Protoculture’s story is one of perseverance and elevation. After headlining festivals on the local psytrance scene each season, the Cape Town-based DJ/Producer continued his reign on to super clubs in London, Tokyo, Sau Paulo and Moscow. one small seed caught up with him at his home and at Cape Town’s own super club, Trinity.
| Elektronik Dialogues | Protoculture: the interview from one small seed on Vimeo.
Nate Raubenheimer aka Protoculture jumps right in, explaining his namesake and how he found his calling into the electronic scene – which quickly evolved after meeting likeminded individuals whilst studying audio engineering at City Varsity. After doing three albums with Nano Records, Protoculture spent nine years focussing on psytrance. He is by no means a stranger to the scene. As a DJ/producer, Protoculture explains the symbiotic relationship between the two and how they feed off each other, before admitting that his first love would have to be working in the studio.
I found after years of doing this, that you need to DJ to know what works in the studio, and you need to be in the studio to have music to play as a DJ
Protoculture feels that there shouldn’t be any boundaries concerning genre, and continues to produce beats and rhythms that cater to the EDM (electronic dance music) scene. ‘The scene that has pushed the likes of Goldfish and Black Coffee has got a healthy future,’ says Protoculture who at the same time worries that the scene might expand and become too mainstream.
There’s nothing wrong with mainstream, but the more it becomes popular the more people jump on the band wagon, the more producers you get which are not generally very good. And so a lot of the music becomes diluted after a while
With the evident growth in electronic culture, let’s hope that the scene pays homage to the greats that started the uprising. Protoculture is, and should remain a household name. Vote for him on the top 100 lists of DJ’s at DJ Mag.com
Images by : Deborah Roussouw
