Michael Mayer - Petrol - Antwerp BE - May 2008

Biography of Michael Mayer

I had a quite early epiphany at the age of 13. I was allowed to go to a Sunday afternoon disco party for kids. That was the first time I saw a DJ mixing, a mirror ball under the ceiling, strobelight, a fog machine et al. It was just the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I was incredibly amazed. And I said to myself: I want to do this. And I want to do it better than that bloke behind the turntables :) I still feel like a little kid when I see laser beams, light effects and stuff. I got this heavy fascination for discotheque’s technology, architecture and everything related to it. I even love the smell in clubs... Apart from that I love dancing. I love to watch people getting loose on the floor and I definitely enjoy to shake my body, too. To play music to other people is a missionary act for me. I like the idea of a DJ as a filter, crawling through oceans of new and old music as a kind of service to mankind. There can be no reason to play boring or bad music to dancing people. As a DJ you’re responsible for your crowd. You have to choose very carefully what you send through the speakers. You can always improve your selection, technique and style. It’s a lifetime mission.

At first I was only a DJ and I didn't feel that I had to automatically produce tracks. For me it was two different things. When I met Reinhardt [Voigt] and all those guys we had some fun nights and thought 'let's make something out of this' so we founded our band, Forever Sweet. I still regard making music as a hobby. I'm not a professional producer in the classic sense. I'm too bad on techniques and I'm not interested in reading manuals. I feel I'm playing with instruments and not a serious producer. Only Kompakt is active now. I used to do stuff for Ladomat too but that was five or six years ago.

The only thing I pre-determine is that I play 4/4. The rest happens by accident. I love the deeper side of music, obviously, but I like it raw and kicking. There has to be some pop sensibility too but in a third kind, not obviously. The structure of my set is very pop influenced: I don't mix tools for hours. There have to be waves like a pop song. I love records that are structured, that have a beginning/middle/end. It's the same for any clubnight, there has to be that progression. I love to warm up and take my time to get in to it, to take the people with me. There's the prime time and then the end and at the end I love to play more songs and some things you can whistle on the way home.

Kompakt is a record store linking the past, present and future of Cologne's house and techno sound. Established by Wolfgang Voigt (who, as Mike Ink, founded the city's minimal 4/4 reputation in the early nineties) it harbours DJ's, producers, record labels and clubnights. It's also a distribution centre, the running of which fills the days of DJ, Producer and Head-Honch Michael Mayer. The label itself has gone from strength-to-strength and 2003 could be it's biggest year yet. Artist albums are forthcoming from Mayer and wunderkind Superpitcher whilst Kompakt DJ Tobias Thomas has just completed a new mix CD. Overload met all three and discovered business and pleasure do mix.

Kompakt started in 1993 as an independent recordshop for electronic music named Delirium Köln. For the first 3 years, I was only working there, taking care of the buying and stuff. Then I started to develop Kompakt’s mailorder service. In 1998, when we changed our name into Kompakt we felt the urgent need to become artistically more independent. We were fed up with explaining our distributor at the time why we want to release the kind of music we did. They were like “Uh... This is not techno. You can’t dance to this shit”. So we started Kompakt distribution. I spent large parts of the past 8 years in building up and shaping its catalogue and structure. Apart from that I’m A&Ring the label(s) alongside Wolfgang Voigt. Since 2005 my responsibilities in the office got less, so I’m transforming more and more into a recording artist. And I’m in charge of our latest baby, the download shop www.kompakt-mp3.net. Looks like I always find ways to avoid boredom...