Nick Curly

After six years of running the respected Cécille Records and establishing it as a go to label for fans of a certain strain of house music, the label is going on something of a hiatus. As such, Nick Curly is now focussing on his other main interest, 8Bit Records, and it will be here that the German DJ and producer will hone in once again on the deep and tracky tech house sound that made him so well known in the first place. As well as releasing more of his own EPs, he will of course continue to A&R new talent for the label at the same time as continuing to work with friends and peers like Johnny D and Marcus Fix, who have been a constant throughout Curly's musical life.

In 2014 the Nick Curly also enters a pantheon of DJ greats with his entry into Defected's hallowed In the House mix series. It's a perfect hook up given his close relationship with the label – not only did Defected re-release his debut artist album, Between The Lines, in 2012, but they also helped serve up some killer remixes of it from seminal acts like Larry Heard. On top of this, of course, Curly is a long time DJ who first cut his teeth during his teens with a residency at the legendary Vibration Club in the Karlsruhe region of Germany.

Since then he has gone on to hold down residencies in Ibiza with Kehakuma at Space, where he helped define that night's sound for a number of years, as well as turning in an official mix CD for them in the past. He's also mixed an official CD for Cocoon, another Ibiza night at which he has been a popular guest, whilst outside Ibiza he has played the world's biggest and best festivals and most connoisseur clubs including Womb in Tokyo, Sonus Festival in Croatia, D-Edge in Brazil, Eastern Electrics Festival In London, Love Family Park in Germany and Gypsy Club in Russia.

Curly's productions and the music released on his labels has come to be known as the Mannheim sound – a deep and tracky tech house style that is loopy and involving, folding you into the groove with each rotation as various elements of soul and melodic beauty infuse the spaces left behind. Whilst tech house is a genre much maligned; Nick Curly has been, is, and always will be a shining example of just how the genre should sound.

"I have a new EP coming out in that style," says the man himself. "It's back to more like the stuff I started with; the Mannheim sound that helped launched my international career. People, especially DJs, expect this from me and I know DJs are playing it already." With a renewed focus on his boutique 8Bit label, plenty more productions in the pipeline and an ever busier DJ schedule, Nick Curly becomes an ever more essential member of the global house community with every passing week.