A MIXTURE OF DARK AND LIGHT

Interview with Marius Latamescu aka Latam aka Fractaliceanu.

To the delight of all local psychedelic astronauts, this year we will be welcoming back perhaps one of the most influential artists in our country's tight-knit disc jockeying community, Marius Latamescu, aka Latam. Marius was present at our very first public event and has returned every year since then, always with the same answer when we approached him: ‘Yes, I'd love to, no question!’

At any place or time, Marius always adapted like a chameleon and conjured up a mind-blowing arc to suit the situation. This year he will be performing at Mumush as Fractaliceanu, bringing the darker side of psychedelic music.

Come and take a trip with Marius into the history of the Romanian psychedelic universe. Don't forget to hit play on the top of the page to enjoy his music while you read.

MUMUSH: Hello there, pioneer! I would like to know so much about you, tell me a little about your childhood.

FRACTALICEANU: Hi! Haha, this is such an unexpected start for an interview. So, not sure if you literally mean my childhood, but here it goes: I was a pretty shy and peaceful child and because of this my mother told me that grownups used to love me; I was quite inventive, I used to imagine and create my own toys and games. Later I loved school and playing football a lot. Then things started to get a bit crazier with adolescence.

MUMUSH: Tell me how you first got involved in music.

FRACTALICEANU: I always loved music a lot, as long as I can remember. Also, I always seemed to prefer the music that had something electronic in it. I remember the first time I saw a video of one of Jean-Michel Jarre’s songs and heard his music, I was mesmerized.

MUMUSH: Where did you meet psychedelic music?

FRACTALICEANU: The first time I heard a Goa Trance track it really clicked something in me. I was listening to a radio show and after it played the guy said, ‘new style of music, Goa Psychedelic Trance!’ It was instant love. Don’t know whose track it was, but the first artist that I developed a big passion for shortly after was Astral Projection. I used to continuously listen to their albums, knew every sound of each track.

MUMUSH: What was it like in the early days? How did Latam come about?

FRACTALICEANU: After I finished high school and got to university, I started to get out a lot, as in going to clubs and bars almost every night. The nightlife in Bucharest was really starting to take off with a lot of new clubs, foreign DJs, after hours. I fully lived that period, so many memories.

MUMUSH: How did Latam come about?

FRACTALICEANU: That’s quite a long story but I’ll try to make it short. There were no Goa Psytrance parties in Romania at that time, we were just a handful of people who knew about this music. I had a girlfriend who I infected with the love for Goa, at some point I spent a summer in Italy and was talking to her via internet telling her that I was gonna go to my first Psytrance party there in Rome and she was telling me that she met some new people from around the country and that they’ve put together an organization and were gonna organize their first party under the name of Spacesheep. After the summer ended, I came back to Romania, met the other guys and we started hanging out together a lot. One of my friends, Dimitrip, was active on a Psytrance forum and that way he got in contact with someone from Germany who wanted to organize a festival in Romania and needed some help with it, so he was looking for contacts here. We helped him with some legal stuff, some logistics, also with promo and ticket selling. That’s how the first Transylvania Calling in 2004 was born. Me and my friend Dimitrip were like the Jehovah’s Witnesses for Psytrance in Romania, we carried a small CD wallet around with us everywhere, wherever we would go we would force people to listen to the music we had on CDs, selections we made with stuff that we liked. At the festival, because it was quite underground the timetable was not full so they had put a poster at the bar: “If any DJs here would like to play, sign up.” When Dimitrip told me about this I instinctively replied, ‘Let’s play’. Of course, we weren’t DJs, of course we didn’t know how to DJ, but we just did it. Many people from the festival were there because of us, many friends in the audience, so I guess that gave us some courage. That was an Eureka moment for me, I went to that festival without a clear direction in my life and left with a purpose. After returning to Bucharest, we started organizing small underground parties in the forests around the city, in the beginning we were just a group of 20-30 friends. But it started to grow. Then we managed to book a club through a Greek friend who knew the manager, then we managed to book a night at the Web Club (quite a legendary club in Bucharest at the time, now it’s extinct), and so on. I taught myself how to mix and within a year I was quite decent. Then the ball really started rolling, more and more people were coming to our parties, people were getting inspired by what we did, a friend started the ReBirth Festival, we made Spacesheep into a legal association and organized ReBirth through that.

MUMUSH: What shaped your interest and style the most? When was Fractaliceanu born?

