I am neither afraid of showing my emotions nor to include them in my music - Stimming

Few people bring a truly original sound to house music. At a relatively young age, Hamburgs Martin Stimming did just that, demonstrating a sophisticated yet accessible sound that is beyond his years.

Two years after hooking up with Solomuns Diynamic Music, his 2008 breakthrough hit Una Pena made the electronic world sit up and take notice, and before long acclaimed labels like Freerange, liebe*detail, Buzzin´ Fly, Green and Poker Flat were snapping up his work. 2009 saw him release his immaculate debut album Reflections to great acclaim, cementing his reputation as one of the most exciting new producers of his generation. 

His second album, Liquorice, eschews the normal kick-clap/snare template by and large to explore more interesting and progressive territories, but always with that trademark magpie-like sense of texture, emotion and discovery. 

His productions are filled with a multitude of his own unique, charismatic field recordings, and he never uses the same sample more than once. 

2010 saw him pick up an award for Best Newcomer at the Ibiza DJ Awards, following on from his live show (Stimming does not DJ) stunning the crowds at the islands legendary Pacha, and the finest danceries around the world Πfrom Berlins Panoramabar to Sao Paulo´s D-Edge, Brussels Fuse, London´s fabric and Paris Rex, and plenty more beyond. 

Remixes for the likes of Sascha Funke, Claude VonStroke, Deadmau5, Stephan Bodzin and Tom Novy to name but a few have further spread his influence amongst the discerning house and tech community, and cemented his reputation as one of the scene´s most exceptional producers.

Clearly, Martin Stimming is a precious talent indeed. But then again, not everyone loves liquorice...

Lulu Rouge are finally back with an amazing new album. The Danish duo has spend the last 4 years in the studio, perfecting the songs and tracks for the forthcomming album "The song is in the drum". You will soon discover that Lulu Rouge has been busy working on a bigger and even more heart and soul penetrating sound than last time you heard them. This time featuring much more vocals next to their trademark dark dubs and strong instrumentals. It all begins with the first single "Sign me out" feat Fanney Osk, the strong young icelandic talent who has been doing tracks for Lulu Rouge since the very beginning. You will be swept back into a familiar, yet all new Lulu Rouge sound that, effortlessly as always, delivers world class electronica and dub techno swept in melancholy and presented in georgous multi-layered productions. Dedicated fans will feel at home right away and new ones will undoubtedly feel the same quickly. Welcome to the next episode of Lulu Rouge. 

LULU ROUGE "SIGN ME OUT" feat. Fanney Osk is available from March 4th in Denmark. Available in the rest of world from April 2013.

https://play.spotify.com/artist/1iFQkdAkxRL9aeBe342DcY

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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