Developer Biography

Developer is one of a few active DJ/Producers that emerged from the Los Angeles techno scene in the early 1990’s. After ending his residency as a DJ on radio station 88.7FM kspc in 1995, Developer “Adrian Sandoval” Became the Import & Export Manager of the first dedicated techno distribution company on the west coast ” Entity Music Distribution ” which distributed top labels such as Axis Records, Reload Belgium, Plus 8, as well as a wealth techno label’s from Detroit, Chicago and around the world.

Over the last 3 decades Developer has played alongside many of the elite techno talents from around the globe as well as taking part in laying a foundation in the LA techno culture by producing events and exposing various first time international talents throughout the mid 1990’s to late 2000’s. Developer gained much of his acclaim and extensive performance history from his strong marathon sets and quick programming skills as well as the ability of playing 50 tracks per hour on 3 turntables with effect processor and sampler.

Currently _ Developer continues to thrive as one of the most interesting techno mixmasters from the Americas as well as the birth of his label Moduarz which features productions and remixes from some of his early contemporaries in Los Angeles as well as a few established and emerging talents from around the world.

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Alexander Kowalski Biography

Alexander Kowalski is a German techno producer who elegantly fuses elements from classic Detroit and historical Berlin techno. His affection for sophisticated bass lines, deep beats and challenging arrangements breathes new life into techno.

He knows perfectly how to program his tracks to sound straight, deep, housy, dubby or funky – and this versatility is one of the reasons for his reputation with both ravers and underground-oriented techno nerds.

Alexander Kowalski has come a long way. A techno producer and live performer since 1997, he has racked up an impressive volume of work including four solo albums, countless singles and remixes. It all began in the early 90’s in Berlin as Kowalski caught wind of the first techno releases that found their way over from Detroit and New York. Soon he was producing his own material and making his debut live appearances at Berlin’s premier techno club Tresor. It was here that he got in touch with Pacou, resulting in his first releases on the Tresor label under the pseudonym DisX3. Around that time, he also teamed up with Stassy of Sender Berlin in a collaboration called Double X.

Not long after, his first full-length release “Echoes” appeared on Kanzleramt (2001). But his big breakthrough came with the release of his follow-up album “Progress” in 2002. In the same year he also scored a hit with “Hot Spot” featuring Raz Ohara. Evolving and honing his production skills with every release, Kowalski was soon getting enormous acclaim for his innovative sound, which combined technical prowess and precision with a strong sense of emotion. After his third album “Response” in 2003, he shifted his focus to performing live across the globe and providing remixes for such artists as Agoria, Dave Gahan, Funk D’Void, Sascha Funke and Paul Kalkbrenner.

In the meantime Kowalski decided to indulge his passion for vocals, which he began to use more and more in his music. His wistful, lyrical track “Lock Me Up” (with Turner) clearly showed the potential he had unlocked with this approach, and in 2006 he returned with the album “Changes” on the Different label, showcasing his new musical focus. Boldly crossing genres, he has produced songs featuring a wide range of vocalists including Khan (“House of Hell”), Fritz Kalkbrenner & Barca Baxant.

Kowalski’s action-packed live sets are always powerfully intense. Having played in cities all over the world, he is a pro performer behind his gear who knows how to rock out the dancefloor with bass-driven techno, deep harmonies and straight beats, pulling out all the stops with his club anthem “Speaker Attack”. His live skills as well as his exceptional discography have earned him a place as a favourite among critics who, over the years, have awarded him the titles of best producer, best live act and two-time nominee for the German dance award.

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Robert Hood Biography

Robert Hood (born 1965 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American electronic music producer and DJ. He is a founding member of group Underground Resistance as a ‘Minister of Information’ with Mad Mike Banks and Jeff Mills. He is often considered to be one of the founders of minimal techno.

Founding member of the legendary group Underground Resistance as a ‘Minister Of Information’ with ‘Mad’ Mike Banks & Jeff Mills, his seminal works on Jeff Mill’s Axis and his very own M-Plant imprint paved the way for a wave of stripped-down dancefloor minimalism that directed much of techno’s path throughout the late Nineties.
Robert Hood makes minimal Detroit techno with an emphasis on soul and experimentation over flash and popularity.

“Growing up in Detroit, I grew up with Motown in the house – a lot of Motown and Philadelphia soul, artists like Marvin Gaye of course and Curtis Mayfield. I remember Isaac Hayes, the soundtrack from ‘Shaft’ had come out. My father was a jazz musician; he played piano, trumpet and drums. My mother was in an R’n’B group.
We listened to a lot of Motown – in fact, my grandfather’s first cousin is Berry Gordy.

“I was influenced by my father – I wanted to play trumpet like he did.”

Robert’s father tragically died when he was just 6. The photo of Robert siting down holding a trumpet is his fathers.

