Honesty

Hans Schaaf, our man from cologne, started his musical socialization in the year, where everything began: 1977, Elvis still is warm in his coffin while disco and punk music are emerging with full force. The young Hans spends his days at colognes Saturn music store, listening to every bit coming from such diverse artists as Tom Browne, The Clash, The Brothers Johnson, The Sex Pistols, Roy Ayers or the Toy Dolls. Besides these daily excursions into the exciting world of music (?), one of his main influences is the John Peel Radio Show, that shows him how inspiring one can be while mixing up all kinds of musical styles.
Before ever thinking of getting professionally into the “music thing”, he has been working as a set decorator during the 80s. Two years after “beat street”, in 1988 to be exact, the first men on their wheels of steel appear almost everywhere in Germany. And Hans… well, he is one of the first of them, and since then his name is not Hans anymore: let me introduce… DJ HONESTY!!!
In the late 80s, Honesty was mixing the stuff he got from his daily Saturn – excursions, mainly funk, soul and hip hop. As the 90s begin, techno comes over to Germany, and Honesty gets involved. In 1992 he is working on own material for the first time and has his own release on space teddy recordings in 1995. In 19…, after a partial loss of his record – collection due to a fire, he moves to Berlin, THE german techno – city in these times. While he is playin synths and samplers on stage with the improjazzband Gelee Royale and being involved in „non-club“ projects like dance-theater or film (from 97 – 99), his musical range is getting more diverse, including detroit – techno, chicago – house, and, finally, towards the end of the originatorist electronic decade (yea, the 90s, y’all know what I mean), the fine broken beats from dollis hill…
Today, he is playing a wide range from detroit techno to soulfull broken beats topped with house in one single set. Just to let you know, that he really is involved, lets do some of this “useless” name – and factdropping: Honesty has been playing in places such as the Warehouse/Cologne, theTacheles, the Globus, the WMF, further the Friseur, the nbi and a lot of Partys and illegal locations not to be
named. He has been releasing stuff on Cabinet records, Sonar Kollektiv, and is planning to run an own label called sonic icons. By the way, he is an internationally booked man: he played in poland, england, spain just to name a few.
So… what is left to say? Lets conclude this with Honestys own words:
“ The roots… it is not about what you do, it is about how you do it.“

Discographie honesty:

– honesty – honesty ep – space teddy – 12“ – 1995

– honesty – honeydrop – cabinet rec. – 12“ – 1996

– honesty – weltzeituhr – sonic icons – 10“ – 1997

– honesty – honeydrop 2 – cabinet rec. – 12“ – 1998

– honesty / werner niedermayer – yellow sunglasses – cabinet rec. – 12“ – 2000

– cabinet allstars “kareen” – cabinet rec.20 – 2002

– honesty – honeydrop 4 – “harz/camarque” – cabinet rec.22 – 2004

– buzfusion – pretty baby (honesty rmx) / talk dirty recs. – 12″ – 2004