Deeprhythms

Estimulo 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 this age 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\’ (www.mixomat-recordings.de) directors, Estimulo was working in the development of internet database applications and doing honorary work for several – mostly leftist intellectual – internet magazines.

Mixomat Recordings managed to successfully launch and distribute up and coming artists like Marco Nega, Immer.Chic, Igor O. Vlasov who all got the chance to release their music on vinyl with other labels later on as well as early work by Rezkar, who is now one of the hottest talents in Deep House with releases on Altered Moods and Meakusma as well as upcoming ones on Running Back.

In 2007 Estimulo felt it\’s time to move further and back to his interest and passion for making radio so he started to broadcast a weekly show simply called the \’\’EstimuloShow\’\’ in Summer of 2007. The word of the show of featuring quality music spread fast around the deep house community and the show grew from being a stand-alone showcase of Estimulo\’s record collection to a global affair, including many known und unknown DJ talents who all have in common that passion for the deeper sounds of house and techno. Even disco and jazz-funk can have their place on the show, it\’s all good as long as it\’s deep but it does have a definite focus on electronic music.

Estimulo\’s core styles are deep house and deep techno with an open interface towards jazz, funk and dub. It\’s largely instrumental, but everything is possible as long as it fits into the flow.

In the past 2 years EstimuloShow has featured (amongst others) DJs such as Estimulo, Makarov, TomTomGroove, Mo\’Joe, Marcustic, Keep:On DJ Team (Jochen Otto, Christophe Degars, Maciej Szalonek), Annette Sihler, Tanja Harde, Kandismann from Germany, Malcolm Moore AKA Roxnadz (AlteredMoods.org) from the San Francisco Bay Area, Pinky Chukkles (tiptopmusic.com), Truly-Madly (truly-madly.net) and Conradio (tiptopmusic.com) from London, Michael Bishop and Linley from Toronto. EstimuloShow had a live performance by Dekay (Danny Kotz). The EstimuloShow webpage and archives can be found at www.mixomat.org.