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📍 Hoboken, New Jersey
🎧 Get Down DJ Group
🔊 Resident DJ @ Wicked Wolf Hoboken
🍺 Friday Beers
🌐 https://djhova.com


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Edits Supported by: Mike Williams, Beatbreaker


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Booking North America:
Ferry Rais-S​haghag​hi | CAA
ferry.rais@caa.com

Booking Europe & UK:
Harald Wim | MFM Booking |
harald@mfm-booking.de

Booking Scandinavia:
Vegard Waske | UFA |
vegard@ufa.no

MANAGEMENT & OTHER INQUIRIES:
pio@panamaxmusic.com

https://www.facebook.com/lepmusicmaking

Diggin' the scene with a disco lean.

bookings & contact:
info@quinten909.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


Management:
yeoram@kungs-music.com
ludivine@kungs-music.com

Booking: 
ROW : joost@anna-agency.nl
America : phil.quist@caa.com / mclark@caa.com

PR:
vass@urbanrebelpr.com


Kungs (pronounced Koongs), aka Valentin Brunel, is a fresh-faced producer from the south of France. He started his musical career with a djembe gifted by his parents to him at the age of five. From these early days Valentin could spend entire afternoons listening to Rock’n’Roll classics with his father. From The Who to The Kooks with many in-between, this essential listening forged the first steps to Kungs inspiration as an artist. As a name that has already exploded across the dance pop spectrum and for a fresh, unique European talent that is only still 21, he possesses a musical gift that is only set to springboard to extortionate new heights.  
His unavoidable, global hit of a track ‘This Girl’ - a remake of a smooth, underground funk track from Australian trio Cookin’ On 3 Burners – took the soulful, high vocals of the original and injected a deep house, sunshine-filled vibe that rippled from Europe, to the US and beyond. Taking #1 accolades across an eye-popping 45 countries including his native France, and dozens of Top 10 placements across Austria, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland; Kungs’s success came in the blink of an eye, but make no mistake, he’s no one trick pony.
Pre- ‘This Girl’, Kungs clocked up recognition via his SoundCloud with streams in the tens of millions, mainstage behemoths in the dance music world including Axwell /\ Ingrosso and Lost Frequencies, tapping up his crisp sound for remix duties on some of their hottest hits. With the release of his debut artist album ‘Layers’ in 2016, shifting over ½ million copies and counting with a platinum status to boot, Kungs is already working on his next collection of stellar tracks with a new full-length in the planning. Whilst the first of his new singles will be ‘Be Right Here’, a collaboration with production/song writing duo Stargate, in time for early Summer 2018, following a zig-zag of studio sessions held in LA and Paris. 
Also winning awards that anyone decades into their career would be proud of, Kungs managed to claim with his uniqueness and talent a scoop for ‘Best Electro Album Of The Year’ at the Les Victoires de la musique - a French prize comparable to the Grammys - as well as NRJ Awards for ‘DJ of The Year’ and ‘Best French DJ’, beating David Guetta and DJ Snake to the accolade.
With a hugely impressive live show that has taken him to perform sets at the World’s greatest events and venues; Coachella, Tomorrowland, ULTRA Miami, EDC, Parookaville, Ministry Of Sound and Bootshaus representing just a needle in a haystack, Kung’s broad of spectrum of sound and universal appeal only keeps on multiplying exponentially. Working closely with prestigious British Fashion house Paul Smith at Paris Fashion Week appearing to guest on shows and beyond into styling ventures with the iconic brand, only further confirms his diversity as an artist that spans music-lovers, tend-forecasters, fashion-devotees and more across the broad culture paradigm, Kungs stands strong at the centre of this with a unique cocktail of sizzling hits and rare talent.

Discography → http://mome.lnk.to/discography

BOOKING:
☞ guillaume.benfeghoul[at]allofloride.eu

MANAGEMENT:
☞ thomas.pfaff[at]allofloride.eu

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