Booka Shade

Booka Shade
Booka Shade at Forbidden Fruit Festival in 2015
Background information
Origin	Frankfurt, Germany
Genres	House, tech house, minimal
Years active	2004–present
Labels	Get Physical Records (2002-present)
Website	www.BookaShade.com
Members	Walter Merziger Arno Kammermeier

Booka Shade is a German house duo. It is made up of Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier, described as veterans of the Frankfurt electronic music scene. They have released 5 studio albums including Memento (2004) Movements (2006), The Sun & The Neon Light (2008), More! (2010) and Eve (2013) and a mix album for DJ Kicks. Their family members include Mark Tyley and Joe Dyakowski.

In the early 1990s, the duo made music under the name Planet Claire and released an album of the same name, produced by Peter Hayo. The duo have stated the name Planet Claire came from a B-52’s song of the same name.

In the late 1990s, the duo collaborated with DJ T and together with friends Patrick Bodmer and Philipp Jung aka M.A.N.D.Y. established the record label Get Physical. The Get Physical label grew rapidly and quickly became a respected name in electronic music. In 2005, Mixmag voted Get Physical as ‘label of the year’ after it became the best selling label on Beatport across all genres. Artists that released on Get Physical include Trentemoller, Chelonis R.Jones, Damian Lazarus, Modeselektor and Junior Boys amongst many others Booka Shade themselves started to release records on Get Physical Music from 2004.

In 2004 Booka Shade released the album Memento on Get Physical.

Their collaboration with M.A.N.D.Y. then followed, with their single "Body Language" breaking through to a global audience. The track became a club hit, the "Ibiza Track of the Season". and led to Get Physical being awarded ‘Label Of The Year” by DJ Magazine.Resident Advisor called the song Body Language "one of the biggest releases of the year.". Body Language has been used as a sample by will.i.am in the song Get Your Money from his album Songs About Girls. It also appears in the video game Forza Motorsport 2 for Xbox 360, as the M.A.N.D.Y. vs Booka Shade version. In 2016 Body Language got sampled again, this time in You Don't Know Me by Jax Jones featuring British singer Raye.