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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


Psychedelic Trance With A Progressive Touch.

VINI VICI BIOGRAPHY 2016 

Vini Vici is the new project of Aviram Saharai & Matan Kadosh, both well-known and experienced electronic music producers for over a decade.
The concept of Vini Vici was formed by the boys with an intention to express their love for the old school sound, paired with their progressive ideas.
Iboga Records and FM Bookings, widely considered to be the biggest psytrance label and booking agency, were the first to see the potential of the project and invited them to be part of their well respected family, alongside names such as: Ace Ventura, Liquid Soul, Ticon, Captain Hook, Atmos, and the like.

After the huge success of their premier EP 'Divine Mode' and their follow-up ‘Back Underground’, ‘Expender’, ‘Anything & Everything’, and ‘Veni Vidi Vici’ tracks (all top sellers on Beatport and Iboga Records charts), Vini Vici continued to produce massive hits while touring the world nonstop - Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Switzerland, Finland, France, India, Denmark, Germany, United State, Italy, Portugal, Austria, Australia, Serbia, Netherland, Scotland, United Kingdom, Ireland, Israel…..
It's no surprise Beatport positioned them at No.3 on the Top Artist list of 2014.
2015 was a huge step forward for the boys with the release of their debut album ‘Vini Vici - Future Classics’. They hit the Beatport Main Chart at No.2 (Psytrance at No.1) - a position that very few psytrance artists have managed to stand at before, followed by Psyshop No.1 and TrackItDown No.1 spots, while the legendary Infected Mushroom named them “the best upcoming psytrance artists at the moment”. The explosion continued when trance king Armin Van Buuren edited their already classic tune ‘The Tribe’, and featured them on his legendary ‘ASOT’ radio show over and over again.

Finishing 2015 with a bang, the boys were ranked by Beatport as No.1 on the PsyTrance Artist chart and they also landed the Best Selling Track of 2015. They continued to make history early in 2016 with their Vini Vici Remix of ‘Hilight Tribe - Free Tibet’ - the track gained over 15,000,000 views on YouTube and 5,000,000 plays on Soundcloud, while also hitting the No.2 spot on Beatport’s Main chart, and becoming the first psytrance track ever to have entered the Beatport Main Top 10.

After such an outstanding beginning to 2016, it’s no surprise that the rest of their year continued to bring this elevated level and even after many successful years before became their best year by far. Some even call it the ‘The Vini Vici Year’ - with over 220 shows in some of the most prestigious electronic music events around the globe (A State Of Trance Festival NL, Tomorrowland BE, Boom Festival PT, Electric Daisy Carnival in U.S.A, Ultra BR, Dreamstate U.S.A, Transmission CZ, Experience BR, Vuuv DE, Sunburn GOA, Luminosity NL, Earthcore AU, Unity IL just to name a few…).

Keeping their No.1 spot on Beatport’s Psytrance Artist list and Best Selling Track for the second year in a row went on to lead a new generation of psytrance fans and producers to their style. Just before ending off 2016 came the jewel in the crown; a collaboration with no other than one of the solid founders of modern electronic music - Armin Van Buuren, featuring french band Hilight Tribe in their creation ‘Great Spirit’. This massive collaboration took over the Beatport Main Chart immediately and gained over 1,000,000 views on YouTube in just 2 weeks, taking them one step closer to their life goal of spreading psytrance culture and energy in the world.

Armin van Buuren: “I’ve wanted to work with Vini Vici ever since they embarked on the music scene. Few acts have such a well-defined signature sound”

Wondering what the buzz is all about? It's time to tune in and find out.

A musical vision attempting to encapsulate the power & beauty of the Cosmos within the confines of techno music. This is Cosmic Techno. This is Pleasurekraft.

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