Like the last post, Kingphen.com presents you more exclusive and rare footage from the infamouse clubbing nights in Zürich. The video of the Last Ninja in Zürich was taken by pavel! He was spotted in Sihlcity car park displaying the formidable Drunken Master Technique! You can view it here. Be sure to watch it with your volume up!

Ok, I did’nt have the balls to post the entire Video. Man I was drunk, if you watched the entire vid, you wouldnt help but think I was on acid or worse! I couldnt remember anything the morning after! It was like watching a new movie starring myself haha!

Hahahaha!

The most crazy nights I’ve expirienced in Zürich get a “Harold and Kumar Night” rating. Last weekend was one of those…

Made a small video of my buddy Pavel touching the sky, while lookin’ extra fly. Check it out here and make sure you have sound!

IM STILL ALIVE!!! But I just barely made it! Hehe. Yea the military really screwed me this time… We had quite a tough 3 weeks compared to last year’s training. The first week was really tough. It was snowing like mad in St. Gallen, and we we’re always outdoors. Waking up 5 in the morning for 5 km runs in the snow to night orientation runs and marches. It was in the first week I started getting a sore throat… Now if there’s one thing you enjoy in the military, it would have to be drinking (which I proudly financed with my all poker winnings!). My theory is; because I drank so much during the 3 weeks, the alcohol must have kept my throat infection from getting worse. It was only after the 3 weeks were over, my throat got swollen and before I knew it I was rushed into hospital with the worst ear ache I’ve ever had. There was blood coming out my mouth, I thought I was dying. Since my mother was always watching Grey’s Anatomy on TV, I was thinking I had one of those crazy viruses or tumors you often see on the show…

This was the first time I was rushed into hospital in Switzerland. Living in South Africa, I’ve developed a mentality of always having semi private health insurance. It’s not common in Switzerland, but I strongly believe that when it comes to my health, I want the very best and fastest treatment out there. Health is the last place you should be saving your money on. Now my friend pvl told me some negative things about the Swiss health system. I never really considered it, but I couldn’t help but notice that their goal was not to find out exactly what was wrong with me, but rather which medication they can send me home with, in the quickest time. They dump you with antibiotics and painkillers and hope for the best. 8/10 people probably get healed and those where the problem intensifies are the ones they bother looking at twice.

Well in my case it didn’t heal. I couldn’t eat, drink, speak or sleep properly for a week. I lost 6 kgs in just 5 days. They then sent me to a specialist who operated on my neck, cutting a slit into it to remove the puss from the infection… think it’s disgusting? It was worse… It was like a mix between Hostel and Dawn of the Dead. But it did the trick. I missed work for 2 weeks but am now back in action.

Right, enough of my bitching, back to the Swiss military. The amount of money being used is unbelievable. With it alone you could probably feed half of Africa, but instead, we pay an unbelievable amount of taxes so that in my opinion, a bunch of people that aren’t capable of living in the real world, can make a carrier in the military. Now this might sound harsh, but if you only knew the amount of money I alone have already paid, even after serving around 21 weeks… Its just crazy! Just in these 3 weeks, in a regiment of about 150 soldiers, we were wasting fuel on about 30 trucks every day, shooting loads of ammunition and breaking million dollar equipment. For what you may ask? Well us soldiers might get a kick out of playing tough guys, camping around the forest. Don’t ask me what the country profits from it… Yea sure, if Switzerland ever suffers a catastrophe, we might need the military… but I highly doubt it. With today’s satellites and internet, communication is usually the last problem in a crisis scenario and keeping order doesnt need a compulsary military either…

The Swiss Army at the moment isn’t really popular in Switzerland. People are arguing the fact if we should even have our rifles at home or not. It was just last month that some crazy kid who just finished his recruiting school, smuggled a bullet out of camp and shot an innocent 16 year old girl waiting at the bus stop with her boyfriend. This happened about 5 minutes from where I live. Why did he do it? Yea he was crazy, but he was crazy with a rifle. What’s scary is that we boast to have the most armed citizens in the world, but hardly mention having the highest suicide rates in the world as well. The fact is, if you have a rifle around, it will always be an option. Heck, if somebody decided to kill someone in my family, you sure as hell can rely on me reenacting the gun scene from the movie Heat in the streets Zürich, that’s for sure!

