INTERVIEW BY SEAN OCEAN
After years of successful events, Kudeki has become a premier figure in the San Francisco underground techno community. Inspired by equal representation, as well as being a proactive force for the community, Kudeki started with Noctuary as an event to bring all walks of life together to dance in the true spirit of SF nightlife. After some prodding, and encouragement Kudeki found new inspiration in Berlin as a producer and dancer in the still burgeoning techno community there and found the importance of bringing that atmosphere home to SF.
Now with Endzeit being a force to be reckoned with and one of the key party crews in the scene to date, Kudeki reveals the importance of what she has learned as a promoter, what drives such crucial choices for Endzeit lineups and describes her influences from Berlin in the following interview.
AYLI: Your roots are from the party Noctuary you threw that was female and non binary focused support. Can you tell us what prompted that even series and why you felt it was needed?
Kudeki: It’s hard to recall now, in this moment of cultural backslide, but back in 2017 the attitude towards diversity was hopeful instead of ridiculed. It was six months before #MeToo, Trump’s first term had barely just started, and Discwoman was one of the most covered collectives on RA, which hadn’t yet shut down its comments section. Dance music was starting to grapple with how male, straight and white most lineups were, and there was a growing understanding that this should and could change.
I met my Noctuary co-founder, Alex, in a local Facebook group for music fans (Concert Raptors). We were into a lot of the same artists, many of them women who weren’t getting booked yet in SF. I’d been an active DJ for a few years, but I was just starting to understand how risk-averse bookers can be towards artists who haven’t played in town before, because there’s no previous data on how many tickets their name is likely to sell (their ‘draw’). This is where smaller, DIY collectives are so critical in pushing forward new sounds and artists.
We started Noctuary to book those artists we wanted to see, and limited our lineups to women, nonbinary or trans artists. I’m really happy we did, because it helped us focus our efforts as a small team, and also gave us a clear way to say no to the (shockingly many) men who tried to play the party.
Looking back, we were quite novice. We used to joke to each other “wow they really let *anyone* do this!” (promote shows), but I think the success of our first few events gave us the confidence that if you don’t see what you want already happening in your scene or city, you can be the one to do something about that.
AYLI: When things were going so well with Noctuary, why did you decide to head to Berlin?
K: I never actually lived in Berlin full-time, but I spend a few months there per year. My first visit was in summer 2016, after SF techno friends rightfully insisted that I MUST go. An SF -> Berlin expat friend lent me her apartment for the week and left us some party favors in her freezer with just one piece of advice: “Berghain. Go on Sunday.” I remember being completely in awe, not only at the music and atmosphere, but at how you can be 30 hours deep in the most outrageous party on the planet and still see two friends casually having a drink and a chat at the bar, while the madness rages on steps away. I remember wondering what the hell those people were talking about.
A year later, burnt out from a day job, I went back to Berlin as an escape, and from that point on I was hooked. I started visiting as often as I could to absorb the music and the vibe, truly in sponge mode from 2017 until COVID. I’d go to Berlin, dance to all the techno I could in two weeks, then bring it home and try to integrate what I’d heard/felt into my DJ sets in SF.
I collided with Berlin at just the right moment in my life. The city is a magnet for black sheep, resonating with those who are going through certain types of personal chaos. It’s the perfect place to unravel and get lost, and I needed the darkness and intensity at the time. I craved the music and the rave and all the strange characters you meet there. Berlin is extreme yet there’s a particular freedom to finding your own limits in a place where the party lasts for days, the sun never rises telling you to go home, and everything is available at any hour.
The rave has evolved into my creative outlet more so than my escape, but I’m grateful for all the years I had to explore while the ‘regular’ world wasn’t working for me, and through it experiencing this mind-opening music for the first time. Creating those alternative spaces for other people to play, dance, seek refuge in, or simply listen and enjoy is what I want to put my time and energy towards now.
AYLI: After you came back from Berlin, did you feel inspired in some way to create something bigger? Was Endzeit that concept? Or was it something else that birthed the Endzeit concept?
