Techno daily routine of Bad Boombox

Make Welofi great again <3

Welofi

Bad Boombox nimbly blends the irrepressible energy of Berlin with the flamboyant spirit of the early rave movement. The charismatic DJ, producer, and internet personality has earned praise from peers and industry luminaries for his blistering beats, warehouse rattling DJ sets, and penchant for the absurd. Bad Boombox is just as much a performance artist as he is a dynamic musician. His 90s Eurodance meets Berlin techno aesthetic and hilarious dance moves were a light in the darkness of nearly two years without dance floors.

Bad Boombox brilliantly harnesses the power of social media to further his agenda. His viral videos, memes, and DJ sets garnered millions of views and billions of indirect streams. The success of his Badass Bootlegs series and original releases on Farris Wheel Recordings and Fantastic Voyage have landed in the Rekordboxes of Will Clarke, Patrick Topping, Stella Bossi, Justin Jay, Gene Farris, Born Dirty and more.

As we know from residentadvisor.com / ra.com

Some descriptions in Resident Advisor characterizes you as DJ and new kid on the block but old school raver, Bad Boombox’s combination of house and techno, dance and viral memes, east and west vibes, are set to make waves in the electronic scene. Can you tell us, how did you get to it?

I was born in Bulgaria, raised in the US, but I’ve always been a Balkan euroboi at heart. My dad played dance tapes in the house on an old boombox and it made me love dance music, in general, but I was always searching for more. This made me enjoy making other people dance – so I DJed in college and for a few years after, but it was also missing something.

A few years ago I took a two-year long backpacking trip around Europe, settling in a few cities including Kiev, Barcelona, and finally Berlin for some time, to continue my dance music education. That’s when my taste really developed, and it allowed me to dive really deep into the particular genres and influences I was fond of. I finally saw the cultural differences in dancing, and how each genre developed in regions similar to how languages develop over time. I grew up listening to French house and Eurodance, but my time in Berlin and central Europe helped me really dive into the darker side of dance. Hedonic techno meets fun house music and hip-shaking disco. However, I also saw that a lot of the techno scene has matured too much and lost its fun edge – so one of my goals is to bring the fun and humor back into it. My goals for 2022 are to break into the European techno community in a positive and humorous way.

How do you form your tracklists?

I love going into a deep Bandcamp rabbit-hole. I love the way the platform easily allows me to dive through people’s taste and find hidden gems, and how it directly supports the artist/label. For example I get a recommendation from another fellow DJ’s set, then I look up the track on bandcamp, click on a random person who bought it, and scroll all the way through their profile. This can be done an infinite number of levels deep. Everything is then organized on rekordbox, grouping each energy/genre into specific playlists, that way I can easily find the right track for the right mood on the dancefloor.

Can you tell us about just a day in the life imprinted in the video Bad Bitch (feat. Crizzle)? Is it hard to live that way?

The goal of that video was to comment on how we can make the best out of a mundane situation. And my life in Los Angeles is very much like that. I have to seek techno and dance in every routine. The video was fun to make because it’s the most real and authentic representation of my average day in LA – pairing two things that normally wouldn’t pair together. And also because as an idea it trolls a lot of other techno music videos.

By the way, Russia also has its own nice music diamonds. Do you ever mark any Russian musicians/producers on your music radar?wAndering through the woods

Yes! I’ve been enjoying my time diving into the Russian side of techno. I’ve been following Pavel Milyakov (Buttechno) ever since his release on Trip because his production is beautifully simple and impactful. Also, electro from St. Petersburg has also been on my radar because it’s got such a unique character and it finally adds something new to the genre.

May I ask about Bad Boombox’es upcoming events and plans for the rest of 2021? What are the chances that you will become a Buddhist monk or lead an uprising against the machines?

I’ve been in touch with Sarah Connor and we have some big plans for the uprising. In the meantime – as of this interview, I am moving away from Los Angeles to Prague, CZ during Autumn 2021, so I can be closer to the European techno scene to learn from the masters and the culture. This way I can be able to travel to more cities way easier. Dates will be announced soon!

What is in your mind while you are preparing a youtube set or greatest club memes? – I’m sure that everyone who knows what rave and music production mean understands such humor.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the harder it is to come up with the concepts. The magic happens when I can completely tune out and come up with ideas while I’m doing it. That’s when it’s fun too and that’s when the most authentic ideas come out. Once you get all the technical things down, it’s all about being able to get into the flow state. This zone helps me during my DJ sets, which is what makes it the most fun job in the world. It also helps while making content and memes because then it comes out looking real and raw. Things always go wrong though. CDJ goes into an emergency loop, or the camera falls down, or I need to take a shit while filming – it all works out anyway when I’m in the zone.

And one more important question: cyrillic often appears on your social networks, because of this some of our mates guess you are a noble [знатный] Slavophile. Do you love the Russian language?

Yes! I’ve been wanting to learn Russian for a long time. The cyrillic that appears in my content comes from my Bulgarian background. We share a very similar language and alphabet. За дружбa и за здоровье!

Bad Boombox

Also, get ready to fall into an hour of strong and driving techno mix by Bad Boombox that builds into a high-octane rave atmosphere!

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