Phew! Had to get that out my system. Sorry about that! Here’s a fun vid where our entire battalion had to yodel with the Appenzeller traditional yodellers. Was quite funny since last year we only had to listen to them. If you listen carefully you can hear good ol kingphen giving a royal yodel himself!

The whizpah launch was postponed due to clothing production delays. I took the liberty to redo some stuff for the website. The samples of the clothing are amazing. The first touch already gives you an impression of top quality. The style is great.

I also finally found time to finish the artwirth website. I photographed all the paintings my dad made and posted them on the website. The artwirth project is a joint project that my dad and I work on. We even have a series of paintings which we will be selling on the whizpah website. Cool Beans! Check it out.

I got to watch a lot of movies during the last 2 weeks. Be sure to check out the new movie Hot Rod. It’s really funny shit, kinda like Napoleon Dynamite, just in my opinion, a lot funnier. Also check out the oldie Once were Warriors. Great movie.

Another reminder to everyone who hasn’t discovered Liquid Drum n Bass yet… Check out my buddy bigh’s podcast at bigh.ch and subscribe it on iTunes. I was at a party 2 weeks ago, and man the music was just awesome. I just felt myself get lifted towards the music. The drum beats works as a bridge to the melodic part of the music. I’m not sure if it’s a combination of the drum n bass raising your heart rate or something. If you want the experience in Zürich, checkout mute.ch – they have the party Liquid Nights in the club Hives.

Azad brought out a new album and listening into it, I find it really good. Much better than the last “wahrheit” album he brought out with his crew. This is the stuff that made Azad great and is setting the higher standard in German Hip Hop. Here’s the music video with Gentleman.

After the last 5 weeks I noticed I wasn’t on my PC for a long time. Before my military service my Boss asked me how many hours a day I sit in front of my Notebook… I worked it out and came with around 12-16 hours a day… More often 16 hours or more… Quite sick really, dunno if its anything to be proud of, but it explains why I’m still keeping up with the IT world really…

Now that my bro has moved to Switzerland, I’m starting an intensive training plan with him, involving mostly weight lifting for upper body building, swimming for cardio and lots of beer drinking for the pain. My pool skills are increasing as well, not used to a challenge here in Zürich, and Brandon is as pro as it gets. We hoping to get fit enough to start kickboxing. We are so serious about doing this, we are watching the movies Kickboxer 1 all the way to 4 in one day! Pretty hardcore!

Hey guys, small feedback from the last 2 weeks. The project went really well so far. We met Niels and fully photographed 2 clubs on Friday. We got to photograph Acqua, which in my opinion has the nicest scenery and exterior and Platins which by far has the nicest interiors. We also met managers of both clubs, and they were surprisingly optimistic about our project and not the least skeptic which we were expecting. I won’t start explaining why companies are skeptical in Europe, those that live here and have travelled a bit, will understand this well, for others I have added this pic from LOLcats website which also explains it well
But yea, things went well, after photographing another 2 clubs from the outside (we need exterior pics for the 3D City Map) we ended the evening with a pretty wild night at Platins hehe.

On Saturday we stopped by THE MONEY MAKERS DJ party. Since I’ve been studying nightlife in Zürich, I found this party’s concept quite unique. Now it’s rare for a party event in Zürich to even have a concept in the first place. I think mostly because the Zürich clubbing scene is very used to the usual mainstream styles and aren’t ready for new ideas like in other cities. Yea, so this party promised great house music like most parties, but added the touch of having DJ’s dressed as bank robbers (with ski masks and bulletproof vests) mixing it up at the party. For the first time I’ve seen, keeping the DJ’s completely anonymous. They also have a great website, with an intro video to their parties. Be sure to check it out. Maybe the event location wasn’t the best, but I still think the people reacted positively and the music was great. It definetly has potential for getting even bigger and better. I met Raphael there, one of the owners of Noskandi. Really nice, down to earth guy, and that not only because he handed us free drinks!

