Electronic music lovers know Dimitri and Mike Thivaios as the monolithic brotherly duo "Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike". The brothers are superstars in the electronic music scene that earned the adoration of crowds around the globe. From becoming the first-ever duo to win the World #1 DJ's crown at the prestigious DJ Mag Top 100 DJs Poll in 2015 and 2019, the twosome has continued to stand firm and stay in the top 5 positions in the Poll since 2014.

Collecting more Gold and Platinum records than they can count, Dimitri and Mike have won the hearts of icons across genres collaborating with heavyweight hitters like David Guetta, Daddy Yankee, Natti Natasha, Gucci Mane, Snoop Dogg, Martin Garrix, Diplo, Swedish House Mafia, Steve Aoki, Armin Van Buuren, Afrojack, Ne-Yo, Wiz Khalifa and many more. An invite from Disney Records led the brothers to work with Hans Zimmer on a big room flavour of the film's lead score 'He's a Pirate' for the fifth instalment of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise Dead Men Tell No Tales. They also created the theme for Mortal Kombat 11, the latest instalment of the iconic video game series.

After a stellar rise in the scene for many years, their monumental single 'The Hum' starring Jean Claude Van Damme and Charlie Sheen in the music video scaled new heights. Netting the #1 spot in their native Belgium, the single went platinum, with the music video receiving over 200 million views online. The brothers repeated their magic touch on the Ne-Yo collaboration 'Higher Place', which spent ten weeks atop the Belgian singles chart and secured the #1 Billboard Dance Chart spot. They claimed the #1 spot again with the release of their Diplo collaboration 'Hey Baby' and then again when 'Selfish' featuring Era Istrefi secured the #1 position on the Billboard Dance Chart. Their summer 2017 single 'Complicated', with David Guetta and Kiiara, became one of the year's biggest hits with over 165 million streams on Spotify and 88 million YouTube views. The duo joined forces with W&W on 'Crowd Control', the sonic representation of their iconic dance move. Their involvement on the All-Star collaboration 'Instagram', which included David Guetta, Afro Bros, Daddy Yankee and Natti Natasha, gifted the scene with one of the biggest songs of the summer in 2019 and which currently sits at more than 280 million streams on Spotify. In 2020 they released this monster hit Do It! together with Kimberly Loaiza and Azteck. The single has received more than 235 million TikTok views and over 80 million total streams.

The launch of their yearly homecoming arena concert in 2013 was another example of their enduring appeal. Nearly a decade later and after 25 sold-out concerts, welcoming more than 500,000 fans, Dimitri and Mike had firmly brought the madness of the biggest annual arena show to Antwerp's Sportpaleis. However, it's their position as the ambassadors of the worldwide phenomenon Tomorrowland which has seen them grow to an unprecedented level of stature, playing their part in the incredible rise of the world-famous Belgian festival.

Dimitri and Mike are locking up more than 30 million fans on social media, combined with billions of music streams and video views. In the meantime, they tour the world, selling out stadiums and arenas with immersive live performances. From iconic clubs like Amnesia, Green Valley, Ministry of Sound and Ushuaïa Ibiza, where the duo holds a summer residency in partnership with Tomorrowland, to festival mainstages such as Airbeat One, Balaton Sound, Creamfields, EDC Las Vegas, Lollapalooza, Parookaville, Soundstorm, World Club Dome, Tomorrowland, Untold and many more.

With a globe-trotting tour schedule while running one of the most iconic record labels in the scene and producing some of the biggest electronic records of the past decade, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike have proved that together, they have what it takes to dominate the scene as they persistently strive to give their global fan base the best experience and memories feasible.

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For Rune Reilly Kölsch, Kompakt has become a great label to call home. In 2013 the German imprint celebrated 20 years of record releases at the cutting edge of electronic music, championed in June by one of the most genre re-defining albums and personal music projects for an era: Kölsch’s landmark long player, ‘1977’.

A melodic autobiography on black wax, the Kölsch project has seen 36/37-year-old Rune take stock of a diverse and successful production career and draw upon his own personal beginnings: a nostalgia for childhood, family, friends and the confusion of applying his split-cultural heritage to what it means to think of ‘home’. As Rune freely admits, “being half Irish, half German and living in Denmark – it was all one big messy period of my life.” 

