Deep house DJ Solomun brings a DIY attitude for Hong Kong gig

Few electronic music artists combine underground credibility and mainstream success like Bosnian-German deep house DJ and producer Solomun, who spins at Dragon-i on November 16.

That’s partly because his career has been something of a slow-burn overnight success – after several years building up a following in Germany, it all kicked off in 2011, first with a string of remixes and original tracks such as the funktastic Kackvogel, followed by his first residency in Ibiza in 2012. Since then he has essentially taken over the Spanish party island.

He was Mixmag magazine’s DJ of the year in 2012, has won three times at industry Oscars the DJ Awards, and has even become a resident on BBC Radio 1 in the UK, while spending 10 years at the helm of reliable underground house label DIYnamic.

All that after coming to music fairly late in life. Born Mladen Solomun in Bosnia but raised in Hamburg, he worked in construction for his father as a young man, then spent several years at a film production company he set up with friends, and was in his mid-20s by the time he actually went into a recording studio.

“It was thrilling at the beginning,” he says. “I remember something like 15 years ago I visited a friend from Hamburg once a week in his studio – he was part of a hip-hop collective there – and he showed me his production skills. For the first few weeks I was just sitting next to him and watching him turning the knobs. After some time I felt brave enough to buy myself a computer with [music production software] Logic and just started then to produce by myself.”

The music he produces and plays is a particularly melodic, warm, organic form of house, featuring lots of euphoric vocals. There’s also an obvious grounding in hip hop, funk and R&B, examples of which have also been known to find their way into his DJ sets.