Estimulo

Estimulo started listening to music in the age of 4, when he recorded music from the radio (mostly RIAS Berlin, FM station of the US-Army in Berlin), cutting them, producing his own radio shows containing his favorite tunes and announcing them. In this age the musical taste was still quite undefined and broad, but the music by black r&b/disco bands like ''Chic'' and ''Kool and the Gang'' drew his attention to them.Later on, in 1983, he got presented his first vinyl 7'' single by his grandmother. It was ''The Haunted House of Rock'' by Whodini. Since then, Estimulo started to record everything from the radio which sounded electronic and groovy. A big influence was the NY and LA electro-funk as well as black music in general. But there was still no special radio show for this kind of music, so it took until 1988 when he first heard the sounds of a radio show called ''The Big Beat on Fridays'', that aired on friday night and was pumping all the hot import shit, from disco to early house music, soul and funk, rap.He couldn't get enough of sample house tracks from the UK like MARRS ''Pump up the volume'', Coldcut ''Doctorin' The House'', Bomb the Bass ''Beat Dis'', etc which meanwhile also aired on normal radio during the daytime, becoming major pop hits in Germany as well as in the UK.Desperately Estimulo started searching for any ''house'' record he could get a hold of, but he wasn't very lucky in this time. So the radio with shows like ''Big Beat'', run by the visionary Monika Dietl, as well as Marusha's show on the GDR station ''DT 64'' remained the main source for the new sounds.As techno exploded in Berlin after the wall came down, the sound was getting harder and harder. Though he made some excursions into hard techno, gabber, etc. he always felt unsatisfied with the lack of soul in this kind of music, so he got focussed on US (mostly deep) House and Detroit Techno and started buying records, which was possible because meanwhile some specialist record shops for this kind of music had opened in Berlin. Every single cent of rare pocket money was spent for music, music and only music.In 1990, Estimulo set up his own little FM pirate station to broadcast electronic beats of all kinds to the neighborhood. The station had a range of about 1 kilometer, so it was mostly his friends who tuned in. Still he got busted after just a few months and the police took all his equipment. Being a programmer and electronics tinkerer, he didn't take long to replace it and went on broadcasting for some years.