Official page for Eric Prydz, Pryda Recordings, and Mouseville Records.

Techno Doctor Nicolas Bougaïeff is a Berlin-based electronic producer and artist known for pushing the boundaries of sound, rhythm, and tempo. With a PhD in minimal techno, Bougaïeff bridges the worlds of rigorous theory and bold experimentation, merging academic precision with sonic innovation. 

His background — shaped by a multicultural upbringing and an academic career — deeply informs his approach to both music and life.
Born in Canada, Bougaïeff’s heritage spans Hungary, Poland, Russia, and France, and his early exposure to linguistics and diverse cultures shaped his worldview. “Learning a new language and integrating into new cultures felt normal to me,” he reflects, explaining his seamless transition to Berlin life in 2008, where he immersed himself in the city's techno scene.

For over a decade, Bougaïeff has explored the intersections between music, mathematics, and technology. His pioneering concepts, such as Pivot Mixing (a technique for tempo modulation in electronic music) and Prime Rhythms (polyrhythms based on prime number ratios), have challenged the traditional understandings of rhythm in electronic dance music. His work often incorporates bespoke tuning systems and experimental synthesis techniques, reflecting his deep engagement with modular hardware. This is further demonstrated in his collaborations with manufacturers like dadamachines and Five12.

As a performer, Bougaïeff has captivated audiences at iconic venues and festivals such as Berghain, fabric London, and MUTEK Montréal, blending intense club energy with avant-garde experimentation. His personal journey as an outsider—navigating Berlin’s techno scene as an immigrant—mirrors the integration of techniques typically foreign to dance music, resulting in a distinctive sound that challenges conventions. Beyond the dancefloor, his collaborations span visual artists, classical musicians, and technologists. Notably, Bougaïeff co-founded Liine, a music technology company with Richie Hawtin, which developed the Lemur app — famously used by astronaut Alexander Gerst on the International Space Station.

For Bougaïeff, music is both a technical craft and a vehicle for profound expression. His artistic journey spans diverse sonic landscapes, from early releases on labels like Trapez to his debut album The Upward Spiral (2020), which captured the industrial techno sound of the clubs he frequented. The album was followed by Higher Up The Spiral (2020), a remix compilation featuring Chris Liebing, Dusty Kid, and Introversion, highlighting his ever-evolving sound.

In his follow-up album Begin Within (2022), released on Mute, Bougaïeff ventured into new sonic territories, incorporating his voice as an instrument — a bold step in his ongoing exploration and redefinition of musical boundaries. In 2024, he released a series of EPs on NovaMute, further showcasing his signature approach to polytemporality by blending complex rhythms and tempos into a distinctive auditory experience.

"I see my music as an act of liberation," Bougaïeff states. "Liberation from within, from the boundaries of genre, and from constraints of thought. Problems are soluble. Everything will be okay."

This Never Happened is a record and event series created and curated by Lane 8.

Experience the moment. Don’t record it. This Never Happened.

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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