James Din A4

James Din A4 is Dennis Busch, a man of many faces. He's the head behind the Esel label, on which he has been living out his own particular view on Techno, with refreshing obstinacy, for eight years to date. In addition to external artists, he also releases there under the aliases Lassie & Chris, Pop Dylan, Krieghelm Hundewasser, and Pastor Fitzner. Virtually alongside this, he runs his own workshop - of considerable output - for silkscreen printing and collage ("Made with Hate"); more and more, he also creates covers for other artists (the most recent being Wolfgang Voigt's current 12"); and apart from that, he's getting practice in life as a father of three.

Occasionally, it is rather obvious what the house and techno coming from James Din A4's Esel factory is modeled after - the deepness of Theo Parrish, above all - but again and again, by the use of swirling hi-hats, stumbling samples, or breaks recorded manually via MPC, he manages to thwart and breach the whole track, and to present it, from one second to the other, under a new light. Only to bring back the bass drum then, holding everything together - along with a thousand melodies. The musician himself calls his style "Techno with weeds", and that hits the nail on the head perfectly. He's also able to bring to bear his charming play with lo-fi-samples quite neatly in his downtempo tracks (Petsoundfile, Human Schaufenster Coalition).

With James Din A4, everything's allowed to crackle, hiss and distort - all the same, his music takes everyone for a ride, and shoves us to the dance floor with a wink. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.