in no particular order:
Ion Ludwig, Butane, Miguel, Petko, Victor, Luis Delgado, Chvck and Lily Ackerman.
WE are TRULY happy to be able to bring you this experience.. ENJOY!!!