ND_BAUMECKER
Labels: FREUNDINNEN, Ostgut Ton
Frankfurt native Andreas Baumecker aka nd_baumecker began his DJ career in1991 in a bar called Romantica, located near the city’s main train station. The venue was run by legendary nightlife impresario Hans Romanov, who also operated Intimbar, where Baumecker would eventually move on to a short time later. It’s there that Ata and Heiko M/S/O from Playhouse took notice, inviting Baumecker to work as a buyer for their record store Delirium and offering him a residency at their seminal WildPitchClub night at the Club Nachtleben. Soon, Baumecker was regularly playing Frankfurt’s numerous electronic music venues (XS - later The Box, Dorian Gray, plus countless underground one off parties), before moving on to Heidelberg and Mannheim, where he promoted the club night HD800 together with Dirk Mantei aka D-Man, Move D and Bouillabass. He worked at Humpty Records in Heidelberg and also curated the label „Freund“ for the labelgroup UCMG.
Regular guest DJ sets at Berghain / Panorama Bar predecessor club OstGut in Berlin followed and he established his own label Freundinnen.
nd_baumecker moved to the German capital in 2004. There he picked up a residency at Panorama Bar inside the newly opened Berghain (in fact, he was the first one to ever play the venue at its pre-opening party), a residency that he holds to this day. On top of this he started a job as the club’s in-house booker, before he stepped down from the role in 2016.
He is curating and hosting the „Revolting“ parties at Lab.oratory, the direct successor to the „Smegma“ parties held in the early years of Berghain.
Stylistically, Baumecker covers a truly broad spectrum of dance music, refusing to be limited by genre: "A well known choreographer once said: 'Surprise is important.’ I think this approach describes my DJ style best. I’m constantly oscillating between nu disco, house, techno, electro, broken beats and pop. Ultimately, I’m open to anything – from brute force to tender. I see the dance floor as an experimental field: If you manage to really capture the crowd, you can do almost everything with them.”
Of course, the flow of tracks and resolving musical differences plays a key role in achieving just that, and few DJs are as adept at uniting fundamentally disparate sounds, different keys, different rhythms and different atmospheres. “If something sounds truly new to me they give me a jolt. Also, dance music should have a good portion of funk and, in a way, it needs to sounds like „disco“, whatever the style. I like vocals a lot. In my opinion they are the most important and significant bits you’re taking home after a good night out; They're the most memorable.”
Since 2010 Andreas has also produced with Sam Barker as Barker & Baumecker. The duo have released four 12”s and two albums on Ostgut Ton, operating musically between dancefloor and spiraling left field electronics.
He has gone on to have releases as SNECKER (together with Snax aka Paul Bonomo) on Freeride Millennium, Permanent Vacation and a Wild Pitch Club Compilation put together with Ata on Running Back.