Habitat: Daniel Bortz (Fri 23/10)
Habitat are proud to present one of our favourite producers… Bavarian artist DANIEL BORTZ.
For the last 13 years Daniel has been forging his deep beats, grooves and tracks for the club world from his base of operations in Augsburg. And it’s precisely that club world that Bortz has been gracing with his releases for quite some time now, aiming right for its hypecraving g-spot. He got his training as a producer with the Munich label Pastamusik with whom he released his first recording in 2007. Since then, he’s been refining his sound between crate digging, house-nostalgia, digitally transferred dance music, sample insanity and a healthy dose of eclecticism.
Be it ’80s new wave, ’90s West Coast hip hop, disco or dance mania, Daniel Bortz brings things together that aren’t bound up with realness and schools: He fuses his own world of sound for today’s dance floor, and part of that is bootlegs – dangerously thin ice for a music producer’s reputation. “I get a kick out of hearing an R&B sample in a different guise, in converting my own tastes in music for the dance floor. Bootlegs in particular give me an opportunity to make some of my favourite songs danceable”. His notable re-working of James Blake’s Feist cover “Limit to Your Love” helped people forget the mud and rain of the Fusion Festival 2011; indeed, the Discogs database sample put him out a cool 10,000 euros, making the endeavour pricier than procuring even the rarest of old school tracks to come out of Chicago.
Daniel Bortz has an infallible knack for reducing things down to the nitty-gritty; to constantly limit elements to their bare minimum, even if nowadays ‘minimal’ is considered an absolute no-no. But none of that bothers the Augsburg musician much; he is just as aware of his special status in the close-knit Bavarian scene as he is of the sceptical gloom-and-doom prophecies of Berlin’s music buffs.
So the MPC guru continues his journey through his very own sound universe, releasing any material he feels is right, and, at the same time, revering his old heroes Matthew Herbert and Daniel Bell. These two old masters likewise shunned scenes and dogmas, an attitude that sets them apart from run-of-the mill hitmakers, who crank out the next short-lived club hype.
Supported by Flex, James A & Nuphoria
Door Sales Only
$20 before 12.30am