International DJ Gigolos

long info:
There was a time when DJ Hell wasn’t DJ Hell but a certain boy named Helmut Josef Geier who swapped playing football with playing punk-rock records in a club in Bavaria. There was also a time when he was fed up with electronic music’s stagnation and realised that there was one simple formula that could work. That’s when he founded International DJ Gigolos: 1997. The manifesto of the IDG label read like a guidebook for modern living: Don’t hold back, release it. Everything is possible. Do what you want. This DVD now celebrates IDG’s 150th release. The label has since grown into a full-scale world of its own. “Gigolo Freakshow” also does something else — takes the viewer deep into the realms of past reality, into the lives of everybody involved; throwing a spotlight on those who attended the many parties, showcases, diners, meetings, hotel rooms, beaches all over the planet. Here, director Angelika Lepper has beautifully managed the areas of research and storytelling: Most of this material is previously unreleased, almost impossible to get. Private recordings, intimate film material and very rare moments of the artists’ lives are gorgeously compiled, so that the story of IDG is told yet again … but not by any journalist or reporter. The story is told by the artists, the Gigolettas, the people. We are invited to have dinner with Casey Spooner and Miss Kittin; we listen to DJ Hell when he hosts a conference in Mexico, in March 2002. We follow the Gigolos on tour through the USA in 1997, join them for a stunt on Siegessäule during the 2000 Love Parade and we witness the outrage and the madness of “Sonar Sunday“ when all hell broke loose. Slowly we drive into a Detroit that looks “like Bavaria, just flat with bigger trucks“. Policemen salute us, people scream, record cases are carried, stretch limos await the white satin knights, while light dawns on those still dancing. Whereas the label’s first release in 1997 predicted its own future as a 12-inch only venture, its fiftieth release was a book, and the hundredth was underwear by Agent Provocateur. Now this. ”Gigolo Freakshow“ is less about freaks than a sympathetically distorted family. A home for those who wanted more: of electronic music, of a party, who evolved, developed, thought and had fun at the same time. For whom there was more to techno than just rave. More to style than just a suit. In this family, women are ladies. Sex is important, as are funk and punk. Lepper allows us to take a look at the Gigolos’ and Gigolettas’ everyday life (everynight life). We understand why they became a bunch of warriors, and we understand their cause: good music, friendship and loyalty. Why it’s important to play straight, to play honest. It’s a family thing, with Hell as the daddy who looks like a playboy, behaves like a gentleman, lives like a jetsetter and plays like a punk. The DVD also clarifies some urban myths, for example: Legend had it that after two glasses of champagne Hell’s done for, which is not true. Legend also had it that you have to wear designer clothes to partake. Obviously that is wrong. IDG is not about overdoing the obvious. “Don’t show everything at once, hide things, play it slow, be subtle, be modern. Have fun.“ Misunderstanding IDG would mean to copy the surface. Understanding IDG works when you simply inhale the attitude. Dig into what lies beneath. “I don’t compromise with any track that is released; it has to fit in the gigolo universe,“ DJ Hell once said. The variety of this retrospective — bending from Fisherspooner via Zombie Nation to Tuxedomoon, DJ Hell himself and DJ Traxx — is wide, but it illuminates the star-studded sky over the Gigolo universe. It shows where the stars came from, where the stars went, which stars stayed, and the many stars who danced and partied and eventually made it all happen. The end is a beginning, because it is a question: “Where do we go from here?” For now: we salute you.