Even as a 12-year-old, I was deeply fascinated by electronic music. At first, I secretly experimented with my older brother’s (one part of @microtrauma) DJ setup, completely captivated by the beats and melodies. When I finally confessed my passion, he didn’t mind—instead, he introduced me to the art of DJing, showed me how to use the mixer, and shared essential tricks. That moment sparked a lifelong love for mixing music.

Over the years, I’ve refined my style, focusing on deep, flowing transitions and storytelling through sound. For me, DJing is more than just blending tracks—it’s about creating a journey, building an atmosphere, and evoking emotions through carefully curated sets. My passion lies in Deep and Progressive House, as these genres allow me to craft immersive and hypnotic experiences. I love creating long, seamless transitions that let the energy evolve naturally, keeping the flow alive.

While Deep and Progressive House are at the core of my sets, I also enjoy blending in elements from other styles, adding unexpected twists and fresh dynamics to the journey. On Twitch, I share this passion with a wider audience, exploring the depths of electronic music and creating unique, engaging musical experiences.

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


https://www.instagram.com/officialprunk

DJ & Producer, House 

- Bookings: nick@meanwhile.nl
- Management: jeroen@spektre.nl
- Released on: PIV, Defected, EWax, King Street Sounds, Nervous, Electronique, Midnight Love Club, Soweso, Nitegrooves, Toolroom, Moulton, Inner City, DHA, Soweso, Double Tree Records.

Prunk is a Dutch DJ/ producer and owner of PIV Records. PIV club nights are organised in venues as Chicago Social Club, Marktkantine and Claire. Prunk is a STRAF_WERK and DGTL regular.

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DJ/producer Prunk is working at his own pace, but this doesn’t mean he’s taking things slow. His label PIV, which he started in 2015, has been steadily releasing EP’s, like his own production ‘Sexy Brasil’ that was released on the imprint in the spring of 2016. Together with his sparring partner Chris Stussy, Prunk released the ‘Material’ EP on EWax in the winter of 2016 and the two also released ‘The Machine’ EP that came out on the notorious Nervous Records and EP’s on Moulton and Innercity Records. These EP’s caught the attention of vocalist Alex Mills, who you can hear on Miguel Campbell’s hit Something Special. Prunk and Mills hooked up in the studio with No Cure as a result. Other labels Prunk has released records on are: Electronique, City Soul and King Street.
Next to producing Prunk is a resident STRAF_WERK and he is a regular at DGTL and Jenja (Bali), has played in Monaco, Barcelona, Zürich, Lille, São Paulo, Ibiza and at Awakenings Festival. His warm and sexy, but always dancefloor orientated and uplifting sound that finds its influences in artists like Kerri Chandler, Djebali, Mark Farina and Mr Ks is definitely attracting attention from promoters.
After editions at Chicago Social Club and De Marktkantine Prunk’s PIV Label night has moved to Amsterdam’s freshest club Claire and already had an impressive first edition in April. Prunk will also host a PIV stage at The Ark, a cruise that will take-off from Barcelona sets sail to Ibiza. In 2018 you can see Prunk play at the following festivals: The Hole Festival Brazil,  Awakenings Festival, Welcome to the Future, Straf_werk Festival, , Amsterdam Open Air and Extrema Festival.

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