Ziggy Kinder presents Barboom

Zany Cologne based DJ and producer Ziggy Kinder has just released his second album, Barboom.  With an impressive 13 EP's behind him on labels like WARE, WIR and Souvenir, he's been carefully crafting his take on house & funk for the last five years, with this album ably demonstrating his grasp of both.  To celebrate the new album. free track giveaway (see below) and exclusive mix, Pulse caught up with Ziggy on his influences, plans for 2012 and his crazy track titles.

Ziggy Kinder is a pretty cool name, is that your actual name or an adopted moniker?  It´s a combination of both. Ziggy is my nickname since years, comes from my forename Siegfried.   Kinder is my real surname .

So your new album is about to be unleashed, what’s changed since the last record and what can we expect from this new one?  My first album " Akrobatik " was more minimal, with sounds from the click and cut kosmos, a lot of surprising rhythmic shifts, stop-and-go breaks and a variety of melodies. I would say a very colourful album with my own style of musical humor.  My new album " Barboom " is much deeper and more mature. The sound aesthetic is warm and clear, without abstract sound experiments and complicated arrangements . The tracks are light on their feet and move nimbly across the jovial house genre. An equal balance of melody and rhythm and exudes positivity. "Barboom" works in the daytime with a cup of coffee, as well as a dance floor mover in the club.

Is it fair to call your music tech-house, as I notice there’s also a heavy funk element in some of your tracks too?  "Funky feeling" is the most important element in my music and is always the base for all my tunes. It doesn’t matter if the main theme is House, Techno, Minimal, Breakbeat, or all together.   But there are also other ingredients in my "Barboom" recipe. In the second track "Rauchgeflüster" for example has a typical dub bass line with a small reggae accent. "der hund kommt" has a more soul feeling with warm pads. On "würzkürz" there is a kind of Dubstep atmosphere, and I worked a Hip Hop beat into "himmelmeister " and some pop guitar chords on the last track "kinderwahrheit ".  

So the new record is called Barboom, did you have ‘bar music’ in mind when you made the record?  The main idea to call it " Barboom " came to me on a small bar gig in Cologne. I realized on that night, after some vodka shots, how popular the bar nights are, still. Everybody likes the personal atmosphere in it. It doesn´t matter if you join the bar before the club or after. Especially after can be very big fun in Cologne. We have some bars here with a long opening hours, like the Six Pack Bar and the Barracuda Bar, or the beautiful king George bar, which was a strip bar in the beginning . By the way: my album cover is made at the King George Bar and all other photos on the CD / Vinyl artwork came from that bar, a very beautiful bar. Sometimes you have more exciting parties in bars, like in clubs and the people dance on the tables. I thought in that night, we have still a big bar boom in Cologne, all kind of generations love going out in bars, and this boom will never stop.  Also my personal musical experiences started in bars, my first official live gig was in a bar when I was 17 years old I think. So it would be time to dedicate some tracks to the bars! All titles of my album have some meaning concerning the bar ambience and situations in bar nights, for example "Rauchgeflüster" means in direct translation "Smokewhisper " or track " Flaschengeist " means genie in a bottle, the track "Himmelmeister " is a latent ambiguity to Jägermeister !

I love your track titles, ‘Assbomb’, ‘Flipflop Crash’ and ‘Tongue Attack’ being my favourites. Where do they come from? All my titles are not only ideas because the words sounds great. Every name has a story behind!  For the single "Assbomb" I recorded a journalist from the US radio, tuned his voice very low and cut every word or syllable. After I put every syllable in a new meaning together. One of that words that came out was "Assbomb". I love puzzles , you know.  The idea for the "Flipflop Crash" single came from the lyrics that Olivia, the voice on that track , brought in. “Flipflop” means the sound of butterflies wings in the air. And "Flipflop Crash” when the butterflies wings crashed into each other during flight. The idea to my single "Tongue Attack" came me on a hot summer time night, when I lick my Ice Cream.

How has being from Cologne influenced your music? What’s it like there compared to other German cities?  When I moved to Cologne, 10 years ago, I was influenced by the minimal sound that came out from the Kompakt label. The Kompakt parties in Cologne had a very good crowd and the atmosphere there was always amazing. It was a good start for me to get in the scene, after my producer activities in different music genres before. The sound of Cologne was very exclusive in Germany and also internationally popular.   At the moment you have different kinds of styles here & the scene starts again to grow, and that makes me very happy. There are some new talented producers in town like Marquese, RaucherEcke, Funkycan, Damiano, Von Erckert from Ava Records or the Motor City Drum Ensemble that gives the old "sound of Cologne" more variety, freshness and deepness.

If you could relay one message to your listeners through your music, what would that be? Take your feet in your hands and move to the dancefloor !  And for all my old fans who live that philosophy there is a small free download present on my fan page- I'm giving one track off my album as a free download.  Enjoy & dance!

Ziggy Kinder- Barboom is out now on WARE 

Listen to Ziggy Kinder on Pulse Radio