In Session: Rødhåd

Techno is positively booming right now. Ravers are in thrall to dark, rugged beats that topple over the 130bpm mark and the artists pushing the sound are surging in popularity. Take London, for instance: there are more techno nights popping up than ever before with venues like Corsica Studios, Village Underground and of course fabric making sure that the stylings of Berlin and beyond are more than well represented.

One act that's taken the genre by storm is German artist Rødhåd, who's in the middle of the best years of his career. Although Mike Bierbach has been honing his craft and chipping away at the scene for a long period of time, over the last five years he's established himself as a must-see at any club or festival he's announced at.

2012's '1984' EP was not only his first release, it was his initial foray into label management and in the three years since his Dystopian imprint has been running, he's managed to project his unique sound alongside a strong musical ethos.

His kick drums are punishing yet his melodies are elegant. The progression in his tracks is calculated but there's always an unwavering sense that anything could happen. All things we love about Rødhåd.

As well as being an outlet for his own emotive productions, Rødhåd has used Dystopian to push artists that showcase a similar sound and vision, one of a broken society.

This industrial, futuristic aesthetic shines through in the bleak, warehouse-held label parties and carries over into Dystopian's artwork, as well.

Talking about the label in our recent cover feature, he said:

“I was always a fan of a certain sort of movie – Blade Runner, The Matrix, Running Man. When you show people who are observed by a bigger authority, like in those movies when society is divided, I’d always identify with those people who would be living hidden in the underground. When you went to Tresor or Berghain it was like entering a new, unseen society,” he says. “Everything dark, the sound of machines. It was a perfect aesthetic: visually and in sound. And maybe we identify with it, because we’re from the East of Germany. There was always this feeling that we were the outsiders, from the corner of society; that we were being watched.”