- DEEJAYS AND PRODUCERS DUO -
Simone and Gabri are long term friends who share the same musical passions, so perhaps it was inevitable that they would eventually join forces and launch a project together. Producing under the artist names of Aki Bergen & Richter, this all Italian duo’s strengths lay embedded in their abilities to complement and inspire each other. 
Both artists have enjoyed exploring a wide variety of genres over the years and each stemmed their initial love of electronic music during the 90’s European techno movement.  Since then, they have spent time fine tuning their producing, composing and DJ skills. Aki and Richter’s common attraction to anything with a deep groove or melodic sound, has provided them with a foundation in which to streamline and empower their new partnership with. As individuals, they have both accumulated many years of experience in the music industry and possess unique qualities that signify their sound and individual flavour. Some of the artists they have worked alongside include, Dubfire, Noir, Miguel Migs, D.O.N.S and Shara Nelson from Massive Attack and they receive support from heavy weights such as Marco Carola, Ame, Richie Hawtin and Dixon among others. 
Aki and Richter’s momentum from here, is to forge a complete union of minds, one that will drive the duo to produce an entirely new sound and one that which draw upon both their individual assets. Both artists see this partnership as a culmination of their creative influences and a tribute to their matured passion for electronic music. Together they are driven and inspired to bring you their best sounds yet. The project aim is to reflect and convey aspects of themselves through their music, with the intent to imprint you with a lasting impression and a burning desire to hear more.


Worldwide Exclusive Management by SOUNDZ (soundzlimited@europe.com)

It's all about the Music.

Made in Naples, Italy, Music On proposes the creation of a cutting-edge club sound, along with unique events across the world.
After some amazing years at Minus, Marco Carola @marcocarola felt the need to expand his musical realm and create a home for up and coming, talented and inspired artists. Music On was born. Music On is a music label where the only requirement is good quality music, which is the standard for everything Marco Carola puts his stamps on.

demo@musicon.com

New Album - PHANTOMGRID
Linktree : https://tr.ee/otNIlLp_aU
Booking : audrey@wartiste.com / booking@joachimpastor.fr
Management : sylvain@kidding-aside.com

A key figure in the French melodic techno scene, Joachim Pastor began his career as part of the Hungry Music label alongside NTO and Worakls. He quickly earned recognition as a distinctive electronic music producer ; his sound is both orchestral and cinematic in its harmonies, sharp and precise in its melodies.
In 2020, he signed with the leading electronic label Armada Music and released his debut album Greater Message. He followed up the next year with multiple singles and remixes, including Season and its reinterpretations, and scored the documentary The Final Season, about world rally champion Sébastien Ogier. In 2023, he unveiled Adrenogate, a festival-ready four-track EP, followed by Blank Page, a more introspective piece.

In 2025, Joachim enters a new artistic chapter, diving into a digital quest shaped by artificial intelligence. His aim: to push its limits and fuse with it creatively ; not to replace emotion, but to enhance it. He unveils Phantomgrid in early 2025, followed by Take Away the Pain and Field of Snakes, which hint at a more ambitious project: a new album - PHANTOMGRID.

Joachim Pastor now reaches over 1 Million monthly listeners, performing on major stages worldwide including Dour, Tomorrowland, Paleo, Solidays, and Delta Festival

Booking
WW: ben@radiusartists.com
GSA: damian@book-kings.de

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


Vriendje van Ferry is de Amsterdamse aanvoerder van de Old Dutch Pancake House. Vrijwel altijd dicht in de buurt van elke gemeende glimlach en een bovenmeester in het beoefenen van spontane vrolijkheid neemt Vriendje je mee van disco naar nieuwe disco met een mespunt Italiaanse disco. Van verantwoorde houseplaten naar de guilty pleasures van je tante. Van het meest discutabele en fiere van wat de jaren 80 en 90 ons te bieden hebben naar de euforische parels uit een heel ander millenium. Na legendarische all-nighters bij Paardenkracht in Club Air, marathon sets op Bungalup en Amsterdam Open Air en actes de presence op o.a. Buiten Westen, Valtifest, Valhalla en in Paradiso, Chicago Social club en nog wat namethrowing material, kunnen alle DJ’s met trots zeggen dat ze collega’s van Vriendje van Ferry zijn. En zo is het maar net. Voor boekingen en dat soort dingen, mail mino@moovebookings.nl

mathew lee is following