Don’t wait
for the
next chance.

It actually began in a very ordinary way. Matti and I are neighbours, and one day we were sitting in his living room. We were talking about the electronic music scene and how difficult it has become to really establish yourself as a DJ.

I make music as NAAZUK, have built an audience and have now accumulated millions of streams. But you soon realise that those numbers don’t automatically open doors in the DJ scene. It’s incredibly difficult to get gigs and really make a name for yourself.

Then there are the organisational challenges and the dealings with authorities that come with putting on your own events.

At some point we asked ourselves: why don’t we try it ourselves? Why don’t we create our own opportunities to play, while giving other DJs a stage too?

That is exactly the idea Amplify Austria grew out of.

Of course we want to throw great parties. But there’s more behind it: we want to create a platform where young talent, DJs, newcomers and people with the same passion can come together.

We don’t just want to wait for someone to give us a chance. We want to create opportunities ourselves. That is what Amplify Austria stands for.

From the start, it mattered to us that the night wouldn’t simply be a collection of individual sets, but that the energy would develop over the whole evening.

We’re starting with drum & bass and neurofunk. Then a DJ who mainly plays techno will take over, also bringing drum & bass into the mix. That already creates a natural transition between the two genres.

After that comes ICON, who has been well known in Klagenfurt’s drum & bass scene for a long time.

Then it’s my turn as NAAZUK. My set will be roughly 80 per cent drum & bass and 20 per cent techno.

MAUKAY is coming over from Salzburg to close the night, bringing a different energy again with hardtechno.

We want to show how well drum & bass and techno can work together, even though they have different characters.

Of course, CAGE BREAK is also our first attempt at this concept. We want to see how the crowd responds, gain experience and develop with each event.

Above all, it’s important to us that every DJ gets enough time to present their own sound, and that people experience a whole night rather than just individual performances.

When you’re DJing, you normally concentrate on your set, the music and the crowd.

As an organiser, you suddenly see the whole picture. You think about how the atmosphere comes together, how the artists fit, how the music develops and what people take home with them at the end.

For me, that is a completely different responsibility, but also an incredibly exciting experience.

I want to create something that makes people go home saying: ‘Wow, that was brilliant. I definitely want to go back!’

That is exactly the feeling we want to achieve with CAGE BREAK.

We also deliberately want to present new artists. That’s why we’ve included a newcomer in the line-up, to give them a chance to play in front of a crowd and gain experience.

I know that situation myself. Even though I’ve been producing as NAAZUK for a long time and have built some reach, I still don’t get behind the decks on stage as often as I’d like.

So I know how important those opportunities are.

One thing matters particularly to me: Amplify Austria shouldn’t stand exclusively for drum & bass or techno.

CAGE BREAK is our first event, on 21 November at ZOO Club Klagenfurt. But in future we also want to organise other events with their own names, different concepts and different electronic genres.

Our focus is broadly on electronic music and rave culture. So we can equally imagine events featuring hardstyle, uptempo or other styles.

The musical direction of the next event is still open. We deliberately don’t want to commit to one particular sound, and we also want to give newcomers from other genres a stage.

If CAGE BREAK goes down particularly well and people want another one, we could of course imagine turning it into its own series. But that hasn’t been decided yet.

For now, our priority is to learn from our first event and build on that experience.

I think our flyer already gives a pretty good idea of where we want to go with CAGE BREAK. We deliberately chose that slightly harder, rave-oriented look.

What you can’t really see on a flyer is the people and the passion behind it.

We deliberately chose mainly regional DJs for the line-up. We want to show how much musical potential there is right here in Carinthia.

With MAUKAY, we also have an artist coming over from Salzburg, bringing another sound with him.

There are so many talented artists, motivated people and people who really live electronic music in Carinthia. Often, what’s missing is simply an opportunity to present all of that together on one stage.

And that is exactly where we want to start with Amplify Austria.

For me, the special thing about a rave is that people who may never have met before come together and share the same energy for a few hours.

It isn’t just about who’s behind the decks. It’s about that shared feeling the music creates.

In the long term, we want to show as many sides of the electronic music scene as possible, and give artists a chance whose genres may so far have offered them few opportunities to play in Carinthia.

I think you have to experience a night like that yourself to really understand what makes this scene.