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Music

We Asked Kölsch to Create the Nightclub of his Dreams

Komapkt's Danish dude walks us through an imaginary club that sounds like heaven and only serves champagne.

We've said it before but Rune Reilly Kölsch has about as good a name as you could ask for. Go on, try and think of a better name than Rune Reilly Kölsch. You can't. So there. Kölsch is also, as we've already noted, and as you'll no doubt be aware, a great producer and a fantastic DJ. The Danish don of the dancefloor's best known for club wrecking tearjerkers like "Der Alte" and "All That Matters".

Having released two full lengths on Cologne powerhouse Kompakt — Cologne, weirdly, being the home of the beer that Rune Reilly was presumably named after — and a DJ Kicks mix, and played all around the world, he's a fully established name in both clubs and record shops the globe over.

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Read more: Kölsch's first club

This week sees him popping up at a tonne of ADE related events in, yep, you guessed it, Amsterdam, but next month sees him return to British shores, popping up alongside Roman Flugel and Louisahhh at Daniel Avery's Divided Love night at the one and only Fabric, in London.

Ahead of that we rang Kölsch and asked him to talk us through his perfect club, a club that could only exist, really, sadly, in the imagination. But imagination is always better than reality. Especially when it comes to clubs. Scroll down for a wander through the wildest fantasies of a man who basically lives in nightclubs.

THUMP: Hey Kölsch, first things first, before we've even got in the club. How strict's the door policy? Are we going to employ a few doorpickers?
Kölsch: Yeah, lets get a few doorpickers in. Let's get the right crowd in. At Berghain, for example, they have the most hardcore doorpickers in the world because the queue's about a kilometre long and everyone int he world wants to get in. The doorpickers are vital in ensuring that you get the right, genuinely mixed, genuinely varied crowd in the club. You need all sorts. What you don't need is people who stroll up to the booth and ask for Madonna tunes when a DJs played three hours of driving techno.

I want there to be energy in my perfect club. I wan't people to be open to the experience of it all. I don't want people to have a kind of pre-conception of what to expect. Clubbing should be an event. It should never be run of the mill.

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How do we make it an event then?
We could deploy the old Studio 54 trick of getting a really crazy girl involved. Clubs need crazy people to be as fun as we know they can be. It's also dependent on the music being right, the soundsystem being good, and the DJ being someone who's not afraid to push boundaries enough to be super interesting, but not so self-involved that they get too extreme.

I think the DJ needs to entertain, inform, and educate. When I DJ I want to give the crowd something back. I want to give them an emotional experience that they can relate to. I want them to wake up the next afternoon thinking they got their money's worth the night before. You have to give things back. Clubs are communal spaces: we all share a dancefloor.

Where do you want your booth then?
I want to be a part of the floor. I've played in the middle of the room before and it's beautiful — you feel like you're really communicating. I know that some DJs like to be hidden from view, but I don't really get that. I keep myself excited about being a DJ, about DJing by being part of things. If I play a track that I love and think is really special, I'll take my headphones off and soak it in, like the audience do. I love being part of the party when I perform. I love moving about.

I think that to keep yourself excited, in the long term, you have to want to be on the dancefloor. You've got to love smiling and having fun. You want to share the emotions you're hopefully giving people. For me, I want to create a moment for now. And that's why I have an issue with selfie culture and people recording sets on their phones. We need to embrace the moment because we'll never have it again. Enjoy it while you fucking can.

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The big question now: what drinks are we serving?
We're only going to stock water and champagne. That's it: water and champagne.

We're going to make you resident, obviously, but let's plan the opening night together. Who are you booking?
I'll play pretty early on, and then we'll get David Mancusco down as well. Then I'd go for Derrick May, who has always been one of my favourites. You might thing the jump from Mancuso to May might be a little extreme, but really it's all soulful music of some kind. Laurent Garnier's going to follow Derrick May and Michael Mayer's going to round the party off. He's the best morning DJ in the world. He plays a perfect balance of techno and trance and disco. He's the total opposite of me as a DJ — he lets the tracks play out, seven, eight, nine, ten minute long tracks, playing out in full. That's why I love him.

That all sounds great. What are we calling the club?
You can decide that!

Kölsch plays Fabric on November the 13th. Head here for more information and tickets.

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