feeder insider w/ Kotelett & Zadak [en]

feeder insider w/ Kotelett & Zadak [en]

Heiko Tubbesing & Martin Zadak are Kotelett & Zadak, the mysterious fun duo agitating crowds from behind the decks throughout Europe and experimenting with their live sets. The story goes that their love for sprat fishing brought them together somewhere on the North German Coast.

Read our conversation with Kotelett & Zadak touching myths, their latest release – Eifel EP, their first live set and the need for independent publishing platforms.

sprats / deep house / live-set / zest

The books we keep in our studio… Heiko: actually, we keep a few at the studio, my fav: ”Dada Total”.
A good sprat recipe… Martin: Take 4 sprats and stuff it into a really old pig. It’s the Nordic version of Surf and Turf.
There’s something uncanny about… Heiko: arriving at home after a gig, opening your DJ bag just to find some Knife that’s not yours.
A place we keep returning to… Martin: Mama, the queen of sprats.
Sunday you can find us… Heiko: at Katerblau.
Lately, party posters… Martin: I tend to look better in them than Heiko.
Visiting art galleries… Heiko: is defragmenting the soul.
The wilderness of nature inspires… Martin: us 😉
It’s always fun to… Heiko: to make silly tricks behind Martin’s back during a set.
3 releases we discovered in 2018… Heiko: Have a look in our Beatport charts! There are 10 releases we discovered in 2018.

Cristina: Hello, Kotelett & Zadak, and thank you for accepting our invitation to chat. Would you like to elaborate on your fateful meeting, somewhere on the North German Coast?

Kotelett & Zadak: Oh please not, it was a very traumatic moment. But we heard that on this little sand dune where we met, there’s a tree growing now which smells like fish.

Cristina: We know your studio is located in the famous „Holzmarkt“, a space related to the Kater blau club, which originated from „Bar 25“. What’s an atypical studio day for you?

Martin: If we are friendly to each other and don’t argue over basslines.

Cristina: Eifel EP, your fresh release on URSL, with a remix from Thodoris Triantafillou, is greeted as a remarkable production, just in time for the festival season. How did your friendship with URSL Rec start?

Kotelett & Zadak: That’s a really long time ago. We first met Soukie&Windish in Bremen, in early 2000. Then later we met people from the Bachstelzen crew, so we basically know the entire URSL crew from the first hour.

Cristina: Eifel EP contains field recordings from one of your journeys. How did you produce the different tracks on the EP? What’s specific about your work process and where does the experiment come into play?

Martin:

We decided to start the track with a noise we recorded out in nature, at the volcanic landscape called Eifel in the south of Germany.

That was the basic feeling of the track. On top of that, we built beats and melodies and arranged it in the end. The other tracks were produced solely at the studio with different analog synthesizers and Ableton.

Cristina: You are playing live as well and we learned that your first live gig at Garbicz Festival in Poland was really magical. What was especially thrilling about that first experience?

Kotelett & Zadak: Actually it was thrilling, cause we only had 3 weeks to prepare our very first live set. Reason behind it is that we sort of got asked to fill in a one-hour time slot at pretty much the last minute. On top, you cannot fit a DJ set into one hour, but it’s just about right for a live act. When we arrived at Garbicz we only had one hour of sleep caused by the travels between gigs, so in the end, because of sleep deprivation, it was kinda a trippy experience for us.

Cristina: What’s your live setup now and how do you see it morphing in the future?

Martin: At the moment we play live with 3 background singers, a colourful ensemble of musicians who play strings and winds and a beatbox-champion from Norway. But in the future, we want to reduce our setup a bit because it is always quite cramped on stage and the beatbox-champion from Norway farts a lot because of his love for sprats.

Our ideal setup would then be a computer with Ableton, a TR8, a Maschine and an Akai APC.

Cristina: 14 years online, feeder is aspiring to connect artists with new audiences and enable conversations. How do you view the role of independent publishing platforms for emerging artists?

Heiko: I think in this time we absolutely need new independent publishing platforms.

Every time when money is involved it just takes a short time that the independence is gone, they bring only content that brings profit and if they end up growing fast then it leads into a monopoly which destroys diversity.

Independents can be more specialized in the genre, so it’s easier to find what you’re looking for and as an artist, it means that you are getting the most of the reward and not just 10% or whatever.