Paul Kalkbrenner — Ambient Techno & Melodic House DJ

Paul Kalkbrenner, born 11 June 1977 in Leipzig, East Germany, is a Berlin-based artist who began playing records at teenage youth clubs and has performed live since 1998. Rather than a conventional DJ set, Kalkbrenner is known for breaking his own tracks into component elements and reassembling them on stage, a live-act approach that has nonetheless placed him on club and festival bills alongside touring DJs, including a set at Amnesia in Ibiza in the summer of 2011 and an appearance at the International Music Summit. He released the three-volume mix series Back to the Future in July 2016, a project that chronicled the early-1990s arrival of techno in Berlin and doubled as a DJ-facing mix compilation distinct from his live-performance format. Signed to Sony and his own label Paul Kalkbrenner Musik, with earlier ties to BPitch Control, Kalkbrenner built his career on ambient techno and melodic house material that translates across both his stage shows and the club scene that grew up around Berlin techno in the years following reunification. His Back to the Future series remains his clearest entry into the DJ mix format, complementing a live-performance career built since the late 1990s.