Markus Schulz: radio star in another country

Markus Schulz is releasing his newset album Called Prague and plays Prague's SaSaZu on February 12. We have chatted with him about being a foreigner, a radio star and a succesful businessman.

You became famous for your Global DJ Broadcast show. How did you get to have this gig and how has the show evolved?

Well I’ve always loved radio. I guess that’s not much of a surprise - a lot of people love radio, but I grew up always wanting to reach behind its curtain and be there. Play the music, get on the microphone, that kind of things. Being a club DJ, especially in the early part of the millennium, often put you in close proximity to that and one day the opportunity presented itself and I grabbed it and held on with both hands! 

The show started out on the radio (pre-internet days) on 93.1 Party FM in Miami and it’s just grown and grown from there. I guess its biggest evolution is the World Tour. As the first show of every month, it features a two hour continuous mix from a club or event I’ve played. In 2010 we did some really special World Tour broadcasts which, I think, locked in the intrinsic individual sounds of clubbing from many corners of the world. The key to its success is picking gigs that are really going to convey a different clubbing experience to those people who tune in for the show.

ONE NATION UNDER A GROOVE
You are living in the USA, but are originally German. You also have lived in several places, so have a lot of experience with different areas. Do you think Germans are very different from the Americans?
Very different, no. However I think that wherever there’s a native language difference, there’s going to be noticeable one. You could spend all day picking out minuscule differences, but they’re insignificant at the end of the day. One nation under a groove – that’s how I look at it!
Is it an advantage being a foreigner in another country?
You know I’d need to reach back to answer that question as I’ve not felt like a foreigner in the States for a very, very long time. Maybe I can remember that there’s a little bit of novelty to being a kid from a different country, back when I was a teenager. Other than that no significant advantages or disadvantages spring to mind. 
You are often playing in the UK in such famous places as the Ministry of Sound. What do you think about the British club scene and the clubbers?
Love it! The Gallery at the Ministry is one of my residencies. But if I didn’t love what went down there, I wouldn’t do it. The energy that you can build up in their main room is incredible. I did a six hour set there back in June of last year and it was an incredible night.  
You have your own label. Is it hard to have a label nowadays, is it a viable concept?
Depends I guess by your definition of “nowadays”! Yeah, it is much harder now than say in 2004, when I launched Coldharbour. There is just a lot more music out there, so you have to be absolutely certain that each track that goes into your label’s system is absolutely gonna kill when it gets to dancefloor. I’m very lucky in as much as I’ve got two people who run the label with me and between the three of us we form a tough quality filter. So yes, run right, it’s still viable. 
How do you feel about your latest album? And do you plan another?
I personally am very happy with the outcome. The music on there was harder to categorize, and that may have thrown some people, but for me, yes, I feel very good about it. There will certainly be another Markus Schulz album, no question, but I have any number of projects I want to work on before we get back there. 

0% GRAY

Our server is called Proti šedi which means "against the gay", gray being the boring, dull part of everyday life - we aim to support the creative side of this world. What do you do against the gray?

I’m so anti-gray I barely know where to begin! Let me just say this broadly, I’ve not registered 1% of ‘gray’ on any of the dancefloors I’ve been working as far back as I can remember, so I think I’m doing my part of fighting against it!