An emblematic artist of the Palestinian underground scene, SAMA’ is one of the first DJs and electronic music producers to emerge from the region. Her sound, an original punchy kind of techno, is dry and musical all at once and has quickly made its way across Europe and beyond.
 
SAMA, meaning ‘sky’ in Arabic, started mixing in 2006 in parties around Ramallah, Palestine. Several years later she started producing her own music and expanding her interest in synthesis in 2010, with a focus on techno, house, and other deeper sub-genres of electronic music.
 
The artist graduated from the United Kingdom with a BSc in Audio Engineering and Music Production, then moved to Cairo where she worked as a sound designer for film, became a music producer and then instructor. SAMA’ now runs her own Audio Engineering & Sound Design company working across films and documentaries in the Middle East. In 2017, she was selected as a Laureate by the French Institute, and during that time attended a residency at the International City of Arts in Paris. SAMA’ also runs a publishing company called Awyav, representing independent artists from the Arab world.
 
In late 2018, SAMA’s Boiler Room performance and the associated documentary about the scene in Palestine went viral and more and more people are seeing that music has no boundaries. SAMA’ was recently listed in SheSaid.So’s Alternative Power 100 List, and plays a high-profile set at Ibiza’s World Heritage Site of Dalt Vila for the International Music Summit in late May. She is currently working on a studio album.

💘💘💘

Contact
contact@swim.wtf

Bookings 💌
EU/UK - ollie.seaman@teamwass.com 
USA/SA - nsokolski@teamwass.com 
AU/ASIA - contact@swim.wtf

Pitch Music & Arts — four aural days of music and contemporary art, situated in the forever-still Grampian plains. Bringing together a community of like-minded people for an indelible weekend.

Hi 👋🏼

Curating @beautilism

Releases: TAU, Frau Blau, Buttress, Bordello A Parigi, Midnight Operators, Ombra International
Bookings: lg@novel.com.au
Contact: gummsound@gmail.com

Gumm’s steady rise and commitment to his craft have been evident since he first broke into the Australian music scene, and even more so as his sound reached a global audience. With releases on celebrated labels such as TAU, Frau Blau and Buttress, his productions have earned the attention of some of the world’s most respected selectors. Anyma featured Shuffer on his Beatport Artist of the Month chart, Joris Voorn included Where You At on his latest Essential Mix, and Dixon (we think) has been spinning multiple records. Add Vintage Culture, DJ Harvey, Agoria, Yet More, Ivory, Aera and Re.You to the list, and you get a picture of Gumm’s
broad yet refined appeal.

Back home, Gumm remains deeply connected to Australia’s scene, a key member of Melbourne’s boutique agency Novel, and the driving force behind his own event and mix series, Beautlism.

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.floatingpoints.co.uk/

 hello@floatingpoints.co.uk

MANAGEMENT / GENERAL REQUESTS
silvi@chaosinorder.de

BOOKING REQUESTS 
amelielens@WMEAgency.com

BOOKING REQUESTS North/South America
ferry.rais@CAA.com

NEWS:
https://linktr.ee/amelie.lens

Amelie Lens has taken the techno scene to another level, with her unrelenting passion for the genre, with a strong message that she always was, and always will be a raver at heart.

Amelie‘s debut release in 2016 marked the beginning of her distinguished career. Since then, she has released music on many of the industry‘s leading labels and contributed to the prestigious Global Underground City mix series. Amelie is a regular headliner at major festivals such as Awakenings, Sonar, Timewarp, and Tomorrowland’s mainstage. Additionally, she performs at renowned club venues across the globe.

Fast forward to 2024 and Amelie is heading her labels Lenske and EXHALE Records, running her party series EXHALE, holds down an extensive touring schedule and hosts her own radio show. The show now streams online and broadcasts on 34 radio stations across the globe, reaching nearly 5 million listeners with every episode.

Amelie has been focused on her signature sound, emphasised by the use of her own vocals. She wants to capture audiences that may not always be there for techno but feel connected after discovering something new.

grainneday is following