Welcome to Rave Jungle, Ken. How has 2019 been for you so far?
Great. I have been spending a lot of time in the studio with other artists, producing and programming the sounds for their upcoming tracks and even managed to release one of my own tracks – ‘Revolver’
Strong sounds across your latest track, ‘Revolver’ – how long had the record been in the works?
The idea came to me during the Christmas holidays, when I was watching a lot of Spaghetti Western movies with Clint Eastwood and music from one of my all time favourite composers, Ennio Morricone. I felt I had to do a club track with a similar theme.
The initial draft took me just a few hours. After bouncing the track back and forth a few times with two of my producer friends, MusicByLucas and Sonny Bass (whose advice I value a lot) – it took me a couple of weeks to narrow down the details and another couple of weeks sending the track back and forth for mastering.
Tell us a little about your journey to now, as an artist?
I learned playing the piano when I was a kid. I was active in the Atari/Amiga tracker scene back in the days and a few years later, I started teaching digital music production for artists. But it wasn’t until 2014 I produced and released my first track, mostly for fun.
I was really surprised to see National Swedish radio picking it up, as it was one of the most downloaded tracks, a few weeks after it got released. This inspired me to start producing music seriously and several of my tracks have already been featured on both Swedish and international radio, with heavyweight DJ support as well.
Sweden is home to many explosive figures in electronic music, what’s the scene like there right now?
Crazy. Kidding a side, Sweden has a lot of great talent in all kind of genres and electronic music is no exception. It all comes down to our municipal music schools that – while not mandatory – were hugely popular in Sweden during the 1980s and still are. It is where I learned to play the accordian and piano, when I was a kid.
You’ve had some great success on the Spinnin’ Records talent pool, tell us a little about this?
I have always been a fan of the Spinnin Talent Pool community, as I think it’s great that young talent have a huge platform to show off their talent and also get a chance to become signed, by one of the biggest labels in the world. I uploaded a few tracks myself, which all went to the Top 10 list.
What has been your biggest achievement to date, release wise in your mind?
It depends. Are we talking about digital streams or support in general? I have millions of plays on Spotify, but since I am not currently doing any touring myself, I appreciate my music being supported by big names such as Quintino, Nicky Romero, Dada Life, Niki Belucci, Sander Van Doorn etc.
Also, I have to say that the biggest achievement is still all the positive comments, messages and mails I receive, from all the people out there listening to and enjoying my music.
Who are some of your favourite recordings artists, currently?
I would like to give a shout out to a few producer friends that I turn to for help and support, that are extremely talented and have a great sound – MusicByLucas, Sonny Bass & Robbie Mendez.
And finally, what’s next for Ken Bauer that your fans can look forward to in 2019?
I will definitely try to make more time for my own tracks. Also a big label have asked me if I would be interested in releasing a few tracks in the Future Trance/House genre, but with my own twist on them – so don’t be surprised if my next record will be around 126 BPM, instead of my normal 128…
Listen to the track below.
