OUT NOW
Alan Fitzpatrick - Don't Stop [APX031]
orcd.co/apx031

Tour Dates & Music: https://alanfitzpatrick.komi.io

Labels
@wearethebraveofficial
@apexfaction

Management - Electric Ibiza 
Neil Evans 
neil@electricibiza.com
Lisa Barraclough
lisa@electricibiza.com

WATB/Apex Label Manager
Graham Sahara
graham.sahara@electricibiza.com

Socials - Tom Aves
digital@avesie.com
 
Bookings - UK, Europe, Asia & ROW
NGE Bookings
will@nge-booking.com

Bookings - North & South America
Emma Hoser
Liaison Artists
emma@liaisonartists.com

A man who needs little introduction, Southampton born techno legend Alan Fitzpatrick has spent the last decade carving out his musical niche and holding rank in the upper echelons of the underground electronic world. Few artists can claim to have headlined Berghain and also had a hit on daytime BBC Radio 1, but then there aren’t many artists like Alan Fitzpatrick. 

One of the most popular techno DJs in the world, he has rubbed shoulders with the likes of Carl Cox and Adam Beyer for the best part of a decade, performing at the world’s biggest clubs and festivals. Known primarily for his raw hard-edged sound, Alan has developed into one of dance music’s most versatile producers, equally at home putting out techno bangers on Drumcode as he is making disco-infused house anthems, or experimental electronica under his 3STRANGE alias, not to mention his impressive range of collaborations (including CamelPhat, Skream, Sasha, Rebūke and Jamie Jones). 

The We Are The Brave and Apex Faction label don adopts a no nonsense approach to A&R and in 5 short years Alan has welcomed some of Techno’s finest producers to his fold. The Englishman champions the musical output of both established artists and breakthrough alike, accumulating over 50 million Spotify Streams on We Are The Brave records since its inception in 2016. Fast-forward to 2021 and the southern powerhouse shows no sign of slowing down, his passion for music permeating all aspects of his career. The WATB frontman is renowned for curating an evening of exceptional magnitude, having already showcased his roster’s talent at The Warehouse Project, Shine Belfast, SWG3 Glasgow and the infamous Fabric nightclub in London.

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


Where the emotive storytelling vocals and melodies of indie music meet the hypnotising characteristics of deep electronica.

Performed for you online, and at festivals and other events in Amsterdam.

Connecting club culture to the wider world, on screen and irl through parties, film and video.

Not many artists are lucky enough to release a track that defies genre classification and reaches into mainstream culture, with people enthusiastically embracing its melody and adopting it as if it were a football anthem.
His track “Rave” has become an instant classic, a timeless piece of music gaining more than 100 million streams (becoming the most clicked Techno track ever).
Since 1996, a landmark year for him thanks to the worldwide success of his track “Zoe” produced as Paganini Traxx, Sam Paganini’s stylistic experimentations have gone from strength to strength, leading him to collaborate and release his music on several record labels like Plus8, Cocoon Recordings and Drumcode, reaching the highest spots on Beatport’s Techno Chart several times. His unique musical journey has achieved great success both on the underground circuit as well as on the mainstream channels.
In 2016 Sam founded his own record label JAM as a new platform to play out his vision of techno music. At first an outlet for his own productions releasing 3 albums and nowadays also a platform to discover new talented Artists.
Beside his studio work and production time, Sam’s DJ appearances are among the most requested by promoters worldwide: his sets are characterized by powerful grooves and have been described as “Sexy Groovy Dark Techno”, which speaks volumes, literally, on what to expect from his performances.
He has taken the stage at legendary clubs such as Berghain (Berlin), Output and Cielo (New York), Rex (Paris), Fabric (London), Crobar (Buenos Aires), Exchange (Los Angeles), Fuse (Bruxelles), Stereo (Montreal), Pacha (Barcelona), Fabrik (Madrid), Amnesia (Ibiza), Privilege (Ibiza) and Cocoricò (Riccione) just to name a few, and at Festivals like Awakenings (Netherlands), Nature One (Germany), Mayday (Germany), Tomorrowland (Belgium), Sziget (Hungary), Sonus (Pag Island), Time Warp (Germany), Ultra (USA). KAPPA Future Festival (Italy), Dour Festival (Belgium) and Monegros (Spain).

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SLAM! was born in 2005. Ever since that joyful moment it’s always been our goal to lead not to follow. This is exactly what SLAM! does with The Boom Room, 4 hours primetime Techno, Melodic, Afro and all other genres we like to call quality housemusic.

The Boom Room selects the finest new releases from the makes of, Joris Voorn, Eelke Klein, Adriatique, Robag Wruhme and Reinier Zonneveld just to name a few. Inviting musical pioneers and world class dj’s in our Boom Room is SLAM!'s saturdaynight business.

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