Guide: Lehult

Mixmag's Guide series invites our favourite new producers and labels to create a mix of their own productions. This month it's the turn of Hamburg label and party Lehult

Hamburg's nightlife took a huge hit earlier this year when the Golden Pudel, arguably the city's most treasured club, caught fire after news surfaced that it'd close in April. Still not officially closed, though not open for business and pending an auction, it's not exaggerative to say there's a massive clubbing hole in Germany's second largest city.

That's not to say partying has been banished altogether, though. Around two miles north of the Pudel is the intimate PAL, the home of record label Lehult's parties. Shanti Celeste, Jeremy Underground, Boo Williams and Galcher Lustwerk have all been guests, all artists known for playing the type of flavoursome, feel-good house music Lehult releases.

A five-man project (it's run by Lucky Charmz, DJ Assam, Eddie Ness, Liem and Johan Kaseta) launched in 2014, Lehult's been a family-only affair so far with only those behind it releasing records. Lucky Charmz kicked it off with pleasurable and cosmic four-tracker 'Follow Me To Flottbek Falls', with other highlights including Liem's funky jam 'If Only' and the recent '8040' EP from DJ Assam. Sweet and sultry house music (notably the title track and 'With A 'Sound' In My Heart'), anyone into fellow Hamburg label and deep house devotees Smallville should probably add it to their library.

More work from the label co-heads is set to arrive before the year is out, but outsiders will be welcomed into the fold, too. The squad might be changing but one thing will remain the same: the joyous vibes will keep on rolling.

Check out an Eddie Ness mix of tracks released and forthcoming on Lehult and a Q&A with Lucky Charmz and DJ Assam below.

Tell us about the guys that run the label.

Lucky Charmz: It's Liem, Eddie Ness, Johan Kaseta and us two [Lucky Charmz and DJ Assam]. We're all from Hamburg and most of us still have Hamburg as the home base although I'm kind of moving back and forth.

Does each member have a certain role at the label?

DJ Assam: It kind of distributes itself. When there's something to do, the person who has time will do it. It's still a low-level operation really so there's not anyone who does it as his main job.

LC: It's a project we do for fun and something we just want to help each other have a platform and some nice parties so we can get together with our friends and play good music. Centrally, that's what it's about. The distribution of the work is a factor that just gets done somehow.

The releases so far have only been from you guys. Have you got plans to release music by producers outside of the label in the future?

LC: We started out as a group of friends and so far it's been about introducing us a little bit. We're incredibly blessed at how well this has been working so far, getting all these great responses and basically just being able to keep producing more records. As we've progressed we've started receiving demos from people. At first, we decided that we wanted to keep the label for us but the stuff we were receiving was getting better and better and, quite recently, Eddie [Ness] got a remix that we were all quite amazed by.

It was a really weird and different, mash it up approach and that guy sent us more demos that we were super impressed by. One of the upcoming releases we will do will be by this guy - he's from Chicago. We've been talking to him quite a bit. He's actually coming to visit us in Germany so we can get to know him. For us, this is still a friendship-based operation but I think now that we've all had the chance to have an EP or two, we feel like we can go a little bit further if the vibe is good.

Assam: For the 10th release we're probably going to do a compilation which will also feature a couple of the people we've met through doing this, people we've played with and people we've got to know.

What's coming up release-wise for the rest of the year?

LC: A collaborative EP from Eddie Ness and Liem which is really exciting and out in August. I love it so much. It's more tech-y and maybe different for the people who know Liem for his 'If Only' track. Then a solo EP from Johan Kaseta that'll come out around September or October. The ninth EP will probably be with this guy from Chicago.