Baleardo Villalobos

Watching this video totally made my day when I saw it. Ricardo takes an old South American folk tune and is mixing it with a deep German minimal techno track. Seems to be an incredible moment for the crowd which is completely out of control. I wish I was among them! The video proves that Ricardo is really holding an exceptional position in the techno scene. There’s not a single other DJ who can create such an emotional moment. And Ricardo is always testing borders and sometimes even passing them. It’s the love to music, the curiousness, a daring attitude, being keen on experimenting, what it’s about. Ricardo is one of the very few DJs where I can see these ambitions. What a pity that I don’t like most of Minimal at all…

Ricardo doesn’t get tired of pointing out that he sees so many origins and analogies of modern dance music in old folklore from South American. A kind of music he often came across with as a child, because his family comes from Chile and he was also born there. He came to Germany when he was three years old. And Germany stands for a tradition of creating and developing electronic music, he says in one of his interviews. It’s probably these two halves which characterise him well. And the video above captures this kind of background quite accurately! And it proves how based on rhythmical elements such an old folk tune can be. It stays in beat the whole time, probably because of Ricardo’s mixing skills, too.

However, people were so surprised when he took Shackleton’s “Blood On My Hands” and integrated it into his sets. It’s a Dubstep track, dark and mesmerizing, but quicker than most of Dubstep. There’s no straight beat, just lots of congas and percussions. It’s a risk to play this to the common techno crowd I guess. But it just made sense. I totally dig the Voodoo-Vibe of this piece of music. Ricardo later turned it into monster remixing it. This track was SO dark and hypnotic. An almost 20-minutes-long trip through the evil parts of human life. It became one of the few tracks I like of the minimal genre!

When Ricardo spoke to German Groove Magazine last year, he said he wishes for a place where the music would be played the whole day and would not have to fulfil any dance-expectations. I like this No-Rule-Mentality. It shows where things should go to. And I’d love to hear the music Ricardo would play without having to entertain the minimal crowd.

For me, it’s just a question of time before this guy will break out, step free, whatever! Perhaps an exceptional mix for this blog would be a good start, Ricardo? Hehe…Till then, just keep it up dude!