BOOKING
world : sebastian@wilde-agency.com
australia : mike@thickasthieves.com.au
CONTACT: outtakes@cordlabuhn.com
Cartoon life - At six years old, CORD LABUHN had his first real career aspiration : becoming an ‘inventor’. Or space traveller. At least working in some kind of laboratory. Hence he became a producer of beats, tunes, records, imagery & merch - and toured the whole planet to play music for the most spaced out...
Earlier, when the ghost of Jimi Hendrix jumped out of his parents record collection and passionately promoted the guitar as the weapon of choice for a leftist punk, folk, if not eurodance infected teenager of the 90s, the piano and his sister’s drumset would have to step back for a while.
A few years later when TV was still the thing and gaming consoles like PS1 were battling N64, Cord the Beatmaker was rather staring at tiny AKAI S2000, MPC and CRT displays, head-nodding, turning the jogwheels, dreaming of a second turntable to complete his DJ setup - the true school, golden age hiphop way. Next mission - still as a school kid - was a self-released vinyl record with international distribution through a self-founded label – learning everything from scratch, only a few years before DJing went 99,9% digital, crazy fast and globalised anyway.
To date, his longest running project is ROBOSONIC, which was formed as a DJ-producer duo together with Sacha Robotti over 10 years ago. A while after their unconventional, free-spirited debut album „Sturm und Drang“ (2007) they took the world by storm with a string of popular tunes and remixes that went into the crates of tens of thousands of DJs worldwide and made it to top spots in the infamous Beatport charts (“Worst Love”, “The Edge” 2012, “La Fique” 2013, “House Music” 2015, “Rise” 2016). With releases on labels like Defected, Toolroom, Get Physical, Diynamic, Stil vor Talent, Deep Dish’s Yoshitoshi, Nervous or lately Mother Recordings, ROBOSONIC became an authentic figurehead for something dubbed “Golden Era House” (Juice Magazine). Not only because Cord was convincing real rap icons like Masta Ace, Jeru the Damaja and KRS-One to collaborate on house tracks, but also because ROBOSONIC remixed legends like Todd Terry, Arthur Baker, Kerri Chandler and Eddie Amador.
Today, after his partner emigrated to the US, Cord the DJ is playing most of the ROBOSONIC shows alone. The house & techno driven sets and releases under this moniker are internationally recognised and performances in 40+ countries (and counting) reflect the universal appeal of a trademark sound they unleashed into the world. And with a string of new remixes and releases it seems that he won’t stop shedding club sweat and tears.
For 2017 Cord Labuhn has redefined his structures and launches a series called OUTTAKES. The label and collaborative hub serves primarily as a studio-to-listeners feed – to pilot an own musical direction, independent from A&R decisions, laws of the market – out of the box. A conscious counterpart and soulful antidote to the dance music business with its particular formulas.
The zero point (#000) of the OUTTAKES series is the ‘SLEEP OUT’ mixtape - a carefully composed 3 hour set indulging in the tones and frequencies of sleep, representing this important human state in musical form – horizontal business. Two of his own productions ‘Gone Love’ & ‘Unter Deck’, which bookend this mixtape, are being released through the label as a wake-up call, followed by hypnotic beat science, hiphop infused electronica, songs, fragments, field recordings and probably some dance music in the future, that would not fit under any other label than: OUTTAKES.
