Daniel Bortz

It was the mid-‘90s, the heyday of techno in Munich-Riem, home to the Optimal and other legendary clubs, when Daniel Bortz stepped into the never-ending, untiring loop of the stoically pumping bass drum. He was born in Berlin in 1981, but for the last 13 years 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, aiming right for its hypecraving g-spot. His sounds include crate digging, house-nostalgia, dancefloor-transfer, 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 street credibility: He fuses his own world of sound for today‘s dance floor, with his refined sense of harmony playing a major role: „I work a lot with tunings. It takes a lot of work to make a few harmonic elements fit perfectly together. I make sure the bass drum and percussion match the tonality of the samples and harmonise with one another“. He stands firmly rooted in two worlds, and is as aware of his special status in the close-knit Bavarian scene as he is of the sceptical gloomand- doom prophecies of Berlin’s music buffs: „While being a music producer in Augsburg has its challenges, I don‘t just want to play for those in the know. I like appealing to a mixed audience that doesn‘t mind if I play Whitney Houston or Phoenix now and then. Daniel does whatever he feels like, a simple and most respectable approach that sets from apart from run-of-the-mill hitmakers, who crank out the next short-lived club hype.