Get to know: Kaiserdisco

Building their reputation as ‘guru-like’ guiders of the groove, Frederic Berger and Patrick Buck remain long-running producers, remixers and DJ’s since launching their Kaiserdisco moniker and powerful, bass-heavy sound back in 2008.

Altering dancefloors with their breakthrough track ‘In No One’s Shadow’ on the My Best Friend imprint, the Hamburg duo soared into the electronic music realm with their mutual understanding of producing in the studio and a telepathic approach to DJing. Confirming their status as burgeoning, open-minded electronic artists following remixes of Booka Shade, Marc Romboy, Dualton, Nicole Moudaber and more, the sonic journey embarked by the pair reached dizzying heights before creating their own label, KD Music in 2011. Having already graced the back catalogues of Drumcode, Suara, Snatch and Get Physical, the doublet maintained a simple ethos for their own label: ‘we produce it, and if we like it, we release it’. Fifty releases later, the imprint is still going strong with the recent launch of its ‘new baby’ KD Raw.

Returning to EGG LDN after covering terrain from Tokoyo to Aberdeen this year, the pair will once again guide the Main Room into the murky underbelly of booming techno tones, a nod towards their most recent sound endeavour released on Tronic this year. Touching on topics from their studio dynamic to quitting law school, we caught up with Frederic and Patrick ahead of the show… 

The release of ‘Another Dimension’ on Tronic earlier this year was named after dwarf planets of the Kuiper Belt, in the outer solar system. Why did you choose this title? Are you both interested in space or perhaps life on other planets?

We like Star Wars and Star Trek, but that’s it more or less. We finally said goodbye to tech house or even deep house with this album, so for us, it felt a little bit like reaching a new or another dimension. Then we thought about different interpretations and meanings of another dimension and came up with this ‘outer space’ idea. We just did a short research about our solar system and found ‘Kuiper Belt’ with its dwarf planets. That’s the whole story about it. 

What’s the dynamic between you both in the studio from casual jamming to actually writing tracks and producing a full album?

Patrick: A typical studio situation of Kaiserdisco looks like me sitting in front of the computer and Frederic next to me. We have a little talk about what we want to produce next, how the song should sound and on which label we want to have it released. Then we start to work. Everything starts, as always, with the bass drum. After that, we create the complete groove. Usually, I offer ideas and work on the production while Frederic does the emails and label stuff, while always having an ear on the music and putting in his veto if he does not like what I am doing or dropping in ideas if it comes to a lack of creativity on my side. As we are always together in the studio, we can definitely say that all tracks we've produced so far are real Kaiserdisco babies because, in every single track, there is a lot of energy, ideas and passion from both of us.

Your own imprint KD Music has previously celebrated over 50 releases, what’s the ‘new baby’ KD Raw all about? How is different to your original label?

KD RAW stands more for our passion for real techno. Rougher and tougher with a RAWer touch while KD Music keeps its focus on more groovy techno with a touch of tech house.

What’s been a standout moment from 2017 for you both?

That’s hard to name just one. As a DJ you are travelling a lot and so many things are happening during one year. The year started quite nice as we were playing at the BPM festival in Mexico for the first time. As most of you probably know the festival ended with a shootout and sadly some people came to death. We had already been on the plane on our way back home, so we just heard about this tragic occurrence through the media when we safely arrived in Hamburg. So the whole journey will always have a strange and negative connotation for us. Much more positive of course was the release of our current album and to see it climbing up to position number one on the Beatport Album Chart!

Finally, what do you think you’d be doing right now if you hadn’t followed the path of music?

Patrick: Maybe I would be a lawyer as I was a student of law after school. But to be honest I hated it from the very first moment and so I was more than lucky to quit studying already after one year because I had the chance to start my career as a music producer at that time.

Frederic: I would probably still work in a hotel at the reception or maybe as sales manager as I had to learn a real job after finishing school before my parents allowed me to live my dream.