DJOKO

Building a track from scratch in Live

With a refreshingly upbeat and funky take on minimal house music, Cologne’s Johannes “DJOKO” Kolter has scored releases on Golf Clap’s Country Club Disco, Okain’s Talman Records, and DJ Steaw and Gunnter’s Rutilance Recordings. We caught up with the Teutonic tech-house titan to find out how he makes his trademark airy, infectious grooves, and the absolute madlad made us the basis of a track from scratch.

The track you made in the video sounds great! Did you finish it?

“No I didn’t! I could, maybe in the future, but the video was actually my second attempt at doing it, because the first time I tried it I had a technical issue. It turned out my camera had a maximum limit of 30 minutes of video, and after that it stopped recording. So, I had to make the whole video again!

Do you have anything on the master track in the video?

“Very little, just a plugin called CamelPhat which acts as a limiter. It’s not really supposed to be used as one, but I figured out it has the sickest limiter on this planet! I always leave it on with the clean factory settings, I have it on every channel where I think there could be clipping, and CamelPhat works some magic on it.”

Your studio appears to be bristling with hardware synths. Which are your favourites?

“I’ve told people before that I really love the Nord Lead, but you know, everything gets a little bit boring eventually, so that made me get my hands on an Oberheim OB-6. I went to the music store because I always love to play a little bit around with a synth instead of just buying it online. I was planning to get one of the Behringer clones, but then I laid my hands on the OB-6 and it just completely blew my mind. It’s so unpredictable!