Goethe.rmx

Baderna is a duo consisting of Rafael Soares and Daniel Mendonça. The collaboration was formed specifically for the remix of Emil Klotzsch's version of the Goethe poem The King of Thule for the project Goethe.rmx. This is especially interesting as the two brothers – both of which are DJs – have never collaborated before.

"Despite our differences, we found each other perfectly during this process. Rafael cares more about the dance floor, and he is a real music expert. Working together was a pleasant experience – in fact, it inspired us to start more projects of this kind," says Daniel, who works not only as a DJ but also as sound designer and film music producer.

"The German language is very strange for us. From a Brazilian perspective, it has a near-percussive sound, thus we experimented with the vocals," Rafael explains the approach towards the rework of The King of Thule. The idea was to add some flexibility to the German vocals and text through the use of instruments such as Cuíca, Tamborim, Pandeiro and Surdo. According to Daniel, the duo tried to make the result sound less rigid, in accordance with the Brazilian culture. "To us, the text sounded pretty strict at first", he says.

Emil Klotzsch - Koenig in Thule (Baderna Remix) by goethe.rmx
Download the Baderna Remix (MP3, 19,4 MB)

In order to achieve this, the two DJs asked Eduardo Macedo (guitar and Cavaquinho) to join them in the studio. As Rafael explains, they aimed to steer away from a sound that ultimately would be considered dance music. "Our intention," Daniel says, was to create "a rather dry sound with less obvious references, far away from the nightmare of today's electronic music, which often is poorly executed and made only for commercial reasons."

The musical tastes of the two DJs is far from clichéd commercialism, as they work dance floors using a healthy mix of traditional and modern music. "I respect traditions, with a view to the future," says Daniel. He is a great fan of "music from around the world and from all eras, including Einstürzende Neubauten as well as Nicolas Jaar, Tune Yards, Nelson Cavaquinho, Tom Zé, James Blake, Alva Noto, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Jards Macalé – to name name but a few." The list of artists could be continued forever, as Rafael is not only the publisher of the comic magazine Graffiti but also a devoted and knowledgeable fan of Brazilian roots music.