Camo & Krooked

Every so often an act will emerge in a specific genre and turn it inside out. They’ll pull it, they’ll push it, they’ll make you question everything about it. They’ll bring in their own influences, elements and techniques. They’ll build huge towers then knock them down… Only to build something even bigger, even more influential, timeless and definitive. One particular duo who continue to do this are multiple award winning, Vienna-based duo Camo & Krooked. Cited by peers and press as one of the most important and vital acts in drum & bass this generation; since 2007 Reinhard Camo Rietsch and Markus Krooked Wagner have thrown every corner of their souls into the music that brought them together and drives them. For over a decade their distinctive, instantly recognisable signature has been sprayed across the catalogues of the most seminal labels in electronic music, they’ve put Austria on the map as one of the top three incubational countries in their genre and their sound has had a phenomenal impact on the direction of drum & bass. Now, with four albums, 126 original tunes, 25 remixes, 50 remixes of their own music and 16 awards to their name, they continue to take their sound, vision and ideas to unchartered heights. Thanks to their energy, passion and ability to tear up the rule book time and time again, it still feels like this is only the beginning of their decorated journey. “Camo & Krooked are the drum & bass rooted duo filling the void in modern dance music. The Austrian duo – made up of Reinhard Rietsch and Markus Wagner – take production leaps and bounds unlike any electronic collective.” DJ Mag

Where the journey began… Reinhard and Markus famously met on the halfpipe but truly bonded in the studio. Both inspired by the pace, energy and melting pot ferocity of drum & bass, and its famously high technical production benchmarks, their shared vision was tangible since their earliest dispatches on Mainframe Recordings. Austria’s longest standing and most consistent and innovative drum & bass brand, the young duo were a driving force behind both Mainframe events and label releases, helping shape the sound… Not only of the label itself, but their country’s D&B scene too; proving that drum & bass didn’t have to come for its UK motherland to be authentic, inspiring and true to the craft. It wasn’t long before Camo & Krooked were embraced by the UK’s infamously tightly kept D&B circle working with some of the genre’s most prominent pioneers Micky Finn, Simon Bassline Smith and Futurebound, releasing on their labels Finn People, