BLOG 23/03/2024
Feature — tportal on the South Africa story and Cycle Studio
A long tportal feature titled “Sugar man iz našeg sokaka” — a nod to Sixto Rodriguez — recorded at Cycle Studio shortly after Jan returned from a month-long South African tour. What was planned as a holiday in Johannesburg turned into a full run of shows, after his records on the German label Deep Inspiration Show Records quietly found a large audience there during the pandemic.
What the piece covers
The interview traces the whole arc: friend requests arriving from South Africa at thirty to forty a day, producer Gary Hattenberger turning a holiday into a tour, and the craft of South African DJs, where slower and deeper music makes the party wilder. From there it goes back to his beginnings — a record collection at home, first gig at fifteen, mentorship by Ivan Komlinović, audio engineering at SAE in Ljubljana — and forward to how the pandemic pushed him to build Cycle Studio, how the studio prices its work, Zagreb’s thin club infrastructure, the homogenised state of big-stage techno, artificial intelligence, and plans to return to Africa twice more that year.
In his words
“Compared with Croatia, which sometimes feels like a black-and-white film, this is in colour.”
“Few things can compare with playing music you love to a room full of people.”
(Quotes translated from Croatian.)
Read the full piece
The full feature, in Croatian, is on tportal.