Through projects such as Datapanik, Lampe (Fellow) has made it his lifelong mission to unearth his own story within this rich, ever-expanding canon of club music. For this mix he dove deep into the Carribbean Club diaspora.

With Guest: Flying Park – the new musical project of Michael Lampe (Fellow) – serves as a sanctuary for free expression, communion and innovation. By sampling sounds from rare traditional instruments from his native home of Aruba, like the tambu drum and the caha di barrel organ, Flying Park transfers the folkloric into something wholly futuristic. Furthermore, Lampe’s productions are driven by a deep curiosity to identify, extract and cultivate new exciting club fusions, integrating burgeoning, defiant voices from the Caribbean scenes to propel things forward.

“Not starting from scratch, but starting from experience.”

Club music is – in layman’s terms – a collective human experience imbued in sound, frequency and vibration, not unlike a spell crafted inside of an enchanted object. Flying Park – the new musical platform of DJ and producer Michael Lampe a.k.a Fellow – is no exception: it is as much an exhuming of lost connections as it is a forging of new ones.

During the course of his career, Lampe has been a vital catalyst in the exposure and development of Caribbean dance music across the globe. Born in Aruba, he grew up in the midst of the island’s vibrant musical heritage, one unbrokenly fueled by traditional styles coalescing into new exciting forms. The high-octane, giddy pulse of soca, the bass-heavy vibrations of bubbling, the spiritual march of the tambú; all of these musical strands are the result of communion between people of different cultural backgrounds.

Through projects such as Datapanik and his former DJ moniker Fellow, Lampe has made it his lifelong mission to unearth his own story within this rich, ever-expanding canon of club music. Often traveling between his place of birth and his adopted home of The Netherlands, he is an artist who bridges two disparate worlds; one leg planted into the oral history of Caribbean music, and the other caught up in the quest for the cutting-edge across the European club scenes.

That avid search has gifted Lampe with a close-knit network of friends, admirers and collaborators, from Major Lazer’s Diplo and Jillionaire to Aruban folk masters such as Vicente Ras and Buchi Boekhoudt. After a five-year detour within the Aruban parliament in a bid to improve and vitalize the island’s musical infrastructure, Lampe returns to his musical roots once again with Flying Park, with newly established connections and wisdom under his belt.

The project is named after the High Flying Park events, self-made stomping grounds by youth in the Dutch Caribbean Islands during the 70s, in part inspired by the hippie movement in those days. Lampe: “My dad used to print the invitation tickets for the underground Aruba High Flying Park events in those days. The High Flying Park events were eventually banned by authorities.”

Flying Park serves as a sanctuary for free expression, communion and innovation. In similar DIY-settings across Aruba, Lampe put the material – which he has been crafting throughout his five-year political career – to the test. These first trials were vital in developing the music further and seeking out infectious new collaborations.

By sampling sounds from rare traditional instruments like the tambu drum and the caha di barrel organ, Flying Park transfers the folkloric into something wholly futuristic. Furthermore, Lampe’s productions are driven by a deep curiosity to identify, extract and cultivate new exciting club fusions, integrating burgeoning, defiant voices from the Caribbean scenes to propel things forward.

Like a new evolutionary outgrowth, Flying Park offers a vivid, incandescent reimagining of what club music could become. At the same time, it speaks of the inherent worth of running things back to its lofty origins. “For me the concept of Flying Park is deeply rooted in how the Dutch-Caribbean youth communities in the 70's empowered themselves to create space to express themselves, free and open. That's the mindset I feel I want to embrace in the journey of making musical connections and expressions. In this process people from all ages and backgrounds come together and strengthen their connections, relationships and their communities.”