“I had to beg my grandmother to let me borrow the trumpet to take a picture with it”

In the early 90’s he began to concentrate on his own production ‘Vision EP’, the ‘Riot EP’ and X-102 were big stepping-stones for him as they were the first releases he worked 100% on his own. The X-101 to X-102, were Waveform Transmission projects with Mills for Tresor. He slowly progressed to work more and more on his own, but collaberated on some of the first Axis releases with label owner Jeff Mills as H&M (Hood & Mills) with ‘Tranquilizer EP’ and ‘Drama’.

He soon decided it was time for him to start his own label to focus on what was in his soul musically. M-Plant started in ’94. I had developed this “grey area” sound – what I mean by that is that in Detroit, even when the sun is out, there’s something in the atmosphere. I don’t know if its pollution or whatever, but the sky has that grey haze over it. It’s got to be something from the industrial factories there. I’d never really heard a sound like that before and it came from a Roland Juno – it was a chord sound that really went along with my depiction of what Detroit was at that time. A lot of buildings were abandoned and there was a lot of lifelessness in the city, especially downtown. The M-Plant, in minimalism, kind of reflected that. I remember thinking of Detroit like a museum. You know, like a work of art standing still, suspended in time. There wasn’t a whole lot of activity going on.

Releasing singles such as “Internal Empire,”, “The Protein Valve” “Music Data,” and “Moveable Parts”, “The Pace”, more recently “Range”, “Alpha” and that isn’t even touching his other monikers Floorplan, Monobox, The Vision, etc.
“M-Plant is what I’ve always wanted to hear: the basic stripped down, raw sound. Just drums, basslines and funky grooves and only what’s essential. Only what is essential to make people move. I started to look at it as a science, the art of making people move their butts, speaking to their heart, mind and soul. “It’s a heart-felt rhythmic techno sound. M-Plant is just M. minimal. “

Although his desire to remain underground has been replaced by an urge to reach a wider audience, mainly via his housier, disco, gospel moniker Floorplan with his daughter Lyric Hood, Hood remains fiercely critical of artistic and economic movements destructive to inner-city communities and has combined his musical enterprises with outreach and social activist ends.

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DJ Stingray 313 Biography

Sherard Ingram is a menacing node in the vast tangle of electronic music’s history, present, and future. As DJ Stingray he propagates a seer-like, totalising concept of what it is to be engaged in thinking ahead by making people move. 

Permit yourself to zoom out of your singular reality enough such that all activity, all that is knowingly accumulated and all that is unnervingly accepted on this earth, is a spectrum of information. This includes the thermodynamics of our own biological structure. Now consider that music is a segment of this spectrum, and DJ Stingray’s nexus of electro and techno a further specialised section forged in bypassing normalised circuits to confront the future, to articulate abstract dynamics. It’s a slice of information, it is a bandwidth. Ingram’s crucial and distinctive function in this system is to decode his particular nexus as a speculative software for others, and to encode its conspicuous qualities as a feedback system with the rest of the spectrum. If it sounds intense, it’s because it is, and it’s still just about sweating it out at a club. 

A Detroit native, Ingram is an established figure in electro and techno from its earliest days. His Urban Tribe project is testament to this. First appearing on the genre-defining 1991 compilation ‘Equinox,’ Urban Tribe has come to call Anthony Shakir, Carl Craig, and Kenny Dixon Jr. members of the group. Though perhaps what has thus far come to be Ingram’s most finely calibrated and entirely natural manoeuvre was under the wing of Drexciya’s James Stinson. Performing with Drexciya’s live unit, Ingram took the ‘Drexciyan DJ Stingray’ identity and conjured a torrential storm from the DJ booth. His aqua-genetic code persists in the form of NRSB-11, his ongoing collaboration with the other half of Drexciya, Gerald Donald. 

The caustic, neuro-shock brand of apex electro that Ingram exhilaratingly pushes in every corner of the world isn’t contained by this past. There’s a motivating edge that’s founded in his formative years, but it’s one that only keeps the next page blank, with little clue of which way the swing will drill across the spectrum, gathering pace sufficient to redistribute definitions and test the limits of those being made to move. 

With his recent releases coming from an enviable smattering of crucial labels both genrecentric and experimental, Ingram is overhauling the very premise of the Detroit legacy he had a hand in writing, and on which others comfortably sit. With an oeuvre that touches base from Planet E to Presto!?, and from Mahogani Music to Reflex, Ingram’s justified attempts at exiting the gravitational pull of genre tropes anticipate a dynamic edge of what we know is an ever-shifting centre. 

By Patrick Quick

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Jeff Mills Biography

Jeff Mills is an American DJ, record producer, and composer who was born on 18 June 1963 in Detroit, Michigan, United States. He became known as The Wizard in the early to mid-1980s. He is the founder of Axis Records(1992)

A founding member of noted Motor City institution Underground Resistance, Mills helped build the artist roster and label ideology (as well as much of its back catalog) with partners “Mad” Mike Banks and Robert “Noise” Hood before moving to New York in 1992 to pursue more vigorously his solo and DJ career (with a resident spot at the legendary Limelight and a recording contract with the noted German label Tresor). (Although rumors of bad blood between the early UR crew have been denied by all involved, Mills’ decision to split was apparently total, with Banks all but repudiating his involvement with Mills and Mills distancing himself from the continuing political militancy of Banks and the UR organization.)

