Seth Troxler is one of electronic music’s most instantly recognisable artists. He has carved out his own unique path as a cultural commentator, art curator, restaurateur and entrepreneur. Descended from a family of cowboys and Baptist preachers, Seth is part African-American, with a singular approach to viewing the world through the prism of contemporary music culture.

Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and raised in suburban Detroit, Seth learnt the art of DJing initially from his stepfather (then a college radio DJ) and later from working, at only 16, behind the counter in legendary Detroit record store ‘Melodies & Memories’. It wasn’t until Seth made the decision to explore new horizons in the mid-2000s, moving to Berlin fresh out of his teens (after debuting at Panorama Bar at just 18 years old), that his DJ career really took off.

Since the move from Detroit to Berlin, then settling in London for a number of years, and now with his time divided between Ibiza and Berlin (Round 2), Seth has established himself as one of the world biggest DJs (voted the world’s number one DJ in scene bible Resident Advisor and gracing the front cover of Mixmag three times). He’s equally at home playing to the smoke-filled dance floors of some of the world’s most discerning nightclubs, such as CircoLoco, fabric (London), Nordstern (Basel), The Lux (Lisbon) or Blitz (Munich), as he is headlining the world’s largest festivals, like Glastonbury, Movement, Roskilde or Sonar.

Right from the word go, Seth has been as passionate about food and contemporary art as he is about music, and these two interests have resonated at all points, and in parallel, to his music career. A multi-faceted modern artist: he has held residencies at talismanic music institutions, run numerous record labels, and pursued his own solo recording career (including the recent ‘Play In The Dark’ collaboration with the Martinez Brothers on Crosstown Rebels, and ‘Lumartes’ that kick started CircoLoco Recordings in Summer 2021). Furthermore Seth has found the time to launch the successful Smokey Tails’ restaurant in London, to create and host his own party during the Rio Carnival, and then to stop everything and to take the time out to climb Kilimanjaro for charity.

More recently Seth has focussed his creative energies on his ‘Lost Souls of Saturn’ www.lostsoulsofsaturn.com project, alongside Phil Moffa and further opaque participants, that sits firmly at the intersection between futuristic electronica, contemporary art and technology. In 2019 Lost Souls Of Saturn presented their audio/visual installation Transmission at the Saatchi Gallery in London, after its premiere during Art Basel in Switzerland, and collaborated with the Met in New York and the Fondation Beyeler in Basel in 2021. Lost Souls Of Saturn are currently recording their second album and conducting further experiments in augmented reality and virtual reality, which will be revealed soon.

Extremely well travelled, constantly searching and experiencing, Seth Troxler continues to follow his own unique path.

Bookings & MGMT: Joshua@lgrp.co

Support from Jamie Jones, Marco Carola, Rich NXT, Hot Since 82, De La Swing, Dennis Cruz, ALISHA, Max Dean, Mason Collective, Antss + More

Instagram to keep up to date - @Francis__uk and @frankshotones

Management/Booking : CP Management 
ciro@cpmbooking.it

PROMO:
erlybalance@gmail.com

No accurate depiction of electronic music culture would be complete without special mention of Deborah De Luca. Widely acknowledged as one of the most prominent flag-bearers for Techno globally and a regular fixture inside the world’s most distinguished DJ booths, Deborah has the unique ability to transfix crowds with her electrically charged, technically nuanced sets, fusing hard techno with minimal grooves and melodic soundscapes to absorbing effect. A pioneer in the use of social networks as a promotional tool, whilst somehow managing to retain a strong sense of discretion in her private life, Deborah is unrivalled in her determination and passion, earning every part of her current status as one of the most exciting talents to emerge from the international Techno scene over the past decade.
Born under the shade of the infamous Vele di Scampia – one of the toughest districts in Naples – the now-globally recognised DJ, producer and label head came from humble beginnings, forging her path to international success against unlikely odds. However this was to become her making. “You shouldn’t let anybody tell you what you can or can’t become”, she expounded in a rare interview, referencing her early livelihood as a nightclub dancer. “It’s true, in recent years I have gained popularity, but I am very grateful for the long journey it’s taken”. More than anything else, Deborah’s roots and her unwavering ethic are an integral part of the flourishing artist we see before us today.
Deborah spent the formative years of her musical career in Northern Italy, following a brief stint at fashion school in Modena. Cutting her teeth on the European club circuit, where she quickly realised music was her true calling, Deborah’s hard work and relentless determination eventually began to pay off and in 2013 she launched her very own imprint Sola_mente Records. Created as a platform by which to release her own music, free from creative pressure and external constraints, the label went from strength to strength and in November 2018, Deborah marked a decade-long career in the industry with the critically acclaimed release of her debut album ‘Ten’. A huge milestone for the Italian producer, ‘Ten’ represented an important rite of passage and a body of work that she would cherish indefinitely.

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


Now an established force in contemporary Techno, Mike Bierbach, better known under his stage name Rødhåd is someone who has seriously put in the work. Having cut his teeth DJing as a relatively unnoted (but well loved by those in the know) local in Berlin for 10 years, one could argue that by the time success knocked on his door, he was more than ready for playing the international stage. It was during these 10 years of obscurity when he refined his craft to become the singular DJ he is now. 

Launching his party-series-turned-label Dystopian in 2009 was what truly tipped the ball over for Rødhåd. In a time where the Berlin scene was heavily oversaturated by fluffy, miscellaneous dance music, he & his peers set out to form a platform for real techno. The reception to this was raucous. 

Although he has lauded productions and remixes to his name, DJing is his true forte. Before abandoning his day job as a draftsman in construction “The Red” (as some call him due to his gingered, bearded appearance) was known for playing very long sets in Berlin’s most notorious hideaways. 

With an album, several EPs & remixes for a multitude of different artists under his belt, Rødhåd the producer has received equal praise as Rødhåd the DJ. Dystopian has hosted most of his releases, but in 2018 he founded a new label WSNWG that serves as a home for collaborative productions, excavated in sessions at his East-Berlin studio with his peers such as Lucy, Alex.Do, & Antigone.

GM33 is following