Yea and now down to the theme of this post. It has been at least about 5 years since I used to listen to Drum n Bass or UK Garage. I found myself moving on to mostly House and Hip Hop. My buddy Phillip has now made this really great podcast on his blog. I’ll be honest, when I heard he was using Liquid Drum n Bass, I was very skeptical. I always thought DnB was dead, since there are hardly any mainstream parties in Switzerland anymore, but it isn’t. I decided to listen into his Podcast, and found his stuff really TOP. Its great music to work to, the fast beats raise your heart rate, but it’s still great to chill to as well, or meditate believe it or not. It’s also great music to work out to, or run to, ok I dont think I’ll try having sex to it… hehe. Not to mention, some of the tracks, mostly UK garage, even have a great message in them (listen to the Roni Size track “No More” on the podcast v5).
My verdict: This shit hits the spot. Since I don’t have the time to start collecting and selecting mp3s and albums, I eagerly wait for the next podcast to be released on bigh.ch. Make sure to check out the page, and if you have iTunes installed, be sure to go to: Advanced -> Subscribe to Podcast and give in this URL: http://bigh.ch/?feed=podcast and load that shiz on ur iPod man!

On Monday I’m off to the army… Damn man, it’s freezing outside, and on the program we have to sleep out in the woods and go on long marches… damn… If I don’t write a post in the next 3 weeks, I’m most probably dead. Cheers

Padre Phen - Halloween 2007

Forgive me padre phen, it’s been ages since my last post! So here’s the long awaited whizpah update post. But before I start, I got to give a holler to the South African Rugby Team. What a performance they pulled off. Even though their playing style was criticized for being safe and boring, the truth is, they played the most solid and disciplined game out there. Percy was a dead on shot and Bryan Habana delivered the most spectacular runs in the tournament. I’m so proud of them and proud to have played rugby at school. GO BOKKE!!!

Man after about a year’s work for whizpah, it’s all starting to come together. The most important project for whizpah would have to be the map. I have been very secretive to the project, but now just a couple months before its release, I’m proud to present it on my blog.

Clubbing is fun and for the youth it’s a life style.

The concept is simple. Have you ever been to a city like Paris, Amsterdam or Rome and always knew these cities had amazing nightlife, but all you could find were some crummy pubs and clubs filled with tourists. Well this problem is serious. I for one, will do some research on tourist attractions, but there’s no way I’m going to dig around party websites, read reviews on clubs, just for a one weekend club tour. Well our problems with Zürich are similar. Even though Zürich proportionally has the most clubs than any other European City, you will still not discover the clubs easily. Even Swiss people living outside of Zürich do not have this information at hand and have to stay active in the scene to keep an overview.

Well the solution is simple. I figured the best way to promote the best part of Zürich is to give people an overview of Zürich at just one glance at a poster. Why a poster you ask, and not a brochure or website? Well that’s quite simple. If phenerics make a poster, you can bet its gonna be pure eye candy. So sexy, it will be interesting to look at even if you’re 80 years old and have no interest in visiting any of the clubs. Sure information is good, and we offer it on the whizpah website for anybody who wants to know more. With a single glance on the whizpah poster, we hope to empower everybody in discovering the hidden treasures of Zürich. The 3D city art was done by the eminent, Romanian Stallion, Ioan Barladeanu. He is probably the most talented artist/designer I have had the pleasure to work with.

Keep in mind, these are very early previews, we are working very hard on the decoration and final touch ups, but I think it still looks great!

We are launching another project next weekend to photograph the top 20 clubs in Zürich. This will serve as content for our website’s City Guide and the poster club content boxes. It will also be a great chance to communicate with the club owners and offer them our first free services of professional photography of their club and free promotion on our website. The photographer is a young cat that I met over deviantArt. Niels Epting has a talent for angles and found him perfect for the job. I was happy to find he was optimistic about working with me on this project, and I’m sure we will prove to be great partners in the future. He has his own blog HERE and be sure to check out his dA account HERE.
The project overview:

Now even though I work with a lot of artists, I find myself doing an immense amount of design work on the whizpah project. Being let down, or not acquiring desired results can leave you stranded in a project. So to keep the progress continuing you got to get your hands dirty and do the work yourself.

In this case, I can actually say, I’m really pleased with the results. I can finally show some early results of the whizpah website. The banner at the top was done by Rob Tombolado, a very young and talented kid from Spain, and my trusty Malaysian buddy Amenth did the footers (with the male photograph done by Joe Danvers and the Female stock photo was bought from photographer Roley Chiu). The rest was done by yours truly – ME!

