Advent – A coming, or an arrival, a coming into being or use. 

Quite an appropriate name for Cisco Ferreira, a man who has played a big part in the creation and development of Techno from the very beginning of this genre’s history. Indeed, his Techno CV is the stuff of legend. Cisco was producing Techno and performing live Techno shows years before the rest of the world had even heard of the genre. He released his first track in 1988, was a pioneer of the Live PA (or Live Public Address – performing Techno live in front of an audience using electronic music gear), and, if all that wasn’t enough, he even worked as the sound engineer on some of Derrick May’s, Adonis & Fingers Inc’s recording sessions! 

The list goes on, and so does Cisco. Unlike other Techno pioneers from the early years, Cisco continues to produce with as much passion and frequency as he did back in the day. His releases on Labels Like Tresor, Rotation, Electrix, Kanzleramt, Dj Gigolos, Pure Plastic, Synewave plus many more is just another example of his ongoing pursuit to keep making music and pushing Techno to new boundaries. 

Cisco was born to Portuguese parents on the island of Madeira (Portugal). His family moved to London (1975) when he was five years old, setting the stage for his musical career. While at Paddington College (1986) in West London, he studied sound engineering and secured a job after graduation as an assistant sound engineer at ZOLOU Then later WALL Studios.  

At this period is when he really started to learn about Sound & Production, his 1st main recording sessions as an engineer were rock & “Inde” based bands & the studio owners being in successful rock bands. Matt Dangerfield & John Payne “ASIA” this 1st step was a start in learning about balancing & mixing down the rock way, which had a lot of intense & Raw energy especially on drums & Guitars.. 

Other bands Cisco did sessions for: P.I.L. (John Lydon - sex pistols) – Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin) – That petrol emotion. Then Later Pop, Dance, Soul & reggae groups like: Wild Bunch (Nelly hopper & Massive Attack) – Marco Pirroni (Adam & the ants) - Maxi Priest – Sly Dunbar (Sly & Robbie) – Loose Ends – Cheryl Lynn… 

1987 Cisco began going to clubs and learning about this new thing called Acid House, which was spreading like crazy throughout London’s underground scene, culminating in the famous “Summer of Love” in 1988, the genre’s golden period. 

Around this time, a record label called, Jack Trax, “One of the 1st to release Acid House, House & techno in UK” moved in next door and began using the same studio for recording sessions, with Cisco as the engineer working with Fingers Inc, Adonis, Marshall Jefferson & Derrick May. Cisco released his first record in 1988 on Ferrari records (R&S records) Then later “Cisco Ferreira” EP on Fragile. 

His first big break came in 1994, when he and fellow Londonite Colin McBean (a.k.a. Mr. G) were brought on by Internal Records to help co-produce a group called Salt Tank. A record contract with Internal/FFRR soon followed, committing The Advent to 12 EP’s and 3 albums.

Today, The Advent goes on just as Cisco Ferreira. While he has had a long history with tons of accomplishments to hang his hat on, he continues to make history. The Advent is fulfilling Cisco’s vision as much as ever. He is busy touring as both a DJ and a live performer, producing for numerous labels, and running his own Techno imprint, Kombination Research. 

As Cisco moves forward, striving to fulfill the ambitious goals he has set one can look back at his storied past and see how he has come full circle… The Saga continues.

⭐️ VALHALLA FESTIVAL 2023 ⭐️

16 December 2023, RAI Amsterdam
"THE GREATEST PARTY ON EARTH"

Upcoming Events: https://www.awakenings.com

The Italian-German composer, DJ and founder of the record label 99CHANTS. He has been releasing music since 2010, but it took self- evaluation and a re-examination of his priorities for August to lean towards the future and follow his most experimental inclinations.
In 2023, his output is harder than ever to define, stretching across genres and disciplines to chafe the heart of the human experience.

𝗣𝗟𝗘𝗜𝗡𝗩𝗥𝗘𝗘𝗦 - 𝗠𝗘𝗟𝗢𝗗𝗜𝗘𝗦 𝗙𝗥𝗢𝗠 𝗔𝗠𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗗𝗔𝗠

https://www.instagram.com/nick.curly

www.nick-curly.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


funky high energy dance music 👻👻👻

email: caspii.dj@gmail.com

📍 San Francisco, California

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