Kölsch Talks "F--king Crazy" Fest Crowds, Electric Zoo & More
The Danish-born producer Rune Reilly Kölsch has tried his hand at everything from pop to dancehall. But it’s the soft-edged, broadly melodic techno he makes under his surname for Berlin’s standard-bearing Kompakt label that has brought him the most success. On 2013’s 1977 LP (his birth year) and the new 1983 (the moment he got into electro, his earliest musical love), Kölsch has bridged the gap between the stadium-dance mainstream and more underground-leaning tastes with hands-in-air tracks that get love from everyone from Detroit purist Jimmy Edgar to gleeful hit-maker Chuckie.
Kölsch's set at Electric Zoo: Transformed is sure to be one of the weekend’s highlights. He spoke to Fuse about creating anthems, crossing over and the necessity of the human touch. —Michaelangelo Matos
How did you work out the material on 1983?
I'd been making demos on the road—in airplanes and such—that I'd been testing out in a live show. The beauty of a live show is that it's very exact, and a breeze to change. So I would constantly test out the arrangements. Obviously, if they keep working, I’d leave them in the live show, and if not I’d take them out again. There are at least seven or eight tracks I discarded because they didn't work. [Then] I sent them off have the strings re-created, or the piano re-played.
Isn’t it easier to just do it all yourself?
It is, but real instruments have a certain margin of error to them that has its own beauty. Repetition is only interesting if there is the human touch—it makes it much more relatable, somehow. For me it was important to respect techno as a musical genre, not only as a tool. When you DJ you need these tools because they're very important to the vibe of the whole thing. But it was important to make this as musical as possible.
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