DJ The Wash

By Michael Neuhold

Today we have a young and really sexy interview guest. Clemens aka The Wash is an Austrian DJ. With his mixes from Techhouse, Progressive House, Techno and all in between he is getting more and more famous.  So we have some questions to his work, the future and his goals.

When did you start your DJ career and what was the emotional reason to become a DJ?
I started back in the year 2000, so I’m celebrating my 15th anniversary this year. My dear, time flies…at that time, at the age of 15 I’ve already been a total music geek and collected huge amounts of CDs. Buying turntables and a mixer was the next logical step. I just wanted to play some music that I love, that’s basically the reason. And of course to show off with my magic super duper DJ tricks J

So since last year you are back. What are the plans for now and the future?
I think this question needs a little bit more explanation...I founded The Wash together with my dear friend Stefan back in 2005 to combine forces. After the power years of 2008-2010 with many gigs all across Austria and Europe it became during 2011-2012 more and more obvious that we should rethink our priorities, so we put the whole project on hold. Stefan then decided to leave professional DJing and concentrated on his daily job and his wife. I had a sabbatical year in 2013 where I reduced my official DJ tasks to a very minimum. After that I came to the conclusion that I’d like to continue on my own as DJ and kept the The Wash alias with me. We are still close friends and are also DJing together at home from time to time.

Regarding my plans, I’d like to expand my knowledge of music producing in the future – I’ve bought a shitload of equipment this year so I have the pressure to squeeze something hearable out of it! I’d also like to catch up with the schedule I’ve had in 2009. I always had much fun on tour, at exploring new cities and get to know new people. I miss that part!

And what is the greatest dream for you as DJ?
To keep the deep devotion to music I have. This is, always has been and hopefully always will be my most important source of motivation and inspiration.

How can you describe your music? You said its Techhouse, Progressive House, Techno and all between. How we can imagine it?
I’d like to describe it as a journey between the worlds. Though I’ve always considered myself as a progressive DJ, it isn’t that easy nowadays to put into words what this exactly means…basically you can always expect hypnotic, eclectic tunes with a lot of groove and bass. Depending on the situation the sound can be warmer and more melodic or darker and more twisted. I love to do warm up and I also love to do open to close sets, from 4-8 hours so I can tell a complete story with my set and take the listeners on a journey.

How important is building a real relationship with the music you're playing for your own approach?
I can’t play a single tune I don’t like – so for me it is a basic necessity to have a relationship with the tunes I play.

What makes you decide to play a particular record during one of your sets? Is there a criteria other than pure subjectivity, for selecting what to play at a gig?
As mentioned before, it depends on the context. I never pre-program my sets. For an example, my virtual record case for a Resident DJ Friday contains about 250 tracks from which I’m choosing the ones I’m playing out at night, in context to the situation and mood. I’m receiving a big amount of promos every month so the general selection is the most time consuming part of my job. I always want to surprise people with something unexpected, something that they can get emotionally involved with. I don’t like to jump on bandwagons – even though I also have my hit moments J - but I want to provide music which is not already over well known and overplayed.

And what is with the relationship to the crowd? How important is it for you?
Very important. I really like to connect with the people standing/dancing in front of me. I like the feedback I’m getting, I like how they start moving their feet. No matter if there’s just one person or 10 or 1.000. I always want to attract people with my sound and it’s a great honour for me when people are dancing and smiling!

Your monthly event – the Resident DJ Friday at HARD ON Vienna – is getting more and more famous. What could be the reasons for it?
I always felt the need of a regular event that combines fetish, high quality music and light/visuals, dancing and sex. So after I’ve been DJing at some main events of the LMC crew it’s been a logic step to put things to the next level. Vienna has some really popular superclubs and also gay clubbings – but all of the above mentioned criteria in one event – I can’t remember if we’ve had that here before.
The LMC Vienna/HARD ON crew is and has been very supportive in this task and they really gave me complete freedom over everything. I think this is a basic success factor.

You are also the Head of progressive-world.at. What is it and what you want to achieve with it?
The original aim of Progressive World back in 2005 was to give german speaking people a database in their native language, devoted to Progressive House. In 2005 the Progressive movement was on its peak so we wanted to make it more popular also in the german speaking area.
Over the years the page became more and more diverse, so even though we also now have a lot of techno stuff, I still can relate myself to the term “progressive”, because we also made progress regarding our musical taste. The rest of the goals is still the same: provide good music for the people J

And now at the end of our interview – what you want to tell our readers?
I’ll hopefully see you soon on the dancefloor!

Thanks Clemens for the interview. If you are interested now you can find The Wash at the web under thewash.at and you can follow him on Facebook or mixcloud.