The return of Burger & Voigt
Philipp Cerfontaine sits down with Cologne techno legends Wolfgang Voigt and Jörg Burger on the eve of their first ever live show.
Back in the early nineties, before the Loveparade, before dance music exploded in Germany, a little known producer named Wolfgang Voigt was quietly releasing tracks in Cologne under the name Mike Ink. At first the twelves were inspired by acid house, but soon they began morphing in a new direction. Stark, stripped back and very much attuned to the 4/4 beat itself, Voigt's releases as Mike Ink are some of the earliest examples of German minimal techno. Voigt would go on to release dozens of records in the nineties under a phone book of aliases, most famously his classic series of twelve 12"s as Studio 1 issued in 1996. Released on his own labels such as Profan, Auftrieb and Kreisel 99, Voigt's records would become prized by DJs and fans alike for their collectibility as well as their unique take on minimal dance music.
Alongside Voigt in Cologne during the nineties was Jörg Burger, aka the Bionaut and later The Modernist and Triola. Burger's output has always been more album-oriented than Voigt, which is fitting for a techno artist as much in love with indie pop as electronics. One of those albums was the highly rated '[Las Vegas]' made in 1996 with Voigt as Burger/Ink. Fusing guitars with ambient minimalism, the record went onto become a classic, even finding its way into homes across the Atlantic on American label Matador.
Later came Kompakt, which Voigt founded in 1998 with Michael Mayer and Jürgen Paape. Voigt then retreated from the creative spotlight, taking on the role of fulltime record executive. But recently there has been a change of heart. Perhaps bumping into Burger in the basement studio at Kompakt HQ has rekindled Voigt’s urge to produce music, but more than a decade on from '[Las Vegas]', Burger/Voigt have decided to get back into the studio. They've also just performed their first ever live gig together, which happened at the annual Kompakt Total party in Cologne this weekend. I caught up with Wolfgang Voigt and Jörg Burger on the eve of the gig.
interview here:
http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature-read.aspx?id=839