Well known for his bootlegs and last year’s re-working of James Blake’s cover of Feist’s Limit To Your Love, the Augsburg native has recently put out some sublimely smooth, down-tempo numbers on Berlin-based imprint Suol and has been playing the global festival circuit.
“I do think it’s a good example of how simple I make my music,” Bortz says of the Limit To Your Love remix. “My production technique is very minimal and I always try to keep everything very clean. For me, the most important thing in making a track is to find the focal point in the production and reduce everything around it to make that focal point stand out.
“Also, when you take out the James Blake vocal, I think it clearly shows I have some roots that are grounded in dub techno… now that I think of it, I can’t really pinpoint a moment or movement that got me to where I’m at today musically as I have such a varied music taste.”
While his sound is by no means divorced from Berlin’s techno obsession, it certainly isn’t following the herd, with house still defying the mainstream in Bortz’s university hometown, situated in southwest Bavaria.
“I can’t really say that the house scene over here is that big, as Augsburg is quite small. That said, for the size of the city there really are a lot of creative people based here. Augsburg is very close to Munich, and Bavaria is very close to Italy which, in a way, gives the local scene a little bit of that Italio-disco influence,” he explains. “There’s also a very big indie influence in Augsburg… so the city is small and we are quite sheltered from the major dance music scenes in Germany, but in a way that’s good as we’ve create our own sound and scene.”
Forza Electronica is a monthly party Bortz has been running for six years, providing him with a testing ground for his techno/house innovations.
“From the start, there have been many changes with the musical direction of the night. In the beginning it was more orientated towards Detroit techno, but over the years it’s gradually changed to a more house flavoured sound as I wanted to set myself apart from the rest of the parties that were being held in Augsberg.
“I think it was around 2009 when I tried to bring a deeper and slower sound to the night, which took a while for the crowd to get used to. Eventually the sound grew on everyone and now it’s very successful. From the start my vision for this event was to introduce the crowd to many different styles of music, so I’m very lucky to have an extremely open minded crowd who attend the night.”
Bortz’s remix of fellow German Console’s A Homeless Ghost is soon to be released and although Bortz has gained notoriety remixing, he’s not a proponent of the current fixation on remixing. “I have done quite a few remixes but I’m not always a fan of them,” he says. “What I don’t like about them is when people make remixes for a track that cheapens the original to the point where they sell out.
“As long as you can keep the integrity of the track in check, I’m happy to do remixes. Also, it’s also difficult when you’re DJing to find the right version of a track when there are five different versions,” he laughs. “Sometimes I just feel like saying to some producers and labels that it really is ok to release a great track without doing any remixes for it. There are so many new tracks being released every day and the good ones will always be found regardless of a remix or not.”
While his Heal The World EP, released last year on Suol, was more down tempo than his previous work, there’s no down-turn expected in the level of his popularity, with heavy-hitters such as Laurent Garnier getting behind it. It’s likely that we’ve only just witnessed the genesis of this wizard of hi-tech, slowed-down minimalism’s career.
BY JO CAMPBELL
