For Dabruck & Klein, it really is “all about the music” and they’ve become synonyms for their crowd-pleasing DJ performances, which bring house, electro, techno and edgy trance within the one show. When ITM spoke to the pair, they had a bunch of gigs in their homeland of Germany to go before heading to Sydney to play at Freedom Festival at Luna Park, as well as select club gigs around the country. And they say they’ll be well primed to play some power-packed shows when they arrive, after such a solid round of hometown gigs.

“That’s quite usual for us. We didn’t have the opportunity to play that often in Germany in the last 12 months, so we played in 17 countries. We decided to do some more shows in our home country before we left to Australia. But generally that’s a pretty normal schedule”, says Frank AKA Klein. They’ve played everything from small clubs to large open-air festivals like over the past eight years of their career, and say they like it all. “At the smaller venues you have more contact to the crowd but of course it’s great to play at big shows.” Klein says the crowd listening to their music will be the ones who judge its merit, and if they like it then that’s sure to be the key to them reaching the larger audiences in the future. And they’ve received a pretty good response from Australian crowds in particular on their previous visits.

“In our opinion Australia has a great festival scene, and we love playing the big shows there. The house scene in Australia is the best in the world at the moment, and you can see lots of commonalities to Europe if you look back in time. In Germany the people are oversaturated, because the scene has existed here now for more than 20 years and it’s hard to get the people to festivals. Only the best organized brands like Mayday, Nature One or Sun, Moon, Stars have survived. We expect the same will happen to Australia someday, but not in near future,” Stefan AKA Dabruck told ITM.

Over the years Dabruck & Klein have remixed an impressive list of high profile artists, and their willingness to work with so many over an extended period of time has become an impressive characteristic of their label We Play Records, and Frank reflects on some of the most memorable ones. “It has always been great to remix tracks for friends like Axwell, Tocadisco etc., but of course it was a great honor for us to remix Public Enemy and Moby too, as both artists we’ve enjoyed since we were teens,” says Stefan. It’s difficult to predict what future collaborations are in store for the guys, but Dabruck likes the idea of maybe working with producer extraordinaire Stewart Price, or even Madonna! When posed the question as to whether they would be willing to do some remix work with Michael Jackson if they were given the opportunity in the afterlife, I received a passionate response. “We hope he is in heaven, but to all the producers responsible for the 1900 terrible bootlegs that have been sent over to us in the last few months, they should go to hell,” said Stefan. “It seems like some guys do it as their main job now!”

Their track from last year Cars, a fresh take on the Gary Numan classic, has developed into quite an anthem, and in more recent times Open Up Your Arms and its various remixes have reached the same status. However, the guys don’t really single any of their work out. “We’re proud of most of our tracks, but especially the new one with Michael Feiner called The Feeling we like that the most. There is no special reason for that, but it’s a great chance to do some promotion here”, laughed Dabruck.

While here to perform their upcoming shows in the country, the duo intend to spend sometime in sunny Queensland as a well-earned chance for them both to refuel. “This time we will have some days off which we are going to spend with the Stafford Brothers at the Gold Coast”, said Klein. On the topic of Queensland’s favourite sons, Dabruck & Klein collaborated with the Stafford Brothers recently on Open Up Your Arms, bringing an inspirational mix of techno and trance, and it seems this approach is an intuitional part of what the guys do. Open Up Your Arms is a serious departure from the duo’s earlier work, and Stefan says that we are to expect more variety in the future.

Versatility is the key for Dabruck & Klein. “We’re open minded, so everything is possible as long as it is music for the feet, not for the head,” says Stefan. “We don’t want to do only electro house or trance or house. You can hear that in our sets as well, we play what we like, no matter if it’s techno, house or whatever; and that’s the same with our productions”, he said.

Dabruck & Klein tour dates:

Sat 31st Oct – HQ, Adelaide
Sat 7th Nov – Freedom Festival, Sydney
Fri 13th Nov – The Met, Brisbane