One of the most charming DJs in the business. A musical ambassador and a veteran of acid house, a champion of techno, a dance music pioneer, label owner, King of Ibiza – you name it, Carl's been there and done it, never losing sight of his passions – playing music, breaking tunes.

Bookings
maria.mayasst@caa.com (Europe & ROW)
matthew.kingseyasst@caa.com (North & South America)

Label: leon@rumorsonthedancefloor.com

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://wizkhalifa.komi.io/

Taylor Gang. @taylorgang


In 2016, Heidi has announced the relaunch of her Jackathon Jams label. After a short hiatus, the first release is a 3-track collaborative EP from DJ T. Vs Emanuel Satie featuring two new productions ‘Break Loose’ and ‘Feeling You’ featuring Joe le Groove, and a remix of ‘Break Loose’ by Kill Frenzy. The EP will be released on 1 April and will be the first Jackathon Jams release distributed via a new deal with !K7. Further releases will be revealed in the spring.

Heidi has worked hard over the past decade to make her mark on the new house and techno music generation. You only have to visit her worldwide brand of Jackathon parties and or listen to her BBC Radio 1 show to experience her passion for music and fiery nature. 

“It’s the way you bring it. If I stood there staring into a laptop and not looking at the crowd once, I could play all the hits and it would sound like shit because I wasn’t interested in it,” Heidi explained to the Independent newspaper in 2011, “I came from the dancefloor, I love dancing, it’s disappointing when you leave without a strong memory from the night, I want to finish it with an explosion.”
 
Her Jackathon parties were inspired by her youthful endeavors into house and techno music. Heidi heard its calls across the water growing up in Windsor, Ontario Canada, just across the border from Detroit. Relocating to London in 2000, she picked up her craft and deep expertise behind the counter first at Koobla Records, and in 2003 Heidi was part of the team that opened up London’s foremost record shop, Phonica.

“I started in 2004, then it kicked off during the summer of 2006. That’s when Get Physical were at their peak and the M.A.N.D.Y guys and DJ.T took me under their wing.“ After a brief stint in Berlin, Heidi was invited in 2008 to do her own BBC Radio ‘In New DJs We Trust’ show on a six month contract. She remains there to this day, now hosting her own ‘Radio 1's Residency’ on Thursday nights. 

“I’m very persistant. When I heard ‘In New DJs We Trust’ was finishing I made a conscious decision to move back to London because I was like “I need to be involved, I need to be as in-their-face as possible and say ‘Look I’m here and I’m dedicated, I want do something’”

In 2009 she started the Jackathon events at various nightspots across the globe. Both platforms allow her to invite her peers and compadres such as Richie Hawtin, Soul Clap, Solomun, Maceo Plex, Nicolas Jaar and Derrick Carter to share stories and special musical moments with her. In 2011 a compilation album of the same name was released on her original home label, Get Physical, and a sublabel called Heidi presents Jackathon Jams was born from its success. The first EP features an all female cast including Maya Jane Coles, Miss Kitten and Tini, but the Jackathon is about energy and unleashing some of that magic created on the dancefloor.

Heidi spends her life immersed in music. She lives and breathes the touring lifestyle, whether its 25,000 person crowds in Latin America or festivals such as Exit ,Global Gathering, Detroit's Movement fest and the infamous cave of fabric in London or Japan’s Womb or holding her own at Jackathon residency strongholds in Ibiza, London, Berlin’s Watergate and Manchester she fits within any destination around the world. Never afraid to fight for what she wants, for Heidi it’s not about right place, right time. She has won through sheer determination and sharing the magic with those she loves at every step. 


“I made the leap of faith into choosing this as a career and putting every last ounce of energy I have into it. I could have flopped on my face but I stuck it out and proved myself to my peers. Every achievement was because I gave 110% of myself, treated everyone with genuine kindness, and sacrificed things in my life that people take for granted.”


Management: MK@threesixzero.com
Bookings NA: MKteam@WMEAgency.com
Bookings RoW: nick.matthews@teamwass.com

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