Finally out! Exclusive on Junodownload

Every story has a beginning. During the 90’s, “Pierre J” was conquering the Swedish dance floors. As a producer, remixer, songwriter he was involved in +200 records, a large number of chart success, and was constantly nominated as “Best Producer”, “Best Remixer” and his acts could be found in “Best Underground” at the Swedish Dance Music Awards.

Although the success was a fact, my need to do more “underground music” became apparent. While playing Disc golf in the year 2000, my friend Tommy aka Subway Baby and I, was talking about setting up our own label. We talked a lot about the look, the feel and of course how the content should sound like. And to be “Distributed by Prime” was obvious, as all our good records that we bought, came from “Prime”. The stuff we were into at that time could be anything from techno from Umek or Rino Cerrone to house from Jan Driver or Moshic.
Q-Records should be a mix of all that. Simply good music.

The first release “Homerun-Native Bullet” was an instant hit. The vinyl was repressed 5 times and it was a pleasure to hear John Digweed play it on Kiss FM. We had something good going on. On the B-side you found another debut, a “Hertz Remix”. From this day “Hertz” was the name to use when producing techno.

“Homerun-Native Bullet” is included on “Q-Records-The Catalogue – Remaster 2013”

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Finally out, exclusive on “Q-Records-The Catalogue – Remaster 2013”

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Classic trax from Boriqua Tribez, Carl Falk, Pratap, Petter B, Cave, Kode, Nihad Tule & Jan Liefhebber Vs Nimbuz.

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Is there a better promotion than when a good DJ is playing your records? I think not.
Here is a clip of Ben Sims at Awakenings in Amsterdam, playing “Pratap-Modulator”.

“Pratap-Modulator” is included on “Sway – The Catalogue 2 – Remaster 2013”.

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Even though Samuel L Session were living in the same town as me, we were both well established, it wasn’t until 2002 we met for the first time. At that time, he was sharing a complex with studios with another good friend of mine, Robert Leiner aka Source, a true techno legend all the way, and a very nice guy.

Samuel did not only play Croquet in my garden or Disc golf with me and my friends, we also worked with music together. One of the first collaborations done were these “Samuel L Session Remixes” on Sway-6. And when Samuel was ready with the remix, it went in to the other room, where Robert Leiner was mastering the remixes, with me watching closely.

As I was a huge fan of Samuels work, it was a pleasure to have him as a part of the label Sway.
“Hertz-Delicado (Samuel L Session Remix 1)” is included on
“Sway – The Catalogue 2 – Remaster 2013”.

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The track “Priorities” has an interesting story. The track was ready and the parts were sent to Pratap who did a nice remix (not that one on the record, but close). It was a nice groove and the baseline was enhanced in a good way, but not much was happening there, it was in lack of something. I asked Tobias if it was ok for him if I played around with it a bit, and yes, no worries. I came up with the smaller synth-bass-breaks that is inserted all over the track and boom, it felt like the track now was complete.

As it now felt like these breaks was a huge part of the track, I needed to insert them in my original version as well. But all together, I still think that the Pratap-version is the better one, after the tweaking.

“Hertz-Priorities (Pratap Remix)” is included on “Sway – The Catalogue 2 – Remaster 2013”.

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Adam Beyer virtually played every single record from Hertz, during a long period. This was leading into a Drumcode-release. Although I wasn’t too happy with the result, and it also went as B2 on the vinyl, Adam told me afterwards that it was probably the most played track out of that EP anyway. And when the remix-EP came, my track was on the full A-side with a Cari Lekebusch-remix. Some months later I did a track, asked Adam for a remix, he did it and now he was part of one of the best selling vinyl-releases on Sway.

When I first got the remix, I felt that “he didn’t do anything”, but after playing it a couple of times, I realize that he’ve just done one of his best remixes, even to date. He used all original parts, re-arranged it in the right way, still having the original feel and baseline. On top he added some funky breaks. A lot of “techno-remixes” doesn’t have anything to do with the original track, but with this remix, Adam interpreted the track and did it better. Absolutely superb!

“Hertz-Lucky 13 (Adam Beyer Remix)” is included on “Sway – The Catalogue 2 – Remaster 2013”.

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Sway was the third label. Focus – techno.
I went to a party, hosted by Johan Bacto in Jönköping, named “Mankind #3” 2002-04-13, with a very nice line-up on the Swedish countryside; James Ruskin, Devilfish, Hardcell, Pehr Herb, Tobias Von Hofsten and Rino Cerrone. As I recall, Adam Beyer was also supporting the event with his presence. I was connecting with all artists backstage and the idea to do collaborations on Sway was born. I’ve already released some material together with Johan Bacto before, on his labels that went really well, so the first Sway was also a “Hertz & Johan Bacto”-release.

Hertz working 2 days with Hardcell looked like this;
I paid for flight tickets Stockholm-Gothenburg, picked Nils up at the airport in the morning, went straight to my house/studio. Started to check some tracks and then straight to work. Did a track in some hours in hot summer weather; we needed to cool down! Moped down to the ocean, swim for an hour, back home working. Another track done. Bought some nice food. Slept in my house. Woke up, back to work, another track done, straight to airport and two productive days were done. The foundation of Sway-3 was rolled out. Very fun and memorable. The same implementation with Tobias and Jonas on Sway-2 and Sway-7.

Not so hard to be a techno-musician after all 😉

Some of the collaborations is included on “Sway – The Catalogue 2 – Remaster 2013”.

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It’s logical to start with the breakthrough record “Hertz-Recreate”. At that time 2003, Hertz was very much in demand and the requests came from all over to do EPs and remixes. One of them came from Umek and Valentino Kanzyani. They already used some of my songs on mix compilations and I really loved their label “Recycled Loops“, so it was easy to accept.

So I did 4 tracks for the EP titled “Look Back To See The Future EP“. As the title hints, there were fragments of classic sounds in my production and this records was played by basically all techno-DJs all over the world, including Adam Beyer, Chris Liebing, Christian Smith, Umek…yeah, the list goes on. And many of them did their own re-edit of the stand-out-track “Recreate”, where the break was extended.

One of them was DJ Montana, who did one that DJ Tiesto, voted nr 1 DJ in the world 3 years in a row back then, picked up and played on main stage at the huge event “Inner City 2003” in Amsterdam. Reports from people on location all told the same story; when that record was played, the whole event erupted. The rumours spread fast and that “Montana Re-Edit” was licensed and released on vinyl in 2004.

Dance Valley, one of the largest festivals in the world, used it as their theme song for the festival in 2004. Carl Cox used it as the final track on Dance Valley 2004, viewed by millions on YouTube, and it now has a spot in the techno history.

“Hertz-Recreate (Montana Re-Edit) is now, for the first time, available on digital release.
Included on “Sway – The Catalogue 2 – Remaster 2013”.

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