While Germany has a long-standing tradition and market for electronic dance music, its producers and DJs more often than not focus on either commercial trance or ultra-minimal techno and house. However, at least one German DJ/producer has chosen to focus on the funk and, for his efforts, Ian Pooley has developed an international career and gained major label support, first starting his career with DJ Tonka as a teenager.

“Tonka had some education, like normal classical education,” says Pooley of his beginnings. “But with the rest, it was really trial-and-error. We soon found out what kinds of machines were used by those guys we admired, like those people from Detroit, like Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. We found those machines, like the old Rolands and old Yamahas quite easily, because back in those days, no one was interested [in] them. And when we got them together, we just started. We just did stuff for fun. And after two years, we had some finished tracks, which were definitely for release.”

Pooley recently introduced his sound to the general public with his first domestic release, Since Then (V2). Already, the album’s “900 Degrees” – a disco-funk number – has been charting with DJs internationally, and critics outside of the clubs have been turning on to Pooley’s chunky mixture of house, jazz and Brazilian pop. When it comes time to make his music, Pooley prefers a small set-up. Mixing on a small analog Mackie mixer, Pooley sequences on the MPC-3000 sampler/sequencer and records straight to DAT. For the live guitars and vocals on his most recent effort, he visited other studios, but recorded onto a ZIP disc and mixed the rest at home. He nowadays favors sampling keyboards that can duplicate many sounds at once.

“The Roland is my favorite piece of equipment right now,” says Pooley. “What I used on the album a lot is the JB-2080 from Roland, direct machines where you can put in this card. And I just bought this machine with three or four extra cards. And it has very, very, very really, really old-sounding Rhodes sounds – at least 30. And I work a lot with them. And I play a lot of basslines from that. The bass sounds sound so real because they have the attack and velocity – things like on the real bass guitars. And then I used the drum sounds and arranged them, of course, on the MPC.”

Plenty of Brazilian music samples float throughout this album and a legal snafu with one caused one track, “Spicy Snapper,” to be removed from the album. Pooley is not very happy about this, but he feels he’s learned a lesson. “I’m of the opinion that I choose my samples very carefully and I don’t use obvious samples,” he says. “So I was a bit pushed by the record label to give out the samples and next time I won’t do that, because I’m quite positive if I don’t name those samples, no one will find out. I really don’t like the obvious sampled stuff. There is some in it, but I always try to cut it up and make it sound like it’s how the original track sounds. I sample a lot with the MPC. But because I did the stuff with the vocals and the instruments, I had to buy a bigger one, so I bought an F-5000 expanded. I always work with Akais, so I stick to that company.”

Like his production work, Pooley’s DJ sets stick to the basics of house, although he’ll mix it up with some downbeat hip hop and U.K. Garage if he’s feeling it. “I go down as far as 80 BPM, maybe, which is totally hip hop, and I mix in some American hip hop or there are really good German hip-hop records we mix in. Yeah, whatever – just good music. But basically, I play house, because people expect me to play house. So I just drop it in for fun.”

– Justin Hampton