Gerd Janson: The craft

The DJ playing looks quite unremarkable. His clothes are casual, little or no attention has been paid to his shoulder-length hair and his full beard is clearly not maintained in the fastidious manner du jour. He looks much like the kind of bloke you’d see in a record shop, who starts at one end and doesn’t finish until he’s looked at every record, his time spent wavering around the abstract hip hop and Brazilian folk sections, offering no clue to what he’s actually looking for. No-one at the club asks to take a selfie with him. When he works the EQ his body does not convulse as though receiving The Rapture. His fingers just move a bit and he gently sings along. Yet close your eyes, embrace his sound and there you’ll find magic. Stay for the long haul and you’ll be transported somewhere truly special. This is Gerd Janson.

Janson has long been regarded as a ‘DJ’s DJ’, while records issued by his label Running Back are widely played by a range of leading selectors. Many of his most high-profile dates have seen him display an uncommon flexibility, playing back-to-back with very different DJs who, in some cases, have much bigger profiles. Dixon, Prins Thomas, Marcel Dettmann, Ben UFO, Move D and Joy Orbison are among them, their frequent requests a situation he admits to feeling flattered by. “They always work with me,” he says a little sheepishly, deciding it’s due to his willingness to fit in with their style. “I’m the submissive one.”

This month sees Janson step out on his own, though, with a superb addition to the Fabric mix series. ‘Fabric 89’, containing tracks by Glenn Underground, Todd Terje, John Talabot, Boddika & Joy Orbison and the classic ‘Marauder’ by Late Nite Tuff Guy (in his HMC guise), delivers a snapshot of Janson in full flight. Its deftly chosen, well programmed house textures move expertly between the boldly melodic and the hypnotically sparse. “I thought the most honest thing would be to put on CD what I would try to do at that club,” he says. This is Janson’s first commercially released mix, bar one he did for Robert Johnson, the renowned Frankfurt club where Janson has had a residency for many years alongside Thomas Hammann, his DJ partner at the club and on that first mix.

“I like it when a DJ plays stuff that, if I’d heard it on record, I’d have said I didn’t care for it, but in their set it totally works,” says fellow German DJ Prosumer, who’s released on Running Back and issued music by Gerd’s Tuff City Kids project on his Potion label. “He’s one of those DJs who are good at putting records in a context that makes them shine.” When Mixmag interviewed Theo Parrish in 2015, before a night that paired Parrish’s Sound Signature with Janson’s Running Back, Theo expressed regret that Janson wasn’t there, “because that guy can play his ass off. All night!”

Gerd grew up in Darmstadt, south-west Germany, venturing to nearby Frankfurt as a youth in order to buy records he couldn’t find in the town. “I remember in the eighties seeing Boris Dlugosch and Klaus Stockhausen from Front on German TV talking about acid house. I thought, this looks great! Even earlier I remember seeing New Order’s ‘Confusion’ and nearly all of the clip was from Funhouse with Arthur Baker and Jellybean Benitez. It sparked a fire in me. I’d always been interested in pop culture and cool things, and this, to me, always seemed like the coolest.”

Despite an early fascination with music which would lead to him buying Juan Atkins records, being sent to shop at London’s Black Market Records for friends while on a school trip, and collecting the 12”s of Ron Trent and Chez Damier’s Prescription label in the 90s, Janson took an academic route, enrolling in a degree in American Studies, Political Science and History. But the bug proved impossible to ignore.He established himself as a dance music journalist, first for several German publications, later for Red Bull Music Academy. Founding Running Back.

In 2002, he issued well-received early efforts by Mark E, Todd Osbourn and Tensnake. Since then the label has released stand-out tracks from the likes of Todd Terje, Konstantin Sibold, Theo Parrish, DJ Nori, Suzanne Kraft, KiNK, Fort Romeau and Leon Vynehall. In typically modest fashion Janson explains the label’s prolific release schedule by pointing to the diversity of sounds it issues. “I don’t expect someone who buys a Maurice Fulton record to necessarily buy a Redshape record. Maybe it’s only me that finds pleasure in enjoying both.”

“I think it’s happy times right now,” he says of the current acceptance of a more musical, classic and diverse dancefloor sound after years of minimal and techno dominance. “I enjoy the fact that there are so many things that are all next to each other, and they all seem to work.” When in control of a dancefloor Janson is indeed able to make anything work. In longer sets he shifts through several tempos, from ambient and mid-tempo through disco and electronica to house and techno. Such sets could be heard at Trouw and Plastic People, where he held residencies, and still can be at festivals like Dekmantel or clubs like Robert Johnson and Panorama Bar, where he plays regularly. But when asked if his efforts with the label or as part of Tuff City Kids were in some ways a means to bring him to this pinnacle of playing to date, he dismisses the idea: “There’s never been any career planning or anything like that involved,” he says earnestly. “Everything I’ve done has either been out of either sheer passion, or by accident.”

‘Fabric 89’ mixed by Gerd Janson is out now