Kabuki (Jan Hennig)

The Soul Behind the Mask

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Hip Hop, Jungle and UK Bass are musical siblings, eternally connected through their cultural roots. So it is no coincidence that the heart of KABUKI beats for all of these seemingly disparate genres. For more than 20 years his music productions covered the full spectrum of beat science, always zeroing in on a particular feeling.

Not content to express himself only through his beats and compositions, Kabuki has also been busy to work behind the scenes, be it programming preset sounds for software synthesizers, creating sample libraries, or teaching sound synthesis at the Abbey Road Institute.

Always in pursuit of new textures and ways to express himself, it was only a matter of time until Kabuki discovered the world of Modular Synthesizers. Be it as a sparring partner in the studio, performing on stage at events such as Superbooth, or jamming with Jazz musicians, Kabuki developed his own unique voice on this instrument.

A project that shows the full scope of Kabukis artistic vision is the New Forms event series that he initiated together with British Bass music figurehead dBridge. For this, they invite like-minded artists to the studio, where they produce a track from scratch in a few hours. The first season of this project took place at the Watergate club in Berlin, and for the second season of New Forms, dBridge and Kabuki are holding a one-year residence in Japan, where they collaborate with domestic artists using music as a way for communication.

Furthermore, Kabuki has quietly established his own platform called Beat Excursions, where he is releasing his own productions,remixes and collaborations blurring the boundaries between Jungle, Juke and Dubstep.

So it’s clear that misty-eyed nostalgia isn’t Kabuki’s thing. Instead, he is more interested in the present and future of electronic music. And more than style and esthetics he is in pursuit of the elusive element that keeps it all moving: the soul.

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