K: San Francisco was especially slow to rebound from COVID in terms of techno shows compared to bigger nightlife hubs like New York and Berlin, even though virtually the whole city got vaccinated immediately. When Movement Detroit came back in 2022, I saw tons of Bay Area ravers out at Tangent Gallery who I hadn’t seen since the start of the pandemic. I asked if they still lived in the Bay, thinking maybe they’d moved away, and they all said yes, but they don’t really go out anymore because nothing interesting was going on techno-wise. Yet they’d made the trek to Detroit, because it’s special and worth it.
A combination of homebody pandemic habits and higher discernment amongst my seasoned millennial raver peers meant the bar was now higher. Meanwhile in the Bay, techno parties were feeling pretty stale — overly straight crowds, the same couple of venues on repeat, inadequate soundsystems for techno which needs a really good low-end response, and no places at the party to rest or sit down. I didn’t intend for Endzeit to be a ‘bigger’ party, but we felt called to address all these things that were lacking, while drawing inspiration from the best musical experiences I’d had over the prior decade in Detroit, Berlin, New York, and scattered other places.
At the very first Endzeit in June 2023, someone told me the party “saved them a trip to Berlin” which was amusing feedback at the time, but it slowly made me realize how ridiculous it is that Bay Area residents have to board an airplane to experience techno in this particular way that many of us are seeking.
AYLI: Your Lineups for Endzeit are quite remarkable, the talents in them range obscure and unknown to the world renown, but every DJ brings something unique to the table. How do you curate such lineups and how do you configure certain DJ pairings?
K: The foundation of our curation is definitely the 10+ year personal catalog of our favorite techno sets experienced on dancefloors around the world. You can’t rush this part, you need time to develop a perspective. Freddy K played the second Endzeit not because we had seen him play well once, but because he’d absolutely killed it at 4 or 5 different shows over the years. We knew he would deliver and that it’d be worth the headache of figuring out how to isolate the turntables properly.
We love artists with a deep dedication to their craft, honed over years, which is why we favor live sets and all vinyl when possible. Sonically, Endzeit leans hypnotic, deep, and dubby, but can go classic, hard hitting, or groovy, as easily as abstract or experimental. I’m always searching for artists that engage both body and mind, so you can lock in and lose yourself dancing.
My co-founder Andrea is excellent at spotting under appreciated talent at every level, and I’m tuned into the US scene from the decade of playing and organizing here. Sometimes, a booking comes from a simple observation, like noticing in mid 2023 that Rrose had played in the Bay like six times pre COVID but never afterwards. We attend a lot of events specifically to scout, and rely on trusted friends to send us detailed party / set reports. We value that in-person experience above anything online.
We also gravitate towards artists we genuinely connect with, who feel aligned with our project and understand what we’re trying to create. The best pairings come when sounds / energies fit together without being overly similar. Freddy K told us that he keeps getting paired up with Wata Igarashi lately which makes total sense — he lays down a relentless groove, while Wata lures you into a psychedelic vortex.
AYLI: To those unfamiliar with it, can you explain the 3024 / martyn mentorship program, what it is about, and if it was a goal of yours to evolve into a music producer apart from being a DJ/Promoter?
K: I’ve been producing for years, but always found it hard to focus while promoting and playing my own DJ gigs. COVID forced a break from shows, so I finally had the space to sit down with Ableton and finish music. Around that time I joined Martyn’s mentorship program, a digital community of up-and-coming producers from all over the world. Martyn leads sessions and interviews on Zoom, and there’s a discord for the community as well. The sessions are a great balance of technical track feedback, creative support, and industry insights. It’s been a great resource in terms of learning, getting my own music published, and for finding new collaborators.
I also work with another mentor 1:1, Eluize, and have had so many different teachers over the years. As enthusiastic as I am about local scenes, dispersed online communities are also really helpful as you start to release music. Plus you always end up crossing paths IRL in really fun ways.