Born to hippie parents in the freetown of Christiania (a commune-like autonomous borough of the Danish capital Copenhagen) his childhood was spent surrounded by creativity. His mother was an artist whose family had roots in German politics and his father a singer songwriter who travelled through Asia playing music in the early 70's. Kölsch, however, did miss out on building friendships and found solace in making up “this imaginary world that I would spend days in,” before the family moved to Germany – a period of memories, relations and characters from which ‘1977’ derives its titles.

For Rune, the tracks he began building from 2010 took in this personal reflection, his being “completely locked in to reminiscing about what shaped me as a kid and into the individual that I am now” – contemplating his unique past to form the brickwork of ‘1977’, one of the most future-facing techno albums of recent years.

Influenced by hip hop, pop and the incredible legacy of Jeff Mills and Derrick May, Rune started producing in 1995, embarking on a string of success stories. In 2003 he released the multi-million selling, saxophone-infused ‘Calabria’, that saw collaboration requests pouring in from artists as diverse as Nicki Minaj, Shakira and Flo Rida. He then set up Tattoorecs – releasing pioneering underground tracks with no titles, just tattoos for artwork, that garnered critical acclaim and support from minimal and techno trailblazers such as Sven Väth, Richie Hawtin, Magda, Tiefschwarz and Ricardo Villalobos.

This appreciation of the complete musical spectrum has gifted Rune with a devotion to groove and melodics and with it the dexterity to input real creative change to the genres he reveres, not least his beloved techno. “2010 was the year of the ketamine house wave, where the music was 118 bpm and everything was extremely boring”, reflects Rune. “I wanted some melodic techno, some energy back in this scene. People needed the energy to express themselves and go crazy for a bit.”

This notion faced opposition, even from within Rune’s close circles. But it was Kompakt founder Michael Mayer who had the insight to see what Kölsch was trying to achieve. Rune’s conviction that vibrations and melodics are the key to human response had tipped the balance, underlined by his experience as a hip hop DJ where he “needed something to catch me and drag me in. And that’s what techno should do!” Here too he drew on his love of Jeff Mills and Derrick May, recalling how “they used to make mistakes all the time. It would be a big mash of all kinds of stuff, but at least something was happening. That’s what I was missing and that’s what I’m trying to change with the Kölsch project.”

The result is ‘1977’, a personal collection of dancefloor destroyers that are continuing to send clubs and festivals across the globe into melodic supernova. Take this video of Kölsch’s set at Belgium’s I Love Techno festival, one of Rune’s 2013 highlights, where “people were doing sit downs, singing along to all the tracks”. Watch it. It puts the hairs up on the back of your neck. “The response was overwhelming,” said Rune in a recent interview with Mixmag (who named Kölsch as one of their ‘Stars Of 2013’), as “when you think about it, it was just a bunch of childhood memories with a kickdrum underneath.” 

Elsewhere he’s ripped up the airways with an acclaimed Essential Mix for Pete Tong on BBC Radio 1, delivered his incendiary soundscape to Singapore’s world-renowned ZoukOut Festival, boomed his live show through the heaving basement of London’s XOYO and played the hallowed Space Terrace – in his words “a boyhood dream since I started going to Ibiza in 1999. That was what I wanted from life!” So opening Amnesia in 2014 with Joris Voorn will be a bonus then...

While these are reasons enough to keep the beaming smile beneath Kölsch’s trademark black fedora, his humility remains just as striking. While tracks like ‘Goldfisch’ have taken pivotal positions in the set lists of world class DJs from across the dance music spectrum – traversing the underground with Seth Troxler, while simultaneously providing credible new euphoric highs for the likes of Axwell – Rune remains joyously down to earth. All despite producing, with ‘1977’, an album that has crossed as many cultural and musical boundaries as his own childhood past.

From the face-twisting melodic drive of ‘Opa’ and ‘Bappedekkel’, to the chord-surfing piano groove of ‘Der Alte’ and the euphoric crescendos of ‘Lorely’, ‘Oma’ and ‘All That Matters’ (all hits in different countries), the fact remains that whether in your living room, on the dancefloors of the world’s greatest parties, or simply in your headphones on your way home, Kölsch’s ‘1977’ has re-defined techno and become an achievement that speaks for itself. 

Words: Phil Dudman – Clubs & Live Music Editor, Mixmag


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