Saturday, October 10, 2009
DJUMA SOUNDSYSTEM
(Get Physical Music, Berlin)

5-7: $3 drafts, wine, champagne-1/2 price menu

Djuma Soundsystem are the latest signing to German label Get Physical. Their first release on the label entitled ‘Les Djinns’ recently achieved the prestigious position of becoming the best selling track on www.beatport.com ever!, and the vinyl quickly got a rerun at the pressing plant to meet the rising demand for the title.

Djuma Soundsystem is Norwegian Mikkas and Danish Lars B who both live in Copenhagen. They met first time when they DJed at one of Copenhagens longest running club nights, the Sunday club "Offline". Thanks to his Norweigian mother, Lars B was one of the few Danes who understood Mikkas’ dialect and the two quickly found an interest in each others music. The breakthrough for their music-collaboration started at the electronic Norberg Festival in Sweden. One of the stages of the festival was a huge kraftwerk that had an amazing acoustic with a sound delay of a cathedral. One early morning they started playing together using the incredible acoustic, and they have played together ever since. Other monikers the guys use are Def Jaguar and Ben Horn.

Mikkas and Lars’ producer career started in a for club music producers somewhat odd way; In 2001 they composed and produced the music for the ballet "Off The Record" for The Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen. A ballet that merged classical music with elements of new electronic genres, such as electronica, two-step and drum n’ bass.

The story of Djuma Soundsystem began a couple of years later in 2003, when Mikkas and Lars B decided to make a tune under the following dogma: to make an ethnical sounding club banger, that isn’t cheesy!?

They came up with the track Les Djinns, a mix of Arabic instruments like tablas and zas and pure dancefloor steam. This track was an absolute winner everywhere it was played, from the more commercial dancefloors all the way to the experienced and devoted clubbers.

EMI/Capitol Records picked it up, and the boys put together a remix packet with some help of their local friends like Kid Massive and Trentemøller. It picked up great support from the DJs, all the way from Ibiza's big room jocks (Layo & Bushwacka, Deep Dish, Seb Fontaine and Pete Tong to name a few) to the more groovy selectors (with the likes of Kruder and Dorfmeister, Jimpster, Lindstrom, Paul Murphy, Fila Brasilia and Dom Servini –to name some.

Stuctural changes at EMI soon saw the promising record hanging in nomansland with the departure of the A&R responsible. The rights for the record was reverted so the record could get a fresh start…

After negotiations with several labels over the following years a match was finally found with Berlin based indie label Get Physical. The labels’ records permanently placed in Lars and Mikkas’ DJ bags already plus being a label witn international success made the label a perfect partner.

The re-release of the record has a new remix package which has kept the Trentemøller mix and added some new ones; minimal act My My from Berlin, and in addition to this Mikkas and Lars themselves have added a new remix under their Def Jaguar moniker.

Mikkas and Lars B have just finished producing a remix for Philippe Cohen Solal (Gotan Project), and are currently working on various tracks for Get Physical, IO recordings and Brut Records.