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Liquid Bass

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Marco Bailey is somewhat considered an icon when it comes to techno and the dance music industry as a whole. It starts with a beat, and for Marco that as in the late 80’s. In 2014 he celebrated 25 years of Marco Bailey, a true achievement for someone who is an ambassador for the scene as well as an amazing DJ and producer. 

He grew up in Belgium, and it all started out when he went to a small local club in his nearby city. At this point, he knew little and didn't have any musical heroes, but soon released that he would rather be behind the decks than on the dance floor. 

His break came in 2000 with his first EP on Carl Cox’s Intec imprint with “Play It Back”. Over the next couple of years he worked on his own imprint, launching MB Elektronics, with the first release in 2002 with “Caprioska”. The releases came flowing over the next few years, which saw the release of his critically acclaimed “Rube Boy” album back in 2004, soon followed by “Dragon Man” LP on John Digweed’s Bedrock in 2011.

His most recent album was with 12 track “High Volume” released back in 2013 on MB Elektronics, dubbed by some techno aficionados as a masterpiece. It was at this time, he also released an up close and personal documentary “Marco Bailey”.

His Electronic Force radio show has been a huge success from the get-go, with almost 300 episodes to date, he has had every artist on board from Carl Cox, Alan Fitzpatrick, Umek, Joseph Capriati, Sam Paganini and Carlo Lio. It’s heard by millions of listeners in more than 50 countries.

Marco has been touring relentlessly throughout his career, he’s an artist who can say he has probably played at almost every club in the world, and been listed at the top of major festivals. He hasn't stopped, and this summer was no exception his MATERIA brand taking a new home at Vista Club, Ibiza. Every Sunday, he offered artists including Sam Paganini, Carlo Lio, Julian Jewell, and Paul Ritch for the closing on the 28th August all came out to party with Marco and the crowd.

You can expect to see the MATERIA brand reach far and wide this year, with parties in London, Vienna, Amsterdam and Tokyo planned this winter. Mid October will see the release of the MATERIA compilation mix, a collection of tracks selected personally by Marco, of both his own releases and all the artists which played at MATERIA in Ibiza this summer. 

2017 continues to be another landmark year for Marco, with his first MATERIA residency considered a huge success, the brand looks to move worldwide, becoming a high-profile label and radio show as well and continuing to grow. He is a true pioneer of Techno, and has no plans to put on the brakes anytime soon.

What is MATERIA? 

A party where the want, need & desire to feel the love and vibrations on the dance floor is understood. Where music lovers can digest the passion in the percussion, the energy of the crowd coming together, experience the sensation of letting go - elements that constitute the foundation for what some may never get to fully experience... a pure musical journey. Embark on a global movement, as Belgium's Marco Bailey sets the mood for one unforgettable evening. Welcome MATERIA - where techno is valued as a religion, the dance floor has no limits, the crowd is united and melted together by sound - where the rules require two things: listen and live.

Being one of the most in-demand Techno DJs of our times, Ben Klock needs little introduction. His name has been closely associated with Berlin’s legendary club Berghain since 2005. His monthly residency has formed the backdrop to his international success, providing an invaluable platform for his ability to create a room rather than just play to it.

Much of his early career was marked by marathon sets – a signature that played a considerable role in nurturing his skills and reputation – but even the more compressed sets he shares today evidence an intricate narrative and sense of flow that defines him as a DJ. It was these inherent abilities that led him to compile the fabric 66 compilation in 2012, before winning the BBC Radio 1’s Essential Mix of the Year award in 2015.

His releases on Ostgut Ton have become landmarks in the imprint’s history. 2009’s “Dawning”, the first of his collaborations with Marcel Dettmann kickstarted the label itself and remains a stand-out track in its discography. Another release of particular note is the Before One EP including “Subzero”, which many techno lovers still refer to as their gateway track into the whole genre itself. For many, however, it is his album One (2009) that best captures Klock’s talents as a producer. His skills as a remixer have also seen him rework tracks by a wide variety of artists, including Kerri Chandler, Depeche Mode, Robert Hood and Kenny Larkin.

Additionally, Klock curates with great passion his own label Klockworks, founded in 2006. With releases from DVS1, Stef Mendesidis, The Advent, Sterac, Etapp Kyle, Temudo and many more Klockworks became a synonym for unique, high quality Techno.

In 2017 Ben started his own event series PHOTON which is a unique concept show that blends light, architecture and music. Since then he toured PHOTON at special venues in major cities around the world such as Printworks (London), Gashouder (Amsterdam), Arca (Sao Paolo), to name a few. It quickly became a new standard for audio visual electronic music events. In 2023 the project returns after a pandemic induced break with a brand new visual and artistic concept.

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


Hot Since 82

Yokshire based DJ & Producer.

@KneeDeepInSound

Management: Jamesd@anglomanagement.co.uk
Bookings: SHogan@wmeentertainment.com
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mariesa@liaisonartists.com

Kathryn Wilson Radio/TV Presenter & Live Event host

Danielle McCaugherty is following