Paul Becker, 27 years old, hometown — Kyritz, DJ
Veniamin Vasiliev, 26 years old, hometown — St. Petersburg, DJ
Veniamin. We arrived in Astana early on Saturday morning. I liked the architecture of the city, looked a bit random, but it's a cool mix between old and new. The city was much more modern than I thought.
I was born in Russia, so I knew about Kazakhstan. Also, my father's girlfriend is from Almaty. But I have never been here before.
Paul. I have never been anywhere beyond Eastern Europe. "Kazakhstan" was a common word for me, which I heard sometimes. I had no information about the country and city. I didn't know how Astana looked like, and I thought it was a little different, not as modern as it turned out.
The local architecture reminded me of southern Italy in a crazy mix with Japan. You see something unusual and crazy shapes every time you look at the sky. All this looks organic. We always know where our house is because it looks like a rocket. And when we climbed the big golden ball — Baiterek monument, we had the view of the whole city and also saw our house.
Veniamin. We were in a big golden ball where can be touched a print of the President's hand, in the Pyramid, and then went to the mosque. That's all we had time to visit.
We noticed that here fewer people than in Germany. If you go somewhere to eat, the cafe visitors can be counted by the fingers, and in Berlin at the same time five times more people.
About music and DJing
Veniamin. We met four years ago, then we became friends on Facebook. When I organized a party in November, I invited Paul, because knew that I would have specific music and he loves such style. At my party, we started to talk closer, hang out every weekend. And we became best friends and now we do everything together.
Paul. We live, work and DJ together in Berlin.
Three years ago, Benny studied event management, organized parties. DJing was the next step in the direction. We didn't have any qualifications, we just asked ourselves if we wanted to do it. We did not understand anything at that time, just learned through practice. And today it's a big step for us to play here because it's an opportunity to share our music internationally.
Paul. We play not only techno but also house, as electronic music has many trends and genres. Techno and house are the best for us. In our free time, we listen to a lot of hip-hop and other music genres.
Paul. We came to Kazakhstan to play our music in Almaty and Astana. Two parties in one week, where we will see how people are having fun in Kazakhstan. We are interested to meet local people. In Berlin, techno parties are a big part of the culture. I wonder how it all looks in other cities and countries of the world.
Veniamin. We mostly play in Berlin clubs, but we have already had parties in Switzerland three times, and Kazakhstan is the second country where we came abroad. Closer to the middle of the year, we plan to play in London and Malta.
Paul. We need three hours to show our music. During any party you need to watch the reaction of the audience, notice: "Yeah, they dance," or slowly leave, and each time you have to see what to do next, what will be better.
Veniamin. Usually, we sit next to each other and talk about which track will go next and decide what to combine with, so we form a playlist with a lot of different tracks. But during the party, everything can go spontaneously, because you follow the crowd and notice what they like, improvise and it happens that everything goes differently. You never can say for sure that everything will go according to plan. We always have a direction, but everything can change on the go.
We work shoulder to shoulder. And if I play, I can advise to Paul put another track after me, and we mix tracks together or contrary.
Paul. We are good at playing together, as we started to play a duet three years ago after we have never played alone.
We work together because it's more fun. If you go to play, for example, in Kazakhstan, you go not alone, but with a friend.
I still remember when we first started, at one festival in Berlin we performed in front of several hundred people, it was exciting. So it's good to know you're not alone. It's nice to have a friend around at a time like this.