Here’s a preview of our front page for the launch in December:

Here are some early views of our City Guide:

and Clubs:

and club details:

For the culture part of the website, which is for smaller and reoccurring projects, we’re hoping to involve and evolve a whizpah community. Our first couple projects involve a weekly DJ Podcast mix. Since the Swiss Podcast law isn’t as strict as the rest of the EU, we hope to bring the connection with unknown as well as known DJ’s with fans closer outside the clubs. In the process we hope to present every second week a DJ out of Zürich. Here’s an early preview of the layout:

Let me know if you have any critics or suggestions, or any feedback for that matter

For our events section, I hired the Greek artist Aaorin to do a small atmospheric flyer. This will just serve as a placeholder until we actually start organising events. It will still be remixed to suit the design, but this is the first result:

Now that I got all that out the way, I can concentrate on posting the results of the upcoming projects.

Like I mentioned in my past post with Noskandi making party vids for all their events, the trend of hiring a professional camera team to record your event is becoming more and more popular. They then cut and mix it professionally with some cool music. I think its a lot more interesting than some boring party pics.

Since its new, I cant help but feel you can do so much more with the videos. For example in the video done by Bigh’s brother’s birthday party, they added a hilarious blooper at the end (silly blond poses for a photo and says take a pic, he then says its a video and she gets pissed off and says, “no! make a photo!” and in a really tarty way HAHA!). First time I’ve seen that. I remember the Counter-Strike scene when it first started making videos. Then about 2-3 years later, the videos looked more professional than some of the stuff you see on MTV…

Anyway, heres the vid from the party. I was even drunk enough to be on the video as well (about 1:07 into it). Next to me was Boban, Bigh and Bigh’s Bro Tim. What a night that was man…

Party Vid

Usually blog posts have atleast one theme to it. This one’s going to be my first random post, and thought I’d start it with a moving pic of no one better than FLAVOR FLAAAAAAV! Since I’m loving the second season of flavor of love on VH1.

Was’nt ready to post updates on the whizpah project, but those closer to me have seen some previews, and believe me, its gonna be quite big

I finally thought I’d post some pics from my cell phone on here. There are descriptions when you click on them.

Some tales from the facebook. With the growing trend of poker in Europe, thought I’d flaunt my pimpin’ skills.

Check out the t-shirt I just had to buy in Amsterdam. And look at these pics of a BMW M5 E60 done by woobiee I found while browsing deviantArt.

Those who missed the MTV VMA’s last week (The one with Britney Spears’ hideous comeback attempt) even with Chris Brown’s performance being by far the most impressive part of the show, this video was my highlight. I noticed that I personally relate with Kanye’s music a lot more than my friends, and to see him pull of this performance was almost expected… Listen closely to the track Big Brother to understand how deep his music can be. Yea so here’s the vid, Las Vegas… Presidential Suite at the Palms… Helicopters with cameras… Near the end of the vid, the platform under the Palms logo… Just breath taking… That’s America showing the world that they can out party us any day…

Been slacking on the writing lately. Just getting back into routines again after the summer I guess.
I’ve noticed that the less I post of my progress in various projects, the quicker I actually forget what I’ve done the last couple weeks… Sadly I can’t post all my progress just yet due to whizpah’s release date coming up soon, and most of the projects are left unfinished for those final few touches before launch. If you plan to work on any projects in the future, try keeping a blog on it. It helps me more than I imagined.

Anyways, I’m proud to show some results from a phenerics (website not updated for a while) sponsored project in London. A couple months back I hooked up with Joe Danvers McCabe through my friend Dan. I saw his work on deviantart and was blown away. He’s a very young and talented photographer that has an amazing eye for atmosphere and color balance. His portfolio instantly inspired me to work together with him on a whizpah project. I figured since I have a budget for whizpah promotion and Joe was eager for professional experience, phenerics could sponsor a photo shoot in London for the promotion of the first whizpah clothing collection… Since we didn’t have any atmospheric pictures of a male model yet, I wanted something different than the already glamorous look we used for the females. I was looking for something more rough and urban for our male promotion. We decided on working with Joe’s friend Ben Browning to model for us. I sent Joe the clothing before my holidays and transferred the £200 to cover all fees for his trip to London and any model commission costs.

