Star of the Year: Zenker Brothers
Munich siblings who lit up the techno world this year
"We aren't doing anything new, you know?" says Dario Zenker. "Everything was there already. We just have a different approach."
Whatever they are doing, it's working. The Munich-born Brothers are speaking to Mixmag from Brooklyn, halfway through An American tour, with gigs in NYC, Washington D.C. and Pittsburgh over the next three days. "This has definitely been our busiest year yet," says Marco.
The brothers also dropped their debut album 'Immersion' at the start of the year. A Mixmag Album of the Month, it garnered huge support from the upper echelons of house and techno, with Rødhåd, DJ Deep, DVS1, Trevino and Ryan Elliot all paying their two cents – not bad going for an album that was produced in just six months. It begins and ends with beatless, ambient cuts with more dancefloor-focused numbers at its heart. Overall it's an amalgamation of the floating pads, glistening atmospherics and rhythmic percussion sounds that have come to define the Brother's style. It's a style that has long found praise in all the right places: techno juggernaut Marcel Dettmann says their music is his "weapon of choice" when wanting to deviate the flow during his DJ sets. No wonder he invited the brothers to join him on a split release in one of the final outings in Modeselektor's 50 Weapons series.
Dario and Marco's own label, Ilian Tape, has evolved alongside them since its launch in 2007 to become one of the most forward thinking and consistent platforms in the game
"You can see in the discography of the label that we're very open minded," says Dario. "It's more about a vision or a certain feeling that a track has and trying to create a certain atmosphere."
In a year which techno was criticised by the likes of Levon Vincent for an increasing, soulless homogeneity, Zenker Brothers have proved otherwise. Perhaps there's hope for the genre yet.
Top Zenker Brothers moments of 2015
'Immersion' LP (Ilian Tape)
The brothers have come together to drop their first album
Fabric debut
November saw Dario and Marco play a long overdue set at London's legendary nightclub - and it went off
Marcel Dettmann/Zenker Brothers 'Activator/Namuan'
A split release with Marcel Dettmann for 50 Weapons' third to last release