Frieze DJ in Residence: Max Pitegoff

For your listening (and dancing) pleasure: a playlist for frieze issue 241 by artist Max Pitegoff, featuring a curated selection of his favourite songs.   

My version of Times Bar existed mostly above ground, while bartending – what I remember best are the moments fabricated for the music video Calla Henkel and I made for Dan Bodan’s DP (2012): Dan crooning atop the bar, his voice gradually surrendering to the din of the late evening crowd. For many guests, though, Times Bar primarily existed underground. As people filtered down into the basement, fleeing the morning, a distinct alchemy was born between our makeshift DJ booth and whoever had the AUX cord. Many of those DJs – M.E.S.H., Lotic, Craxxxmurf/TCF – would soon become regulars at Janus, the party and label led by Michael Ladner and Dan DeNorch that they began after Times Bar closed. The music that was played in the basement rethought the relative humourlessness of Berlin techno: inundating it with pop refrains and hallucinatory dissonance, pushing the auditory space of the club (or the basement) to extremes. Above ground, behind the bar, we felt this in the bass reverberating at our feet – which lives on in these songs. 

The oral history of Times Bar is now live on our website.

_{Main image: Dan Bodan, DP, 2012, video still. Courtesy: Max Pitegoff and Calla Henkel}