Estimulo - Reminisce - Aug 2007

Biography of Estimulo

Estimulo (real name Andreas Stolzenberg) started listening to music in the age of 4, when he recorded music from the radio (mostly RIAS Berlin, FM station of the US-Army in Berlin), cutting them, producing his own radio shows containing his favorite tunes and announcing them. In the year of 1978, the musical taste was still quite undefined and broad, but the music by black r&b/disco bands like 'Chic' and 'Kool and the Gang' drew his attention to them.

Later on, in 1983, he got presented his first vinyl 7' single by his grandmother. It was 'The Haunted House of Rock' by Whodini. Since then, Estimulo started to record everything from the radio which sounded electronic and groovy. A big influence was the NY and LA electro-funk as well as black music in general. But there was still no special radio show for this kind of music, so it took until 1988 when he first heard the sounds of a radio show called 'The Big Beat on Fridays', that aired on friday night and was pumping all the hot import shit, from disco to early house music, soul and funk, rap.

He couldn't get enough of sample house tracks from the UK like MARRS 'Pump up the volume', Coldcut 'Doctorin' The House', Bomb the Bass 'Beat Dis', etc which meanwhile also aired on normal radio during the daytime, becoming major pop hits in Germany as well as in the UK.

Desperately Estimulo started searching for any 'house' record he could get a hold of, but he wasn't very lucky in this time. So the radio with shows like 'Big Beat', run by the visionary Monika Dietl, as well as Marusha's show on the GDR station 'DT 64' remained the main source for the new sounds.

As techno exploded in Berlin after the wall came down, the sound was getting harder and harder. Though he made some excursions into hard techno, gabber, etc. he always felt unsatisfied with the lack of soul in this kind of music, so he got focussed on US (mostly deep) House and Detroit Techno and started buying records, which was possible because meanwhile some specialist record shops for this kind of music had opened in Berlin. Every single cent of rare pocket money was spent for music, music and only music.

In 1990, Estimulo set up his own little FM pirate station to broadcast electronic beats of all kinds to the neighborhood. The station had a range of about 1 kilometer, so it was mostly his friends who tuned in. Still he got busted after just a few months and the police took all his equipment. Being a programmer and electronics tinkerer, he didn't take long to replace it and went on broadcasting for some years.

The years from 1994 on were spent with studying at the university (computer engineering) and buying and listening to music most of the time, wandering thru the realms of all house genres, techno, drum & bass, breakbeat, jungle, hardcore techno, industrial, dub reggae, digital dub, ambient, lounge, trip hop, basically everything electronic except for a short excursion to punk. First tracks were produced around 1990 on a very simple Amiga500 setup with a very simple program which could basically only play drums and some noises.

Later in 1993, the first tracks with the famous 'Fasttracker' on the PC were created.

Always being more a DJ and selector & collector than a musician, though he was playing flute and guitar for quite a long period in his childhood, he started to produce mixes and publish them on his personal webpage at the university. There was almost no response at all. In 2001, Estimulo met SpIn through filesharing client soulseek, and they had the idea of setting up a professional page to release their mixes.

Mixomat became a success from the start, getting highest acknowledgement in the deepest of deep house circles for the quality of the mixes and the selection of timeless, sensual and passionate music.

Apart from being one of Mixomat Recordings' directors, Estimulo is currently working in the development of internet database applications and doing honorary work for several - mostly leftist intellectual - internet magazines.