One would think that THOMAS VON PARTY has discovered an ancient secret to extend the hours in a day with everything that he’s been working on. His talents range everywhere, from conjuring up chilled out dj sets to the underappreciated art of puppeteering, but he mostly keeps himself busy enough running the hugely succesful Turbo Recordings. World domination seems to be up next on the ever-growing list, as this year’s Planet Turbo is taking over all over the world with killer line-ups. We caught up with Thomas on his plans and general thoughts on record making during Planet Turbo’s stop at Rotterdam. Thomas Von Party will also be playing Undercover party in Ghent together with Hey Today! on the 22nd of May!

TRUANTS: First of all, how have you been? THOMAS VON PARTY: The first word that comes to mind is BUSY! The label on its own is a lot of work as I run it with just one other guy, Mike Mind.  On top of that, a lot has gone into planning the Planet Turbo tour. It’s a big step to add the visual production and work with a full crew… it’s exciting and I think it should pay off for us and for the audiences. We’ve just finished a new website for the tour that we’ll keep updating with a lot of content from the live gigs, sets, photos and track giveaways. Traditional record label websites are kind of  stale now, often a boring archive with buy links even though you probably won’t end up buying it… part of the reason why people prefer to spend their time on blogs and torrent sites to get music. Hopefully, with Planet Turbo, we’ll be able to offer a little more than that.

I’m not sure it’s something that all our fans were asking for, but we’ve put a lot of energy into certain details… the design, as usual, but also a lot of fantastic writing from Michael Lesliejack of “Ciao Means Forever” fame. For example, we have little city blurbs for each gig, and we’re doing interviews with all the main artists on the tour.

What are you looking forward to in the tour mostly? I’m really looking forward to seeing the visual show in its entirety. We’re working with Andreas Nilsson, who has also done live shows for The Knife. We liked his work, and after approaching him he had a few conversations with Tiga. From there onwards, we gave him a lot of space to just do it the way he wants so I don’t even know exactly what it will look like yet, other than that there will be a lot of lasers. It’s really a case where there’s a lot of trust between him and us. I feel like it would be pretty boring to try and describe it, but it’s basically video walls on the sides of the hall and a lot of LED sticks and strobes and giant lasers on top.

What do you predict will be your most memorable moment of the whole tour? I’m really excited for the London show and the other shows where the stage is big enough to showcase the full visual show. I think Proxy is going to kill it in Rotterdam tonight, it’s going to be really really good, ‘cause he’s playing a peak slot right after Tiga, and I think that will be amazing. I’m looking forward to the Berlin show, a much more techno line-up with Ivan Smagghe and Konrad Black, Tiga and me… we kind of straddle these two sides, one is more kind of big and banging hard music, and the other is more techno. The gigs in Holland and Belgium and France are much more of a hard crowd and those gigs can be amazing. But the Berlin one kind of stands out because it’s a different scene and a different type of party than I’ve been doing lately.

Are you planning on ever doing a full-on live show for Tiga? I think originally with Ciao! that was the plan, but it just didn’t happen. For one thing, it’s a big step to take as being a DJ is what he’s done for a long time… A lot of producers are producers first and DJ second, for Tiga that’s not how it is and he’s very comfortable and talented as a DJ. It would have been cool and maybe it will happen for the next time. I’m really hoping – fingers crossed – for a ZZT live show, but we’ll see.

Will you do a video for ZZT again? Good question! I’m not sure, I’d really like to do another one but I don’t know what they have in mind. If I did another one it would probably be reptile based.

What’s your favourite place to DJ? It depends for what, but Germany is amazing. I also love going to Japan. I really like playing in places where things are more techno and branching out from that a little bit. When you’re always playing before or after someone who is going to bang it out, it feels like there’s more restriction on what the crowd will react to. In general it’s nice to play long sets and go late night, I like that.

Are you sensitive to audience perception? The number one thing is I just want to feel that WE did a great job. If the music was great and everybody played really good sets, I’m always happy. That’s the part that we can control.

