BeatRoute Magazine [AB] print e-edition - [June 2018]

JUCY
ELDERBROOK
a surprise that keeps on surprising
Five years ago Londoner Alexander Kotz, the Then, in the midst of his first year, he uploaded
the song “Rewinding” to Soundcloud.
singer, songwriter, and producer known as
Elderbrook, was a university student self-releasing
“I think I uploaded it to Soundcloud when I
downtempo acoustic music online.
had 153 followers thinking basically nothing was
Now, thanks to artistic ingenuity, a decisive going to come of it,” he says.
gamble, and the power of the internet, he’s
Instead, it became a life-changing catalyst
become one of house music’s most recognizable seemingly overnight.
new voices, a platinum selling artist, a Grammy “All of a sudden it got 200,000 plays, and I
nominee, and an opening act for Bonobo on think I was as surprised as anyone else because
select tour dates this summer.
off the back of that Black Butter [Records] got
“Honestly it’s so amazing just to be associated
in contact,” says Kotz. “I started working with
with someone like that, I actually love him them, released an EP, and I think that was the
and everything he’s done, just to be chosen to moment I decided to leave university.”
support him really it’s amazing,” says Kotz.
Although Kotz sees the decision to leave
He’s currently on the phone from a train university as the best decision of his educational
somewhere in London. Just a few hours prior he
career, he also acknowledges that it was
was atop the London Eye alongside production definitely a gamble as he now had to navigate
duo Camelphat being presented with a platinum the complex world major-label music with only
plaque for “Cola,” the song that shot to the number-one
the experience of an indie artist. Thankfully the
spot on the Billboard dance chart last success of the first EP Simmer Down and the
year and earned them the Grammy nomination major label recognition continued to snowball
for best dance recording.
his notoriety.
The journey to this point began when
A year after the release of his first single, German
Kotz, who played in indie bands as a teenager,
production duo Andhim remixed his song
purchased the audio software program Logic to “How Many Times.” It soon became a hit in Ibiza
record and release what he describes as “acoustic and clubs worldwide, and currently has almost
folky music.”
two million plays on Soundcloud alone.
“I learned how to record the guitar and vocals, More importantly it became a stylistic turning
then after that I started pressing buttons and figuring
point for Kotz, inspiring him to take his down-
out you can do so much more,” says Kotz. tempo, folk-inspired sound in a dancier, more
“And that kind of developed and developed until house music driven direction.
there was no more guitar, it was just me pressing “Those kinds of songs really made me want
buttons and making funny sounds I guess.” to make more music like that, it just made for a
Hoping to eventually make music a career, much more fun evening, a more energetic environment
Kotz decided to major in music at University.
that I just love performing in,” he says.
He soon discovered, however, that the academic House music was always an influence in his
study of music wasn’t what he expected.
music, however being in close proximity to some
“To be honest I wasn’t doing too well at it, a of the genre’s mainstays gave him new insight
lot of it is knowing music theory and knowing into that realm of sound.
the real ins and outs of classical music,” he says. “I think [the first EP] was me as a folk musi-
JUCY BEATROUTE • JUNE 2018 | 41
cian trying to find my way around a computer,
trying to make house music and not quite succeeding,
and ending up with a 90 bpm hip-hop
kind of thing really.”
Kotz also believes that it was this single’s
success that caught the attention of CamelPhat,
who unexpectedly booked him for a studio
session in London early last year despite having
no previous correspondence.
“Honestly I’ve never been in more of a spur of
the moment writing scenario,” says Kotz.
“When they came to the studio I met them
for the first time, and they said ‘okay this is the
instrumental that we want you to write over’
— and I was like okay, give me a minute, so
they were just sitting there looking at me, I sat
down on the floor and wrote some words quite
hastily.”
According to Kotz he then got up, sung the
lines that would eventually become “Cola,” and
left the studio not knowing what would come
of the session. A month later he received a text
saying that Defected Records, a giant in the
house music world, wanted to sign it.
“We really weren’t expecting anything to
BY JONATHAN CRANE
come from it at all, we were surprised that they
wanted to sign it in the first place,” says Kotz.
“But they did, they released it, and it’s been
surprising us ever since that initial surprise.”
A surprise that keeps surprising is an apt
metaphor for Kotz’s career on the whole.
From the runaway success of his first single, to
being discovered by Black Butter, to becoming
a Grammy nominee, Kotz’s story is that of an
artist who was plucked from relative obscurity
and swept along on a ride to unimaginable
heights.
However, as his most recent single “Sleepwalking”
indicates, behind the surprises is an artist
who has honed in on the formula for creating
house music that can cross over from the club to
a wider audience by morphing it into something
new. This is precisely why Kotz ultimately doesn’t
see himself as a house artist
“I love the music, but I personally as an artist
don’t see myself in that world [of house music],
I’m more of an, I guess obviously because I
came from a folky background, more of a signer
songwriter background with an electronic house
twist,” says Kotz.