The path to becoming one of the most influential German techno labels was not a chosen one, but rather, was a result of an organic growth process. Heiko Laux never aimed for any of his success to come about. It just sort of happened.
Closing in on the better part of a decade of running his label, Kanzleramt, Laux has produced under a number of pseudonyms, such as Apathism, Total Planet Refreshment and Item One, where he aired up with Johannes Heil. Laux has had hundreds of releases and has appeared on almost just as many compilations, varying anywhere from Danny Howells’ 24:7 to Tresor Vol. 6.
It is no small feat that Laux rose to such notoriety after having hacked out a start for himself in the Bad Nauheim/Friedberg area of Germany. I should know. I grew up in the next town over.
It all began long before his famed Kanzleramt bar. “I had a mixer when I was 14 and I was the first person in the area to start overlaying songs and matching beats. This was completely unorthodox and unheard of at the time in Friedberg. Friends started offering cash for mixes of all the pop songs of the time and I caved once they started offering me 35 marks for a mix tape. I had to match the songs based on their beats per minute because my turntables didn’t even have pitch control!”
The Kanzleramt bar became an underground sleeper and people were travelling great distances to hear this techno coming out of Laux’s sets. Laux remembers: “We had just closed the bar a few days prior because we were running into so many problems with the town council, when a bus full of Dutch clubbers rolled up looking for Kanzleramt. Having driven all the way from Holland and finding out it was closed, they wreaked comlete havoc on the town.”
According to Laux, it was this bar that laid the foundation for the label. It was where he met Johannes Heil and Patrick Lindsey, who had some of the first releases on the label. “Everything was different back then. It was basically a bedroom label with friends helping out with whatever was needed. The move to Berlin was like an invisible chapter change. Berlin is the capital for everything music in Gemany and everyone passes through here, so I get to see a lot of friends on a consistent basis, while also being introduced to their friends. Also, it wasn’t until we moved to Berlin that I got in touch with Diego and Alexander Kowalski. Again, it was all just happening.”
In speaking with Laux, it has become apparent that he is very well set in postmodern ideas regarding the craft of DJing. “The basic necessity by the public for the DJ is diminishing because of the access to tracks via the internet. But the essence of DJing is therewith not under attack because it is still me DJing. The performance is still my performance. I’m the one taking my songs or tracks from other producers and piecing them together in a new context. My performance is unrepeatable, by myself or others.” That being said, Laux retains a heavy modernist aesthetic. “I don’t think laptop DJing makes for a good show, although there is nothing wrong with the medium. It’s just that I love touching the records. I’d rather flip through my box and feel the stickers or the cracked spine, than scroll down a list of song titles on a screen.”
Even within this modernist viewpoint, Laux has narrowed himself down to a specific purism for his sets. Where does one go with one’s DJing after one has done it all? One goes deeper. Laux has a disdain for samplers, saying that they make things too easy. Nor does he make use of effects, whether they be built into the mixer or external. Laux has taken his DJing so deep that he has learned to by-pass the mixer altogether. “I’ve figured out a way to get rid of the mixer and DJ with only Hi and Low Cut Filters.” If that’s not enough, Laux has been incorporating a third turntable in his sets over the last few years, keeping the three decks going non-stop, rather than using the third to enhance the foundational two, which would be the norm.
Laux has taken on a whole new perspective of the dance floor. “I want to feel the exact same thing as the audience. I want them to feel the same thing as me. When the record pops or I make a mistake, not only will I stress, but there seems to be a general feeling of unrest within the dancers as well. When I remedy the mistake, both I and the audience have this shared sense of relief. ‘Perfect’ sets are not necessarily good sets. One must play with a certain amount of risk.”
In 2003, Laux struck up a musical partnership with Teo Schulte, forming Offshore Funk. The self-titled album was released the same year and the follow-up is due early 2005. Laux describes the upcoming album as being the most musical piece he has ever created. “teo is a jazz musician and he’s playing sax into a synthesizer. Diego helped on a couple tracks. We’ve got beats coming from the 909 or sampled from kits or even from my mouth. We’re going for this whole nu-fusion techno thing. I call it tech-fusion. We’ve got light electro beats with orchestration. We’ve electrified Steely Dan!” From what I heard of the album over the phone, this doesn’t even begin to describe how jazz and techno can sound so natural together.
New Year’s Day sees Heiko Laux visiting Melbourne to play at ‘Sunshine People’, sharing the stage with artists such as Tiga, Miss Kittin, Oliver Lieb and Tom Middleton. Official release for Offshore Funk’s The Cliff is set for March 2005.
