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.”

That recent cover feature is testament to the upward trajectory he's on at the moment. He's essentially become techno's new poster boy alongside Ben Klock and Marcel Dettmann as the artists who drive an unrelenting sound to the masses. We've seen him several times over the years and he's consistently been one of the best on the bill.

He obviously looks the part. Vibrant red hair, an unmissable ginger beard and a glowing smirk that creeps across his face when a crowd roars once he's unleashed the full might of a track. When we saw him for his marathon set at Village Underground, he ended on 'Knights Of The Jaguar' by DJ Rolando and he danced around behind the decks like a man who genuinely loves what he does and who feeds off the audience's belief in that.

For this week's In Session we're thrilled to be able to present his outstanding cover mix in full. Expect Dystopian landscapes carved out through ambient builds, eerie melodies and of course face-melting techno that has the power to even subdue the most war-intent Terminator.

Read our full cover feature on Rødhåd here

Funster is Mixmag's Digital Music Editor, follow him on Twitter