tyle: “Halfway between techno and tech house.” Best known for: “Creating good music and mayhem.” Tune of 2012: “Kölsch’s ‘Opa’ on Kompakt.” Breakthrough DJ/ producer of 2012: “Mike Vale, Mladen Tomic and Siniša Tamamovic.”
SUMEK
UMEK is excited. He’s just finished working on a new compilation for Toolroom that will be out early next year. He’s got some hot new tunes from artists he’s excited about coming out on his 1605 Records label, and just yesterday he heard a batch of new tracks that he says he can’t wait to play on his weekly Behind The Iron Curtain radio show. “All of it — the label work, the radio work, the production and the DJing is equally exciting to me,” says the Slovenian DJ/ producer.
In the past 11 months Umek has done over 100 DJ gigs, covering every continent. Highlights for him, he says, were supporting Carl Cox for his Revolution
If you were a superhero, what would your superpower be? “I would be known as Mr Good- will and I’d spread positive vibes around the universe.” Should you play to the crowd or for yourself? “A combination of both.” What does EDM mean to you? “My life revolves around electronic music and it has for the past two decades.” Should celebrities be DJs? “Celebrities, reality show contestants and ex-porn starlets are generally not very good DJs, I think.” Have you ever been thrown off the decks? “No, never!” Are you a DJ if you don’t beat match? “Beat matching is just the start. DJing is much more than that.” Where’s the next dance music capital? “The whole Croatian coast and the islands will explode in the next couple of years.”
WOLFGANG GARTNER
Style: “House music.” Best known for: “Just saying ‘no’ to heart-hands.” Tune of 2012: “Ingrosso & Alesso ‘Calling’.” Breakthrough DJ/producer of 2012: “Popeska.”
WOLFGANG Gartner is five-years-old. Well, the moniker is, and after plenty of hard work for the man behind it, aka Joey Youngman, it’s finally paying off. No longer is he the new Deadmau5, but instead a hugely popular house artist in his own right. “This has definitely been the best year of my career,” states the man who was well established as himself, before switching styles and pseudonyms a few years ago. Indeed, 2012 has been as busy as ever for the Californian. “You know, the best shows I’ve done this year were not dance music-orientated. Shows like Sasquatch in Washington, Ottawa Blues fest, a jazz fest in Montreal — those were the three best crowds all
year… maybe because it’s people who don’t go to hear dance, but when they get exposed to it, it’s all new, so they love it.”
What people have also loved this year are more Wolfgang productions like ‘Flex’ and ‘There And Back’ on Ultra Records. So too did ‘Back Story’ get released, an anthology of past hits that was intended to tide fans over until the next full length proper. “The main change musically for me this year is that I’m not doing so many features — Will.i.am, Eve and people all sang on my last album,” says Wolfgang. “But now I’m doing more instrumentals. Mainly, they’re catered towards what’s going to work for me as a DJ in my sets.” KRISTAN J CARYL
If you were a superhero, what would your superpower be? “Time travel, so I could go into the future, listen to music, and come back and recreate it.” Should you play to the crowd or for yourself? “The crowd! Just don’t take gigs that would require you to play music you don’t like, and you can always play for the crowd. It’s as simple as that. “ What does EDM mean to you? “A synonym created in the last few years that I still can’t really get behind. I call it dance music.” Should celebrities be DJs? “I think we’ve reached the point where DJs are celebrities so that question is a bit of a catch 22.“ Have you ever been thrown off the decks? “Once, in Bulgaria, some club on the shore of the Black Sea around 2006, for not playing ‘commer- cial enough’.” Are you a DJ if you don’t beat match? “In 2012, yes.“ Where’s the next dance music capital? “Without bringing DJ fees and venture capitalist expenditures into account, Los Angeles. Everybody’s moving here from all over the world to make it their home base. And more broadly, America. The USA is definitely the dance music capital at the moment.”
residency at Space in Ibiza and playing his “most ever USA gigs” in the space of a year.
As one of Eastern Europe’s most famous dance music exports (he even had the President of his home country of Slovenia urging people to vote for him in a specially recorded video), Umek is as excited about what’s going on in that part of the world in terms of dance music as he is about his own career trajectory. “It’s all about music for me,” he says. “It’s what keeps me going.” CLAIRE HUGHES