Even though I gave Joe a rough idea of what I was looking for, I still wasn’t sure how this project was going to turn out. It was a gamble (being the control freak that I am) , I was only involved in the concept, but it was also new waters for phenerics. The entire idea fit perfectly into our phenerics “Strategic orientation” philosophy. The shoot was done in Grays in Essex next to London. The grungy area is supposedly one of the roughest/most dangerous places in Britain. They had to be a crew of 6 people to safely move around with all the expensive equipment!

Anyways, enough chit chat, here are some of the pics:

After my holidays I announced September to be a party free month for me… But then found myself partying both weekdays and weekends anyway! One special event was the ***Vanity*** party held in Kaufleuten. I haven’t been to a previous Vanity party and seeing it was organized by Noskandi-Entertainment it looked really promising. Meeting Raphael, the owner of the event on Facebook, he hooked me up with a VIP table at the event.

The highlight for me was the music. With the growing trend in varying between Urban Hip Hop, R&B and Electro House music, at Vanity you even get them mixed together in the single tracks. All my respect goes to DJ Kofi. All will agree, he set the party alight. Be sure to check out his band website.

Noskandi also do a great job with their promotion and design. Studying their marketing strategy on the internet I noticed they use an element that Taza brought to my attention a couple weeks back. NE don’t only have photos, they have a professional video crew recording the event.
They then mix it and post it on the website. This idea achieves the “I’ve been here” effect. Today people attend prestige events mainly just to be a part of the hype. Now you have a video reference to the event. If somebody asks me what I did last week, I can just show them the awesome video, and already people will regret not attending the event and automatically will want to partake in the next. Just to say “Take a look, I was there and as you can see, it rocked!” Well looking at the Vanity video from the 14th of September, I am definetly attending the next one!

Next to that they have an awesome taste for music, atmosphere and design on their website. Their “corporate identity” is very slick, modern and elegant. My only critique would be the lack of their identity at the event itself. They have more style than any other labels in Zürich. They should flaunt it even more at their events and give even more identity relating to the label.

It’s also been a great 2 weeks for sport. The mighty Springboks won their first 2 matches with a stunning 59 – 7 vs Samoa and 36 – 0 vs England in the Rugby World Cup. I was in the Oliver Twist the most popular English pub in Zürich, proudly wearing my Springbok Jersey. There were more South African’s than English there! Guess England knew what they were in for Oh and check out this tackle by Schalk Burger that got him a 2 match ban. If you ask me, he went for the ball! Unfair decision!

Watching the English Premier League highlights I saw Arsenal’s Adebayor scoring surely one of the season’s most fantastic goals. Check that out:

Till next time.

I really dont have much to write about Amsterdam. Not even because “what happens in Amsterdam stays in Amsterdam”… rather that it was just a really relaxing but still very entertaining weekend. Spending time with some good friends in the Dam is something I could do at least once a year (well I have been for the last 3 years). Though we only visited the Heineken museum, we spent most of our time chilling in a coffee shop, playing poker.

These coffee shops are a must for great service and atmosphere:

There are a lot more I’d recommend, but I thought I’d keep it at a top 4.

Oh and be sure NOT to visit the BEN coffee shop. Really bad/rude service! Then again, it was the only dissapointment for the entire trip, so no problem!

Other than one night photo, I did’nt take any pictures. The pic is from the bicycle parking infront of the mainstation. It’s an amazing sight. Those are’nt even half of the cycles on the pic:

Pavel did make 2 videos though:

FEBO! DE LEKKERSTE!

Youtube description:
I had to listen to my friends criticise the FEBO vending machines all day long, so I decided to buy a burger for 2 Euros and chow down. It was actually pretty damn good!

EGG OR NO EGG?

Youtube description:
phen explains the rules of “Egg or No Egg” in Swiss German, in Amsterdam.

Credits go to some english alcoholic i met in paris… Cheers!

Now awaits a relaxing week at work, while listening to the great new albums that have just come out:

Common - Finding Forever
Kanye West - Graduation
Bushido - 7
Talib Kweli - Ear Drum
50 Cent - Curtis

Delish!

Thats it! Check in soon for a more interesting post, even while in my holidays, all projects were working full force!