Anthony Parasole

For the past several years, Anthony Parasole has served as a resident DJ at the world’s most famous club, Berghain in Berlin, and traveled the planet as part of their Ostgut Booking roster. But the knowledge and technique he brings to production and DJing were honed in New York, his hometown and home base. In this excerpt from a recent interview with Parasole, he talks about the most important moment in his journey into electronic music.

In 2001, I started transitioning out of being a delinquent moron into real life. I had a real job and just started working. It was like only a month or two. I was working for the Supreme Court. Then someone got busted and I got taken in too.

What happened was there’s a section called pre-trial in the federal system. In that timeframe, I had a revelation. It’s a tough window for me to imagine. Prior, I stopped DJing for a little while because I was frustrated with the music and all that shit and maybe I was trying to find myself as a human. I was a complete mess. I sold my gear and everything. Now, in this time frame of pre-trial, I had an epiphany that when I come out of jail, I’m going to do music again full-time, so I went and bought Technics 1200s. Then I started buying records. I started rebuilding my record collection in that time frame. It took about a year.

Then I went into the system. I served my 15 months. Then I came out. I was like a man possessed trying to do music. I promised myself that when I came out that no matter what I do and whatever I get into, I would always do music. Meaning if I get a real job and I’m sitting in a cube or in an office, I’m still going to do music even if it’s just like doing little parties, neighborhood things.

I guess, to be honest, jail might have been the best thing that ever happened to me because if it didn’t happen, truth be told, I won’t be doing music right now. That’s a fact because I was totally done. I was working at the Supreme Court, and I was going to be like a freaking IT guy. Then I would just been some fat dude in a cube setting up wires and computers for the legal system of New York. To be honest, my arrest is the greatest thing that ever happened to me.