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‘The Other Radu Munteanu’

I recently realised how little I’d written, during the past few months, about Romanian music, and so this week I resolved to rectify the situation. With the MTV music awards rapidly looming, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to make fun of a host of Romanian ‘stars’. However, taking the piss out of Romanian pop is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel – it’s far too easy to be enjoyable. Artists like Fizz are, quite simply, beyond satire. I genuinely wish the man well, simply for having the unashamed to egoism to keep on doing what he’s doing, despite the fact that even his own mother must cringe [feel embarrassed] whenever he comes on the TV. Not only is it too easy, making fun of Romanian music also leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. Even if the people you’re mocking actually deserve to be deported to Siberia (which, in the case of most of the guests at the MTV awards, they actually do), it always makes you feel a little like the school bully, determined to boost his own self esteem by belittling other people And most importantly, it does a great injustice to the Romanian music scene. It’s by no means a reflection of what is really happening out there in studios and bedrooms across the country.

“Nothing ever interesting happens in Romania .” It’s something you hear so often that it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People stop looking for exciting new Romanian music, or youth culture, or creativity in general, because they’ve become so certain that they won’t find anything of interest. Many people here are quick to dismiss new bands as soon as they know that they’re from Romania . And in the shadow of the Western media, it’s hardly a surprising attitude. It’s no wonder that most videos on TV K-Lumea look fairly disappointing, given that you’re always going to compare them to the latest glossy pop product from the richest nation of earth, made for a sum of money that would probably purchase half of Bucharest .

It’s also the fault of people like me, the people who write for the media. Us journalists are lazy creatures. We’d much rather cut and paste a report from Reuters, or steal something from the internet, than go out onto the street and discover what’s really happening. Genuinely exciting music is difficult to discover. And that’s what makes it so worthwhile when you actually find it.

You’ve probably heard of Radu Munteanu, but not the Radu Munteanu I’m talking about. This Radu holds down a regular job and has never been to a showbiz party in his life. You won’t find him nominated for ‘best artist’ in the MTV Music awards, but he should be. Because Radu, aka ‘The Model’, is producing some of the most innovative music in Romania at the moment – so innovative, in fact, that he’s on the verge of making it big in the West.

“I sent my first demo off the International DJ Gigolo Records in 2001. It wasn’t until 2004 that I tried again – that was when things really started to take off,” Radu tells me. International DJ Gigolo is one of Europe ’s best known, and certainly on of the most fashionable, independent record labels. Thanks to the popularity of the Electroclash and electro-house sound with hipsters all over the globe, Gigolo is one of the labels that everybody’s checking at the moment. It was Gigolo who discovered New York ’s Electroclash overlords, the flamboyant ‘Fischerspooner’, who were later signed to Ministry of Sound’s record label for a barely believable one million Great British pounds. Other big names on Gigolo include the ubiquitous Miss Kitten, who can be heard intoning her deadpan Euro-English (i.e. ‘rubbish English’) over every electro-house record made in the past four yeas (or at least that’s how it sometimes seems). And last year, Gigolo signed two Romanian artists – The Model, and Mihai Popoviciu. Both artists feature on the latest International DJ Gigolo compilation CD, which was released just last month.

Gigolo, with its Champaign and cocaine hedonism, with its associations of jet set lifestyles, sex and glamour, seems a million miles away from the city of Sibiu . But it was Sibiu that proved to be the starting point for Radu and Mihai’s sonic experiments. Under the umbrella of the ‘Elektrocasnice’ record label that he set up, Radu brought together six other like-minded bedroom producers, many of them living in the Transylvanian city, and started to create his very own musical scene. Very much like Gigolo, the six artists on Elektrocasnice are held together by a coherent musical vision – in this case, an obsession with technology, and the music that pays homage to it, techno.

Techno has something of a reputation for being Geek music. And rightly so. When it began in the city of Detroit , USA , it was often listened to and produced by rather obsessive electronics wiz-kids, who would often end up explaining their theories of the universe to bemused music journalists who made the mistake of asking about their music. The producers who make up the Elektrocasnice collective are no less obsessive about what they do. The only difference, and the reason why The Model and Mihai Popoviciu look set to go so far, is that they make fantastic dance music. It’s music to fill dancefloors.

The release of the Gigolo 8 compilation was a genuinely important moment for Romanian music. It’s not often that native artists get the respect that they deserve internationally, especially not from labels as important as Gigolo. “And it doesn’t make it any easier when the western press prints rubbish about you being a Russian,” Radu complains. However, the Romanian press has been no less irresponsible in the way that it covers exciting new acts like The Model. I ask him if he’s ever been contacted by anyone from the Romanian media regarding what he does. “Erm,” he pauses for a moment. “That’d definitely be a no. Never.” Not even after people in the West started to take an interest in what you’re doing? “No.” Of course not. They’re all too busy making fun of Fizz. It’s a joke that is starting to wear a little thin.