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Wareika
Wareika started as a creative project in the summer 2007. In fact, it was as school friends that Jakob Seidensticker and Henrik Raabe formed a band called “The Havana Boys”, something of a house-band for the famous Mojo Club in Hamburg at that time. While playing another gig, Florian Schirmacher, already famous with projects like “Glowing Glisses”, jumped up onto the stage and they just hit it off from day one. And so Wareika began. The very first release was “Men Village” (2008 Connaisseur Rec) and demonstrates the deep influence of jazz and wobbly dub-sounds that all three musicians are heavily into. Definitely no need to mention King Tubby or Sun Ra…

It also showcases the musical education that all three artists enjoyed from an early age. Henrik Raabe studied guitar, drums and piano, Florian was educated in singing and piano, while Jakob can master a fretless bass and plays all kinds of percussion. Besides this classical education, Jakob and Florian are also very much into djing, rooted within Techno, House and all sorts of contemporary club music, leaving no surprise as to the high versatility of Wareika’s musical style.

Their productions include three albums, several single releases and more than a dozen high-profile remixes on different labels like Tartelet, Perlon, Circus Company, Future Classics, Eskimo and many others – with sounds ranging from balearic to deep techno, jazzy house, balkan-jazz sounds and dubby riddims. Wareika are always maintaining a smart intellect, depth and dynamism in all their compositions. It´s a bright and dazzling kaleidoscope of melodies and polyrhythmic or four to the floor beats that is entirely unique in the electronic worldwide circuit. You could maybe label their music with the term Jazz-Not-Jazz or even better Techno-No-Techno… Whatever you may call it, it´s deep and atmospheric – but it never misses the groove!

When it comes down to live gigs the trio are very keen on defining a quality and outstanding sound, always playing 100% live. Definitely no computers on stage!

Due to mainly playing club venues, they beef up their sounds, getting the masses up and dancing to their sometimes 3 hour long sets, even though they are definitely not your average club heads band.

Jakob Seidensticker (MPC arrangements, effects, mixing) Florian Schirmacher (vocals, keyboards and percussions) and Henrik Raabe (guitar, percussions and vocals) are playing in venues all around the world from London to St. Petersburg, from Miami to Oslo and from Tokyo to Brazil.

It’s always thrilling to see Wareika on stage as techno-marries-jazz improvisers, whether they are performing their recorded masterpieces like „King’s Child“ (2009 Motivbank) or „Harmonie Park“ (2010 Perlon) in some completely new way, or just improvising and creating things unheard so far. Many of these stage-born songs were captured on vinyl and CD, forming their fourth full-length album „Wternal“, which was out on Visionquest in October 2013.

There are many more horizons, hidden valleys and unclimbed peaks to conquer in music: stay tuned and follow the huge steps of Wareika.