Erobique

It’s 11 am: He is blind drunk, as usual. Same as every morning, I stand at his bed, which has begun to resemble an ashtray. The bedroom is a maze of decrepit synthesizers, the floor a tapestry of loose keys and cables mingled with food scraps, yellowed porn and empty Prosecco cans. Erobique alias Carsten Meyer was born in 1972 in tranquil Muensterland and has been making music since he was 8. His last release was 10 years ago. In the meantime, he has worked with and for artists like Daniel Wang, Justus Köhnke, Discokaine or Andreas Dorau. But not even “International Pony", the universally admired super-group he started with DJ Koze and Cosmic DJ, was powerful enough to break the steady cycle of drinking, gluttony and compulsive masturbation. Meyer is sluggish. He eyes me venomously from behind puffy lids. Leave him alone with my DJ shit, I make out from his inebriate slur. All I had wanted was to bring around the test-pressing of his new 12-inch, “Endorphinmachine” that I am releasing on my label, Mirau, in September. Squeezing the entire, magnificent 12 minutes of these two tracks (Endorphinmachine / Arf Patzo) out of him seemed at times a Sisyphean task. Disconnected telephones, nocturnal taxi odysseys across entire states, physical assaults and broken joints were enough to push even me closer to the quagmire of selfabandonment than to my ultimate goal of finally bringing out a new Erobique maxi. The gleam has almost gone from Carsten Meyer’s eyes. He is one of the best and most dangerous live entertainers in disco. It is his infallibility, but also his unpredictability that make people murmur the word “legend” behind his back. If only they could see him lying here! I hand him his test-pressing and ask in leaving if there is anything I can do for him. “Yes,” he retorts irritably: “write in the blurb that I am the most ambitious of them all!” “the MOST AMBITIOUS!! Of ALL!!!” his ranting echoes from the bedroom, down the hallway. Then an ashtray hits the apartment. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.