TALLINN - At the age of 25, DJ Nemaier 's a.k.a. Sergei 's is one of Estonia's top DJs and a budding composer of progressive electronic music. His musical career began seven years ago, when he and some friends started a hip-hop band. He has played at Estonia's annual Sundance Music Festival, hosted a regular show on the radio station Energy FM and plans to release his first album in the near future.
But despite his passion for all kinds of music, he's had no formal musical education. By day he works as a computer salesman.
"I took piano classes when I was seven," he says. "I hope to go to music school one day. I think it's necessary."
Nemaier regularly performs at various popular venues in Tallinn, including Cafe Moscow and Pegasus. As a DJ, he plays new jazz, deep house, bossanova and lounge music: a variety of chillout sounds. His own compositions 's a selection of which can be heard on his website (http://charlesnemaier.ee/) 's reflect those tastes.
Nemaier mixes his compositions on his home computer, with the help of a collection of old synthesizers from Russia, Japan and the German Democratic Republic. One of his typical pieces is entitled "Syntetic Retro," a robomonk's plainsong synchronized to an early hip-hop beat. "It's so retro," Nemaier says. "Retro electronic. Mild acid and rave. It's so early nineties, so naive."
Such ironies pervade much of his music. His "Aerobika" 's produced in collaboration with his musical partner DJ Tapecut (aka Denis) 's offers a muzak tribute to Kraftwerk's "Aerodynamik," a workout track less suited to the gym than to the elevator. And "Orange," a dialogue between synthesizers, is reminiscent of a conversation between a mildly retarded married couple who've got stuck in a bit of a rut, until they succumb to the temptations of some psychedelic sex. "8th Breath" combines the Teletubbies with an electronic George Harrison during one of his Ravi Shankar moments. "Let's Funk!" is an absurdist nightmare of cyclic bass-lines tailor-made for true devotees of ecstasy.
"I wrote 'Let's Funk!' in one day," he says. "I just woke up and did it. I have a lot of tracks that I did in two hours or so."
Nemaier admits that such quickfire composition isn't necessarily an advantage. "This is my problem," he says. "I create tracks quickly. After that, it's hard for me to sit down and do something more with a track. I'm not a perfectionist. In so far as I compose a piece quickly, it's like a frozen moment in my life."
He composed the track "24" in just a couple of hours, on the morning of his 24th birthday. Like much of his work, it is heavily distorted. Nemaier's friends found it reminiscent of Depeche Mode. He begs to differ. He prefers to think of his influences as Kraftwerk, Nirvana and Portishead.
"Portishead are gods," he says.
But there are other influences too. His Russian and Estonian female vocalists sound like Enya more than usually depressed, or Andy Warhol's protegee, Nico, abandoned by the Velvet Underground and adopted by the Pet Shop Boys.
Nemaier, however, prefers to avoid such comparisons. "I prefer not to classify my music," he says. "There's good music and there's bad music. I just try to do good music."
