All contact details and tour dates: www.eelkekleijn.nl

The DJ formerly known as Kremlin Disko,
But then Putin went fully dickmode.
#notmywar #standwithukraine🇺🇦

Listen to Melodica now: https://found.ee/EDancer-Melodica

Bookings: ed@arcade-talent.com 
Management: phil@onehouse.com

Platinum-selling recording artist, label boss, festival promoter, true innovator in the pantheon of popular music, cultural champion, cracking DJ: there’s a lot to be said about Kevin Saunderson.

His influence runs deep, through both adopted hometown of Detroit, and music culture as a whole: as one of the Belleville Three, the high school trio which also includes Juan Atkins and Derrick May, he irreparably changed the face of electronic music; with Inner City, he gave it some of its most memorable tunes. 

The genesis of today’s enormous techno scene can be retraced straight to Kevin, Derrick and Juan, as their formative experiments on rudimentary hardware sketched a blueprint for a genre that was yet to exist. By absorbing Kraftwerk, cutting-edge funk, local radio stalwart The Electrifying Mojo’s electicism, and all manner of new synthesiser and drum machine-led pop music, the Belleville Three broke new ground as musicians and DJs in the 80s. 

Saunderson’s comparatively late start as a producer – kicking off in ’87 under the moniker of Kreem, with E-Dancer and Reese two of the more well-known names to follow – inadvertently gifted him a headstart. With the eruption of house music a few hours down the I-94 in Chicago, Saunderson married Detroit’s raw sound to more tactile, pop-leaning sensibilities. Inner City was born, and global success followed.

Between “Big Fun”, “Good Life”, debut album Paradise and a number of follow-up singles, Inner City (Saunderson and vocalist Paris Grey) amassed 12 UK top 40 hits and over six million records sold worldwide during their peak. A dancefloor-dominating remix by Luciano in 2008, and a globetrotting reunion tour in 2012, underscores the longevity of Inner City’s classic sound. 

His nickname of ‘The Elevator’ is apt: for his role in transporting Detroit’s new sound to a wider audience; as anyone who has seen him perform live can attest, his high-energy, high-spirit and high-impact DJ sets; and for spending the past 35 years of his life progressing the culture he helped create. 

Operating in tandem to his golden run as a producer in the late 80s and early 90s, Saunderson’s own KMS record label – a remarkable 30 years strong in 2017 – has chronicled the early footsteps of R-Tyme, Blake Baxter, MK, Chez Damier, Derrick Carter, Bicep and even Saunderson’s son and regular DJ partner Dantiez more recently. 

A special 12” series in 2008 called History Elevate, released in tandem with fellow polymath Carl Craig’s Planet E label, brought contemporary names like Mathew Jonson, Simian Mobile Disco and Loco Dice into the fold, proving his nous for fostering relationships with each new wave to come through techno’s gates. 25th anniversary compilations and numerous reissues have followed suit. 

Saunderson has a behind-the-scenes role to play, too: he is intertwined with the history of Detroit’s flagship Movement (formerly Detroit Electronic Music Festival / Fuse-In). Having produced the event in the mid-2000s, the last handful of years have seen repeated invites from Movement to display his ORIGINS showcase at the festival, bringing acts like Delano Smith, Phuture and DJ Minx under his curatorial umbrella. 

And of course, with a stacked international touring schedule over the decades, playing in nearly every country and at nearly every festival or club worth mention, he has not stopped pushing the feeling of techno on and on. 

The Groove That Won’t Stop, indeed.

Label owner : Disco Inferno

World Booking - Apelago :  
nina@apelago.com 

French Booking- RAW Agency : 
val@rawagency.org

Promos : ihatemodel@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


Photographer of stars to become and exploded

MANAGEMENT / GENERAL REQUESTS
silvi@chaosinorder.de

BOOKING REQUESTS 
amelielens@WMEAgency.com

BOOKING REQUESTS North/South America
ferry.rais@CAA.com

NEWS:
https://linktr.ee/amelie.lens

Amelie Lens has taken the techno scene to another level, with her unrelenting passion for the genre, with a strong message that she always was, and always will be a raver at heart.

Amelie‘s debut release in 2016 marked the beginning of her distinguished career. Since then, she has released music on many of the industry‘s leading labels and contributed to the prestigious Global Underground City mix series. Amelie is a regular headliner at major festivals such as Awakenings, Sonar, Timewarp, and Tomorrowland’s mainstage. Additionally, she performs at renowned club venues across the globe.

Fast forward to 2024 and Amelie is heading her labels Lenske and EXHALE Records, running her party series EXHALE, holds down an extensive touring schedule and hosts her own radio show. The show now streams online and broadcasts on 34 radio stations across the globe, reaching nearly 5 million listeners with every episode.

Amelie has been focused on her signature sound, emphasised by the use of her own vocals. She wants to capture audiences that may not always be there for techno but feel connected after discovering something new.

Wessel de Groot is following