DJing still feels way more natural to me as an art form, but its ephemerality can be both a blessing and a curse. I also want to make sure I’m creating something lasting, and something accessible to people who are never going to come to my shows.
AYLI: Did any of those ideas and influences end up culminating in your AYLI release “Spiral” on the Dear Johnny Compilation?
K: I wrote Spiral in early 2021, and it was one of the first times I managed to shift my sound darker. My musical background is classical cello, and I grew up listening to a lot of pop and indie, so my productions have naturally gravitated melodic in a way that doesn’t match my DJ sets or the music I prefer dancing to. In Spiral I finally started to nudge things more dissonant.
At the time I was listening to Aurora Halal’s Liquiddity a lot, along with modern EBM like Fleisch Records and aufnahme + wiedergabe, plus plenty of electro. Those were the major influences, but it’s really just my attempt at capturing what it feels like to emotionally spiral.
AYLI: What other musical influences have led to your musical creative output recently?
K: It’s hard to tease out what your influences are as they are happening — it’s easier to pinpoint them in retrospect. My productions absorb elements from what I DJ, sometimes months or years later. I gravitate towards kind of simple and slightly off-kilter loops with an industrial edge, and in that dimension I’ve definitely been influenced by people like Thomas P Heckmann, Terence Fixmer, and Silent Servant. I love Donato Dozzy’s workflow strategy of trying to make a loop that’s so good you never tire of listening to it — a great idea if you can actually pull it off…
I’ve never been one to go through an artist’s full catalog, I tend to discover individual songs and really get into them. I have one electro song in my library from 10 years ago, DeFeKt – Move — I played it out a ton and I can definitely hear it influenced some particular songs I made, maybe on Spiral even.
AYLI: Are you working with anyone in the studio right now? Or have any production collaborations planned?
K: I’m about to release an EP as part of my new(ish) side project, Blondage, with Amalija Blurry — we’ve been friends since I moved to the Bay 13 years ago. Our first musical collab was me playing cello on one track during her indie band’s performance at Milk Bar in 2014. Amalija Blurry (Emily) is a great vocalist, and Blondage has become our outlet for recounting our hazy rave tales from nights out together, generally making fun of nightlife itself. Genre-wise it’s somewhere in the synthwave / EBM / pop zone with some techno thrown in and no rules whatsoever. We come up with the elaborate song titles first, and figure out what the song sounds like later.
The EP is fun and silly, and the project provides a break from the seriousness of techno and the challenges of shopping for labels — just releasing everything ourselves is pretty refreshing.
https://blondage-xox.bandcamp.com/album/research-revenge
AYLI: With your connections and central role in the SF Bay Area scene is there any desire to have an Endzeit label and utilize the talents of the Bay Area or West Coast Techno as a whole?
K: Oh yeah — it’s definitely something we’ve thought about doing — but we’re a very small team and we’ve just been prioritizing other things this year, like our first Detroit show and our first multi-day event. In the meantime, we’re focused on uplifting and developing local talent (“local” meaning anything from Bay Area to West Coast to North America). I hope our project inspires Bay Area artists to further their craft, and also provides them with resources and opportunities to do so.
AYLI: You’re at the top of your game right now. What’s next as an artist and promoter, do you foresee any big left turns or shifts in the future as it was with Endzeit?
K: Endzeit is definitely my primary focus right now, but it’s also given me the chance to level up as a DJ. You need opportunities to play on bigger systems and in front of larger crowds in order to practice holding a dancefloor’s attention and building an engaging journey. I played a few shows this summer in Europe that were challenging and exciting in a similar way: WHOLE festival in Germany with Müll and Magick Bar in Rome as part of the Neel Invites series. Time is definitely a scarce resource, but I feel fortunate to work on a project that doesn’t detract from my individual artistry and vice versa. And as far as studio time, I’m excited to turn back towards my long ignored individual projects, between the Blondage EP and the Endzeit x Parameter Weekender that just wrapped up.
That’s the plan for now — we’ll continue building Endzeit events and our community in the Bay Area with the same level of intentionality as we grow the project, while also stretching outwards.
