Alex Bau
Alex Bau Bio
There are not many DJ`s of this type. DJ`s who believed in Techno from the first minute, DJ`s who experienced Techno from the very beginning, DJ`s who made techno their own thing. DJ`s who found their own style, even more, who developped it over the years, Dj`s who`s name is the expression for a specific sound. Alex Bau is one of them. But at the same time, there are some slight differences with this guy. Why focussing on just one style of music? Why only minimal sounds? Why only Techno? Why? If cou can have both…
Is it related to the fact that there has been a time before Techno for Alex Bau? Thousands of records in his collection, different styles, different music, for sure something that leaves its marks, no doubt about it. Still he is doing Depeche Mode- Nights from time to time, just for fun, and his activities on Techno doesn`t really suffer from that, not at all! With his 5 or even more hours sets at his first resident club in his southeastbavarian homearea, the „Libella“, where for example also DJ Hell started his career back in the 80ies, he achieved the reputation as somebody who is totally aware of what he is doing, totally dedicated to it and also totally loving it. He had his own radioshow for over 2 years on a local radiostation, still so far the only technoshow in this area, but after countless gigs at the local clubs time was right to proof that he is also able to play at other places all around. Especially the productions together with his friend Sven Dedek, mainly released under their moniker „Basic Implant“ or „Electric Envoy“ on labels like the at this time starting „Fine Audio Recordings“ from Chris Liebing have hit the technofloors in a very impressive way, so that he was able to collect also international experiences behind the decks while Sven was playing live. Releases like the „Phase Edit EP“, a highly acclaimed and well sold rework of some Nitzer Ebb EBM Classics, or their work for Dave Angel`s “Rotation”, Justin Berkovi`s “Predicaments” or Pascal FEOS` “PV-Records” enabled the guys to reach a much bigger audience.
Finally, after numerous releases for different labels beside his own label “Toneman”, Alex released his debut-album “Connected” in late 2004, which immediately draw the attention of many high class DJ`s like Chris Liebing, Pascal FEOS or Good Groove to name just a few. The fact that these artists, all standing for a different kind of style, grabbed the tracks from “Connected” constantly shows that the name of the album couldn`t have been chosen in a better way.
With starting his own label „Toneman“ back in 2000 Alex Bau also started to his soloproductions for labels like Chris Liebing`s “CLR” or the Montreal based label “Default Recordings”. Montreal can be understood as a kind of scale of Alex` DJ-activities too! Within 3 years he has been booked to Montreal four times, his set from the legendary night at “Aria” from january 2006 was even released as a mix-cd “live at Aria / Montreal” so that Alex came back months later to perform on the releaseparty, once again a night to remember for the Montreal technomovement. At this time Alex was already booked as the headliner, and its reported by numerous mails and guestbook- entries that it was not a mistake to do so. Maybe also as a small, unconscious “thank you”, but mainly due to a very inspirational night he spent in Halifax, where he flew over to Canada for just one night, he declared an EP as the “C.A.N.A.D.A. EP”, which was released on CLR in late 2007 and received overwhelming feedback from all over the globe. People desrcibed the tracks “Summer in Moncton” and “Halifax Funk” as masterpieces of contemporary technomusic which seperates positively from the rest, mainly dominated by minimal clicks and cuts.
But it`s not only Montreal, where Alex is being booked again and again, there are also other places, which obviously is a sign that he seems to be a guy who understands what to do when standing in front of people and trying to bring the party to the max. Clubs like Frankfurt`s “U60311”, where, among other dates, he was part of the closing night of Chris Liebing`s legendary partyseries “Es ist Freitagaaabend”, Munich`s “Electric Delicate”, Würzburg`s “Airport”, or the legendary “Tresor” in Berlin are not only the trademarks of german technoclubculture, they can also be found on Alex Bau`s giglist. Japan, Braszil, USA, Canada, Poland, Croatia, Serbia, Holland or the closer Austria and Switzerland are some of the tourstops on Alex` calender, and no matter where, all over the places people can hear and feel how interesting, versatile and powerful techno can be if you understand to combine minimal and straight techno as a constant up and down. Always everything under control while the party is going wild, that`s what Alex is always going for. That`s also something what the crowd seemed to have experienced, so that Alex was voted among the 20 best national DJ`s on the poll from Germany`s leading Dancemagazine, Raveline, in 2006.