Mills’ UR-related releases (including “The Punisher” and “Seawolf”) are stripped-down and erratic, fusing elements of hardcore acid and industrial techno to the sparse Detroit aesthetic. Not surprisingly, his post-UR sound hasn’t eased a bit, although UR’s penchant for the four-track has been replaced by higher-quality production.

Prior to his involvement in UR, Mills was a DJ at Detroit public radio station WDET (he was also studying architecture at the time), spinning everything from Meat Beat Manifesto and Nine Inch Nails to Chicago house and underground Detroit techno. He began producing in the mid-’80s, working with Tony Srock on the project the Final Cut.

Mills met Banks through a local garage group Members of the House, who Banks was working with in the late ’80s. Mills remixed a track on a Members 12-inch, and his and Banks’ shared love for Chicago soul and the harder edge of Detroit techno blossomed into Underground Resistance as a combined business and creative enterprise. The pair, along with Robert Hood, recorded several EPs and singles together, including tracks such as “Waveform,” and “Sonic,” before Mills defected to New York in 1992 to pursue a residency at the Limelight club and a solo career recording for Tresor and his own label, Axis. Mills’ discography includes two full-length volumes of Waveform Transmissions for Tresor, a live album and rarities collection for the British label React, and the first album in a new contract with Sony Japan, as well as a handful of 12-inch EPs on Axis and several collaborations with Robert Hood on his M-Plant label. In 2000, Mills took more memorable action by scoring a new soundtrack for Fritz Lang’s 1926 film Metropolis, screened around the world at venues including the Museum of Music in Paris, London’s Royal Albert Hall, and the Vienna International Film Festival.

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Victor Santana Biography

Víctor Santana is one of the Spanish reference artists of today’s underground electronic culture. Dj, producer and a romantic of the analog equipment in the middle of the digital era, part of his success is the meticulous and artisan work with his label Chaval Records.

His versatility on stage turns his live shows into pure energy shows where his mastery of machines and his ability to connect with the dance floor always prevail.

As a DJ, that musical versatility has led him to host artists as diverse as Sven Väth, Laurent Garnier, Richie Hawtin, Underground Resistance, Oscar Mulero, Simian Mobile Disco, Carl Craig, Derrick May, Robert Hood, Ben Klock, Marcel Dettmann or Amelie Lens. In his LIVE (original format), with or without his Band of Live Musicians, he offers a 100% analog live, with clear influences from the Techno movement, and House from Detroit and Chicago.

Víctor has passed through the stages of the main clubs on the peninsula, parties in Ibiza such as Cocoon in Formentera or Privilege Ibiza; festivals like Mad Cool or A Summer Story; plus several world wide tours.
At the record level, he has published on labels such as EPM Music, Motech Records and Involve Records; He has made remixes for artists such as Orlando Voorn, Dj Skull or Hiroshi Watanabe; and it has been remixed by, among others, Ken Ishii, Eddie Fowlkes or Mark Flash (UR).

The authenticity of his “music made with soul” has led him to be multi-awarded at the electronic music awards in Spain.

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Fadi Mohem Biography

Raised in the outskirts of Berlin, Fadi Mohem developed a passion for electronic music in his youth. Exploring the city with a desire for graffiti and urban culture, he made his first steps as a DJ and producer in 2011. 

His studies in Sound Engineering and the subsequent work as a Mix & Recording Engineer granted him a set of technical skills that improved the sound of his own productions. Influenced by early Detroit Techno and Berlin Dub Techno, Drum & Bass and IDM, he likes to break the frame as a producer, DJ and live act. Having played in various clubs internationally the past decade, he keeps pushing himself as a DJ with informed selections and technical finesse as well as a live act with everchanging hardware only setups. 

His productions and sets are united by a constant lookout for groove, flow, reduction and repetition and follow the urge to surrender oneself solely to the music. With a quick workflow as a producer, he likes to play out new unreleased tracks in his DJ sets to establish a bridge between the dance floor and studio. Paired with quick and razor sharp multi deck mixing, his DJ sets keep building and building with a forward drive and the goal to create a unifying experience on the dance floor. In his hardware only live sets he creates a unique listening experience with tracks being made on the spot. Instead of following trends, Fadi Mohem always seeks to fulfill his own sound ideals and stay true to his musical vision. 

Now working at Berlin’s record institution Hard Wax, Fadi Mohem deepens his musical knowledge and versatility as a record collector and DJ. With releases on labels such as Klockworks, Seilscheibenpfeiler and Werk, he laid the foundation for his work and his reputation as a producer. Having drawn up plans for his next solo productions in 2022, Fadi Mohem has further paved the way forward for his musical vision.

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