Bookings (WW): sari@neptunemusic.net
Bookings (NA/SA): natalie@auroratalent.agency
Promos: promos@mira-official.de

Upcoming Gigs: http://mira-official-tourdates.de/

Mira is that rare kind of DJ whose music can immediately transport you into her world - a midnight circus in Berlin, where time loses all definition and anything becomes possible. 

Born in East Germany to a renowned photographer and a classical musician, she began DJing in 1996 and quickly rose to prominence as part of the growing underground techno scene around Leipzig and Halle/Saale. Her dedication to her craft and natural talent swiftly paid off with a series of rapid successes, leading her to substantially shape the electronic music scene of Eastern Germany from that point on. 

In 2006, Mira moved to Berlin, Europe’s capital of electronic music, where she found her musical home at the legendary Bar25. Situated on the banks of the river Spree with parties that lasted into the middle of the week, Bar25 was the true embodiment of Berlin’s club scene in the 2000s. In the company of notable artists such as Nu, Acid Pauli, Feathered Sun and Christopher Schwarzwälder, a musical language was being formed that looked past the minimal trends of the time towards a more nuanced, organic musical language. 

It was from this here that Mira rose to fame throughout Europe and the world, as she suddenly became a defining representative of a distinctive sound that was going global. Deep and soulful whilst always maintaining a continuous, sensual groove, Mira’s sprawling, hypnotic sets became the soundtrack for many an endless night at Bar25, Kater Holzig and now, Kater Blau. 

The centrepiece of Mira’s residencies at these clubs has been her yearly birthday event ‘Katzen Tanzen auf’m Tisch’, which runs for three days straight every December. Curated by Mira from a selection of old friends and new faces, the series has hosted a multitude of  then-unknown artists who have now gone on to tour the globe. In 2020, Mira’s birthday series came in the form of a compilation for the first time, showcasing the spirit of her events over 43 original tracks. Also a year-round booker at Kater Blau and curator for the Kater-affiliated label Kiosk I.D., Mira’s fingerprints are all over the sound of the club.

In the studio, Mira often collaborates with her partner-in-crime Christopher Schwarzwälder, and the two of them have released a host of chart-topping singles. This partnership has since carried on to dancefloors globally, where their legendary back-to-back sets make for a perfect musical dialogue between the two artists, who share a deep understanding and love of sound.

Mira has been at the height of her game for the past twenty years, continuously shaping the sounds around her, and never ceasing to push inspiring new artists. As happy playing in a small underground club in East Germany in the 90s as she is playing to thousands of festival-goers at Burning Man - Mira is one of those artists of whom you can truly say that she’s doing it for the love of the music. 

Every time a new track by some undiscovered producer falls into her lap is a new moment to fall in love again with her craft, and spread that love with the tens of thousands who hear her play.

For booking please contact: sari@neptunemusic.net

If we think of those magical moments out on the dance floor, what likely comes to mind is that moment when the DJ and the crowd find each other in a rare kind of symbiotic balance of give and take. If you see this happening between two DJs it becomes obvious that two of a kind have found one another.
Those who love this kind of confluence will adore watching Mira and Chris Schwarzwalder doing
what they do best; playing back to back.
Having influenced the East‐German techno scene throughout the last twenty years, Mira established her musical home in Berlin’s legendary Bar25. There, she shaped her very own unique sound that can be considered as a story of these endless nights full of intensity.
Bar25 was also the place for her to meet DJ and producer Chris Schwarzwalder. Moving from his Hip Hop­‐roots towards electronic music, it was not by accident that Chris followed the beat of time to Berlin.
Anyone who has experienced their endless sets already understand why Berliners speak of the particular sound being created by both of them.
A soulful, mesmerizing sound that you will sense sinking under your skin and leaving you with a feeling of deep warm­‐heartedness.
What happens is the perfect chemistry of classic mixing skills along with ingenious live productions that really deserve to be called a moving experience.
All of their styles and sounds can, not only be discovered live behind the decks, but also on prosperous vinyl and digital releases.

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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