The nova bosses

German collective Jazzanova have been one of the leading lights in soulful, leftfield electronic music since the late 90s. Having given acts like Koop, 4 Hero and Ian Pooley their magic remix treatment and released timeless jazz-tinged tracks like ‘Fedime’s Flight’ and ‘Caravelle’ and their debut album in 2002, they also put out albums by Victor Davies, The Underwolves, Rima, George Levin and Clara Hill on their JCR and Sonar Kollektiv imprints.

Despite this heavy release schedule, Jazzanova have an equally busy but less publicised occupation as DJs that sees founding members Alex Barck, Class Brieler and Juergen von Knoblauch spinning in Europe, Asia and the USA every week.
As the self-explanatory Mixing, their first mix CD proper demonstrates, the German soul bothers apply the same soulful and wilfully eclectic approach to their mixing as to their music.
Recorded live at a club by Alex Barck, Mixing works its way from the soul and hip-hop of Jill Scott, Dimlite and Carol Williams into the sensuous, string-led house Ame remix of Jazzanova’s ‘Glow And Glare’ and Atjazz’s rework of their ‘Dance The Dance’, before taking things into the broken beat sound with contributions from Domu and Ski, before the nu-jazz of Bugge Wesseltoft’s ‘Try’ and – after a 30 second call for an encore from the crowd – Georg Levin’s ‘Let There Be Love’ end the set.
Unlike most DJ mixes, Mixing steps away from the 4/4 formula and, instead of presenting 70 minutes of seamlessly mixed club music casts its gaze further, dabbling in hip-hop, breaks, soul and house.
“Sometimes tracks are made especially for DJ use and there’s nothing wrong with that, but our CD draws on artists from within our community. We wanted it to represent what we’re about, that we like all these styles and, even if the music is made with computers and samplers, it retains a warm, organic feel.
“Some mixes are done in a linear fashion, but we like to alternate and surprise people, switch the tempo and the atmosphere. We love to play long sets in Berlin and Mixing is one of these sets condensed into 70 minutes. At the end of the night, we like to play a few well-known tunes and let people go home with a smile on their face,” he adds.
Unsurprisingly, every track on Mixing comes from Jazzanova’s global yet tightly-knit community. While their sound has its focus at their long-running Kaleidoscope night in Berlin, one of the reasons why Jazzanova are such globetrotting DJs is because their sound has a worldwide appeal.
“The music we make and play is quite different to what Berlin is known for these days,” Alex believes, “but we don’t feel that isolated. One of the reasons why we DJ all over the world is because from early on, we were thinking globally and hooking up with people all over the world – and it’s how other small labels should operate.
“We were also lucky that people found their way to our labels, but, once they got there, we made sure to treat them well and pay them properly, something that’s rare in the music industry.”
Talk of the music industry draws sighs of disbelief from Alex, who claims that the downturn hasn’t made things easy for Sonar Kollektiv, but that there is also a positive side to the slump.
“We have suffered but it was also good because there were a lot of people releasing rubbish and this downturn has meant that the people who really believe in the music will survive,” he says. “It also means that the big record companies aren’t trying to license any more tracks from us for chill out compilations. Don’t get me wrong, the money was good and the exposure helped us, but we were worried people would think that we only release ambient music! Now that they have ‘discovered’ electroclash I don’t think they’ll be contacting us again.”
Anyway, Jazzanova have got more important issues to deal with. There’s their second artist album, which Alex says will contain “a little bit of everything”, as well as new artist albums from Slope and Georg Levin, a folk compilation and the second instalment in the excellent Best Seven compilation series. Meanwhile, Alex Barck has a plane to catch.
“I’m off to Edinburgh, you’ll have to excuse me,” he says politely as he heads off to mix it up yet again.

Mixing is out now on Sonar Kollektiv