FRACTALICEANU: There are so many artists and styles that influenced me musically. Before I started mixing, I was listening to music solely from passion. I didn’t really understand what defined a genre, what were the differences etc. But then, because I was really driven to do this, I needed to change my approach and went down the rabbit hole. I always had a curious personality who enjoyed studying and discovering, so what followed was a total immersion in everything I could get my hands and ears on. For a few years I experimented with a lot of styles, I was also playing techno-electro-house in clubs in Bucharest. Also, I used to host a weekly chillout Sunday afternoon in different locations. Fractaliceanu was born in 2014, when I got very sick with tuberculosis the previous year, which was quite an intense and extreme experience; and because of this I went into a darker vibe, so I was listening to a lot of Forest and Dark Psy. I always listened to all styles of Psytrance to stay up to date with what’s going on in the scene, but now things went deeper in this direction. As a joke my girlfriend at the time said to me, ‘You should start a new dark project’ and I thought, why not, let’s play with this and see where it can go. As I was also fascinated with fractals, hence Fractaliceanu came to life. I kept it rather underground for many years and this helped me experiment with sounds which otherwise I don’t know if I could have done. Now it’s always funny for me to hear some people say, ‘I prefer your Latam sound’ and others say, ‘I prefer your Fractaliceanu sound’, it’s so interesting. For sure it was an important part of my self-discovery through music.

MUMUSH: Tell us about one powerful experience when you were on the dance floor and one when you were behind the mixer.

FRACTALICEANU: A really powerful moment for me was when I heard Astral Projection playing Kabalah live at Waha Festival in 2016. After loving their music so much, to be able to book them at our festival gave me goosebumps. Also, I remember an incredible Minilogue (a Swedish duo which I also loved very passionately ever since I discovered them as Son Kite) live set at Kristal Club in Bucharest, they played for almost 5 hours, 95% of their material was either live improvisation or unreleased material. Best live I ever heard. A very special period in my memories is also the first years of my clubbing times, even before I started DJing. Those were special, almost unreal times. Behind the decks there are so many moments and memories, especially when I got to play at some incredible festivals and in some amazing locations around the world. I’ll just say that after I played my set last year at Mumush I seemed to have really surprised many people because besides the live feedback I received messages for a while after from unknown people via email, SoundCloud, Facebook, telling me how much they’ve enjoyed it and asking if I recorded the set. It’s always such a satisfying feeling.

MUMUSH: What would you say about the psychedelic community in the country at present?

FRACTALICEANU: Things grew continuously for many years and at some point, there were a few summers, I think, with even 7 proper gatherings in Romania. Now most of them have died, there are a few new ones who try to compensate. In Bucharest some years ago there was a Psytrance party almost every weekend, but then the Colectiv moment came and because of that tragedy most of the clubs had to close which was a major blow for the movement. Then Covid came, which was another major blow. The honest truth is now we’re struggling a bit. I think we have some decent performers, both producers and DJs, Psytrance and Psychill, but without a strong scene it’s difficult to sustain the activity. We need more, I want more.

MUMUSH: Let's fly for a moment to where I live and where Waha has been living for more than 10 years now... Picture the first Waha where we walked from my house and it was already dark when we got to the other side of the Murgo and of course, we met a bear. You are there from the start. What are your responsibilities?

FRACTALICEANU: I was there from the start, yes, put a lot of time, energy and soul into it. My last 10 years were super intense, both personally and professionally, a mixture of both dark and light. I am still in the processing of things from the 2012-2013 period, so you can imagine. For the past few editions of Waha I was focused mainly on what is happening at the Psy Stage, I’m doing most of the bookings, the communication with artists or their agents, PR and promo ideas and execution, the musical concept together with a friend, stage managing, supervising things in general.

MUMUSH: This year Waha has grown tremendously, and the lineup is the fruit of your labor. Are you satisfied, did you achieve what you had planned?

FRACTALICEANU: It’s been growing with each edition, both in audience and quality. We managed to book a lot of incredible artists, many legends that shaped this genre, things that even I couldn’t have imagined. Musically I am very satisfied, but there is a lot of room for improvement on all levels. I’m quite a perfectionist, I’m trying to go easy in this regard.

MUMUSH: With what feelings, thoughts and energies are you heading to the Mumush World?

FRACTALICEANU: With a lot of gratitude that I’ve been invited again, fourth year in a row. I like the team and have a lot of appreciation for what you are trying to do there. I have plenty of experience when it comes to organizing so I can see the most important things in the small details. With my set I hope to make the people dance while guiding them through a psychedelic journey, I never prepare my sets upfront so let’s see, it will be a surprise even for me :)

Don’t miss Fractaliceanu at Arboretum stage with a bloody serious set of thrills to meet the rising sun on Saturday (August 19th) from 6 am to 8 am at Mumush festival, 2023! You can also check him out on Soundcloud, Facebook and Instagram and his alter, DJ Latam on Soundcloud, Facebook and Youtube.

article by áron, edited by benji