He can rave with the best of them, raise his arms to full dance floor delirium, but his head will never spin right off. Paul Kalkbrenner’s demanding compositions are full of energy. They exist to take listeners away from the everyday, from the weekly grind, into rapture – into art, ecstasy, absurdity friendship, hope and love.

Just 12 years old when the Berlin wall fell in 1989, Kalkbrenner watched as East Berlin became an anarchic playground for a previously oppressed generation, recently freed from an overbearing state. Techno music became a way of expression and for many, Paul included, the soundtrack of Germany’s reunification. In the autumn of 1992, together with his friend Sascha Funke, he started to DJ at local youth clubs. Very quickly Paul and Sascha were either DJ’ing or obsessively collecting records as electronic dance music’s first tidal wave spilled over dance floors in Berlin’s soon to be legendary clubs Tresor, Planet, Walfisch and e-werk.

At 18, he took a job at German television, spending his days sitting in editing suites watching as staid German political parties held national conferences. This would make him enough money to buy equipment to produce his own tracks. As much fun as DJ’ing was, Paul wanted to play his own music live.

His first tracks were released on Ellen Allien’s newly founded Bpitch Control label in 1999. In contrast to the darker, monotone sounds that characterized techno at the time, Paul’s music was more melodic and enriched with a warm dubby feel. After a number of 12″ singles, Paul realised he was better suited producing albums — in 2000 he released “Superimpose”, followed by “Zeit” one year later. His third album, “Self”, from 2004 resonated beyond the dance floor and took the cinematic quality of his music to new heights — an indication of what was to come next.

In 2004 Berlin-based film director self-confessed Kalkbrenner fan, Hannes Stoehr, got in touch with Paul. He planned to make a movie about an electroni...