After a short intermezzo as an official artist on the highly acclaimed label „Zenit“, that has been the platform for acts like Marco Carola, Adam Beyer, The Advent, Gaetano Parisio and many more, he now puts the focus back again on an own platform after releasing his album „Credo“ as a sublabel from Zenit, which is now “continued” as his personal artist label with already highly acclaimed releases like “My bleepy helloween” or “Bullet in your heart”, minimal tunes go together with peaktime slammers in a way that appears obvious and logic. This fact and the music on “Credo” attracts a lot of leading colleagues of Alex like Chris Liebing, Dubfire, Adam Beyer, Stephan Bodzin or
also Charles Siegling aka Technasia, who invited Alex to join the worldfamous Sino- Label by end of 2008. The feedback on Alex` music is growing constantly, he turned out to be one the few real technoproducers since 2008 and his decision to focus on only a few, but very powerful and strong releases on labels like CLR, Sino or Credo speaks for itself. After releasing numerous succesful releases and remixes in 2009, e.g. “Red Chromosome” on CLR or the “Dark Summer Nights” on Credo, which has to be repressed again and again and was even featured on the German Club Charts (DDC), Alex was really touched by the fact that one of his musical idols, Martin L. Gore, has picked a remix from him (Marko`s “Everything turns black” Remix by Alex) for his pre- show-dj-set of the worldwide Depeche Mode “Tour of the Universe”. 2010 was not only Alex being a part of handful of high-class artists to create the “10 years CLR compilation”, it also was the year of Alex` “Being Wayne Sidorsky”, an outstanding album and a compilation of tracks which are totally dedicated to the bas(s)ic energy of Techno, something Alex always stood for and will always stay stand for.
After the impressive success of the album and the amazing feedback on it from DJ- colleagues all over the planet, numerous remix-requests followed (e.g. Brian Sanhaji, Mark Broom, Hans Bouffmyhre and many more…) as well as it was time for Alex to return to the studio in order break barriers and search for new inspiration in 2011 as far as his extensive schedule allowed him to spend time on it. Quite obvious that his output in 2011 was reduced, but only by quantity, not by quality, which is proven by the fact that another highgrade technolabel became part of his discography: Sleate Records, a label that has defined techno in 2010 and 2011 like only a few others. His “Theory of Noise”, combined with remixes by Alan Fitzpatrick and Monoloc, showed again his ability to serve the dancefloor to the point. Beside, his monthly “Wasabi Tunes”, available as a free mix on his newsletter or on iTunes, constantly shows his clubactivities quite impressively, and so it was a kind of logical consequence to dedicate a DVD to the growing number of fans worldwide, containing a kind of documentation of a weekend he spent in Buenos Aires for a gig at the legendary “Cocoliche” club. Much more than just a continuing recording of the set, this movie delivers a deep insight in the tourlife and the related circumstances. It`s like a 45min “roadmovie”, perfectly fitting to his credo of DJing: the party is nothing more as a movie, and while all the dancers are the mainactors, he is nothing more than the creator of the soundtrack… a second issue of those movie-tourdiaries came for christmas 2012. „Wasabi Tunes – Gringotechno in Australia“ was a documentary not only about one city, but a whole tour down under to Sydney, Brisbane und Melbourne. 3 days, 3 cities, lots of travelling. Isn`t this pure love for techno? The title track of this DVD called „Sydney Acid“ was released together with „Melbourne Dub“ on the Austrapop EP, the first “real” Credo-release for more than two years. The inspiration on this Ep is kind of funny: a traffic light in Melbourne!
The 2 years break on new original tracks on Credo however does not mean Alex was lazy of suffered from a lack of inspiration, not at all! He created the „Recycled Tracks“ series which first release featuring „Hollywoodbullet“ was a huge success. Alex took an old classic from the 80ies from Frankie goes to Hollywood and created a track which even still now is present on parties from time to time. Even Chris Liebing, meanwhile more known for the really monotone and machine-like technosound played the track as well as for example Len Faki, the ravemonster from Berlin. Beside the continuation of the Recycled Tracks series with a mashup of Ministry`s „Jesus built my Hotrod“ and a really different sounding „Unsquare EP“ on Credo Black Series Alex received more and more invitations for EP`s or remixes on labels or for artists like Respekt, Driving Forces, Kombination Research or also still Sleaze as well as Green Velvet or Thomas P. Heckmann. Does not sound boring at all, hm?
Same with touring! Except Africa all continents had the chance to check out „Gringotechno“ by the „Bavarian Technomachine“. His schedule is international, just the way he was always looking for. On one weekend to Canada, then back to Germany before taking off again to Australia. But also domestically not only the quantity, but also the quality of the gigs increases. Best example on this respect: Tresor, Berlin. Years ago maybe one gig per year, maybe also a break in between, meanwhile three already scheduled gigs per year minimum! No comment.
5 Years Of The-Zone Records 
Mnestic/Roaches Deluxe EP 
THE-ZONE LTD002 (vinyl)