A star of the tech house underground from 2001, Hal the dj has delivered serious electronic funk to some of the World’s best clubs, beaches, bars and exclusive parties, building a reputation for rocking the dance floor and moving the soul.

As a producer he has released music on some of Europe’s most respected underground dance music labels including Get Physical, Soma & Carl Cox’s hugely revered Intec.

funk/soul/house/techno

𝘼𝘿𝙐𝙇𝙏 𝘾𝙊𝙉𝙏𝙀𝙈𝙋𝙊𝙍𝘼𝙍𝙔 - Feb 16, 2024. Pre-order now. ⁣ 
https://shop.chromeo.net/

𝗙𝗨𝗡𝗞 𝗬𝗢𝗨𝗥𝗦𝗘𝗟𝗙 Tour in North America. Get your tix.
https://chromeo.net/tour

Darper is a Hastings, UK-based Producer and DJ. A guitarist at heart, Darper spent
his formative days running his own label and producing electro. Darper’s sound is a melodic brand of organic electronica, one that sets foot into both the lighter and darker ends of electronic music. He has DJed from London to San Francisco and Berlin to Burning Man. He has his own Electric Fiction mix series and has released music on a number of imprints, including The Vinyl Factory, Anjunadeep, Culprit LA, Sound Avenue, Ton Töpferei, Balance Music, The Soundgarden, Earthly Delights, Seven Villas, Traum Schallplatten, Sag & Tre, and more, as well as featuring on releases alongside Brian Eno, Coldcut, Matthew Dear, Way Out West, Nick Warren, Lane 8, Yotto, and more. Beatport included his track ‘Midnight’ in their top 100 best organic house tracks of the year in 2023. With many upcoming releases, an album, and gigs in 2026, Darper is making an impact with his thoughtful approach to music.

【﻿ＦＩＮＡＬＬＹ　ＯＵＴ　ＥＰ　－　ｏｕｔ　ｎｏｗ】

+ * _ .  .  - .# +  " ? - . ´* ++

ORDER_MERCH!
store.thedigitalism.com

OFFICIAL BIO
Regarded upon his 2006 arrival as a promising beatmaker looming in the shadows of J Dilla, Madlib, waterfalls and Dabrye, Steven Ellison -- known as Flying Lotus -- nullified all comparisons only two years later with Los Angeles. On that album, his first of five for the Warp label, Ellison distilled a uniquely crisp, spasmodic, and heady sound with elements of hip-hop, avant-garde jazz, IDM, and dubstep. While the abovementioned producers fueled Ellison, he had also been excited as a youngster by the '90s West Coast rap classics that combined programming and live instrumentation. His sound continued to develop as he put his own twist on the approach, recording with a crop of jazz musicians including the indispensable likes of bassist Thundercat and strings master Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. This process began with the turbulent 2010 set Cosmogramma and peaked in terms of acclaim in 2014 with You're Dead!, which crashed the Top 20 of the Billboard 200 and spawned the Kendrick Lamar collaboration "Never Catch Me," a Grammy nominee for Best Dance Recording. Ellison devoted a few years to various forms of film work and the operation of his revered Brainfeeder label, and returned in 2019 with Flamagra, his second consecutive album to top Billboard's Dance/Electronic chart.

A bi-monthly mix series of Electronica, Organic House, and Melodic Techno brought to you by @Darpermusic and friends.

On Frisky Radio every 4th Monday of the month:
friskyradio.com/show/electric_fiction/

Promos / Submissions: 
electricfictionpromos (at) gmail.com

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


“Searing neo tear-out hazer ‘n’ phaser that could actually be played by anyone from any sub-genre at any time” 

K.E.S.- DJ Mag


“Enough to make any priest go bubbly!. Urgent, driving, layered, full of twists and turns. Sparkling!” 

Champagne Priest - Annie Nightingale


"A tidy little roller with a cool analogue bassline, crisp beats and some wicked bleeps and squeaks" 

Gutter Glamour - IDJ Magazine


“Becoming a very consistent purveyor of quality club bangers!” 

Voltana (TSD Remix) - Dylan Rhymes


"Very tasty EP!!" 9/10 

Far Too Loud


“Big sounds coming from The Sonic Deviant” 

Ben & Lex

Check out my new production project, @GasparFuego

Hello there ! this is the official breakbot soundcloud.

The Sonic Deviant is following