Contributing Writer
Berlin powerhouse trio Komfortrauschen are one of the best live acts in the game and have honed their craft for years as musicians. We catch up with the band to discuss their iconic sound, the success of their debut album ‘K’ and the fresh upcoming remix package.
Hey guys and welcome to Music is 4 Lovers! Where are you speaking to us from today?
Hey, thanks for having us! We’re in Berlin right now and it’s our first weekend off after the summer festival season, so we’re looking forward to relaxing a bit 🙂
As the summer season now draws to a close, what were some of your highlights?
We’ve been playing a lot of festival shows and overall we have to say that we really had a great summer! One of the most beautiful shows was the opening of the Sound of the Forest Festival. The Stage was directly in front of a really beautiful lake and it was one of those perfect summer nights!
2022 has been a huge year for you especially with the release of your superb debut album ‘K’. What are you most proud of from this momentous release?
We’re really proud that we finally managed to produce a full LP. We’ve been wanting to do that for years, and it feels great to finally hold the Vinyl in our hands. When Sisyphos asked us whether we wanted to play our record release show at Hammahalle we were super happy. Celebrating the release of the album in one of our favourite clubs was really cool!
The album is set to be re-released in October as a remix package featuring top talents such as Oliver Deutschmann and Sylvie Maziarz. How does it feel to have such vital players in the Berlin techno scene remixing your tracks?
It’s awesome! We feel honoured the artists we asked said yes, and we’re really happy with what they came up with.
Undoubtedly you are known as one of the best live techno acts in the game. How did you discover the craft and how does it weave into your creative process?
First off: Thank you so much! Before we were into techno we’d been playing our instruments for many years already. We were into jazz, rock and hip hop but we didn’t have any drum computers or synths. That’s why we went for it and tried to play these grooves with a real drum set and tried to “re-synthesize” some of the sounds that are important for techno on the guitar and the bass. Trying to make a guitar sound like a 303 is quite challenging, and if you get there you can’t just play any acid riff because there are a lot of limits to what works and what just sounds glitchy and bad. But these limits can also be inspiring because they force you to think about the essence of an acid line for example.
As your sound is so crucial to your identity as a band, what is your most important piece of kit?
Wow, thats a difficult question! We need something like an electronic brain on stage, and for us this is the Electron Octatrack. It’s syncing all time based effects via MIDI and it’s also sending a click track to our in-ear monitors so that we stay perfectly in sync while performing. But without a kick drum there wouldn’t be any techno, right? So probably our most important piece of gear is the kick, hahah 🙂
What can we expect from Komfortrauschen in the near future?
We joined forces with Rocko Garoni and produced an EP which will be released in Winter. We also recorded a new KOVER which will be released soon. We went for some old school 90ies techno because that’s what we love most, and that’s where we draw our inspiration from at the moment. We can’t wait to share this!
What are your plans for ADE this year?
We want to get to know as many people as possible because during covid we sometimes felt really disconnected to the world (probably a lot of people felt that way too). So meeting musicians, promoters and bookers is what we’re looking for 🙂
Lastly, as Berliners what is your favourite venue in the techno capital?
We really love Sisyphos, just because it’s so fun to play there, The club has a really nice vibe.
But we also love Tresor, there’s no club with a bigger legacy, and without Tresor we probably wouldn’t know Jeff Mills, Claude Young jr., Robert Hood, K-Hand and all the other amazing artists from Detroit.
Komfortrauschen ‘K Remixes (incl. Matthias Vogt, Oliver Deutschmann, Sylvie Maziarz & Smilla Remixes)’ is out on 14th October on Springstoff.
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