Do you plan your DJ sets? No, it’s definitely more improvisation, for better or worse. Sometimes the chaos can be managed really well and sometimes it doesn’t work out so great. The big thing about DJing is finding a balance in giving the crowd what it needs, not just spoon feeding them what they think they want. It’s not always the same thing. In the end, if you’re not into it and not excited about what you’re playing, then it’s not going to fool that many people. But obviously you have to be sensitive to your crowd and know that Rotterdam is not going to be the night to play all your minimal records, because nobody would want that. You can’t have your head down and forget about everyone else, but you still need to assert something…

Aside from DJing in places, what’s your favourite place to holiday? India. Anywhere with amazing food.

As for Turbo, what do you have coming up for us? We have a lot of new stuff coming. The most exciting stuff for me is the new ZZT material, it’s going to be amazing. It’s a really good mix of personalities and I just love the music they make together. They just did like five new tracks and they’re all amazing, so probably there’ll be a little full-length album from ZZT. It’s hard to say when that’s coming because it’s not a hundred percent finished, but I think by the end of the year, hopefully. It’s really hard for me to give dates.

The Proxy album is a big event… Very delayed, but that one also somewhere around winter, maybe. The reason for the delay is very simple. Once you set a goal to yourself of making an album, just because you have enough tracks for an album, that doesn’t necessarily mean you want to put it out there as an album. You only release so many things, so you want to have it set up for yourself, so that it has a real impact when it drops. And for the Proxy, for a lot of reasons it just hasn’t quite been finished. He’s working on it and there’s a lot of great material that is going to be released, we’re doing one single in June of Vibrate, that won’t be on the album actually but just as another single. But there’s really good remixes on it by Noob, who did two great versions, The Bloody Beetroots, who are big Proxy fans and supporters, and one more by Sound of Stereo. Proxy has lots of fans and we do want to keep the interest up by releasing bits and pieces for now.

Another artist called Sei A from Glasgow is also amazing. He’s got an album coming. There’s quite a few projects that might happen but I can’t talk about them yet. There are a couple of big album projects and a lot of twelve inches. Our twelve inches will always be the focus. There’s one coming that’s kind of secret from a high profile artist that came up with an own alias – Disco Samurai.

What do the Turbo headquarters look like? The office is in Montreal, and it’s very simple and small. It has the same Ikea record shelves that everybody has and two little desks that face each other. It’s just me and Mike that work there so it’s a pretty basic setup.

What do you look for in a good record? No specific elements. Personality, ideas, something that feels new. The last track that blew my mind is a Shit Robot record called I Gotta Feeling. I really love it. It’s very uplifting, very danceable, and it has a melodic piano house vibe which is very difficult to do in a new way.

What are some artists that you’ve been keeping an eye on lately? Well, I just came back from Russia where I was hanging out with Proxy and his crew and I was really impressed by that scene. The place we went to is like 80 kilometers outside Moscow, and I really didn’t have much of an idea what to expect. It turned out to be kind of more east-block than I thought possible. The clichés are kind of true about Russia. The hospitality was unbelievable… everyone was sooo nice to me. If people come to like Montreal or London—everyone’s busy with their own life, rushing around thinking about their own jobs or whatever, so they won’t really bother meeting you. But in Russia, everyone was waiting on me… I was the main event. Proxy’s starting his own little label there and has his own crew of artists that are on the rise.

The Cómeme label, run by Matías Aguayo and Gary Pimiento, is also something I’m really excited about. It’s sort of a mix of South American music with just good, groovy techno. It sounds like something I wouldn’t like, but I love it.  I’m not really into that tribally house and or novelty tracks with Brazilian samples and that…. But it doesn’t feel that way with Cómeme.

What would you consider success for Turbo? I have a lot of separate goals within the project. I have relationships with all the artists, and I want the best for them. I want to see their careers go well, I want to help them make a living doing what they love. From the business side, that’s something that I always try to keep in mind—I just want all the artists and music that I love to continue and survive. Evolution by record label Darwinism… ?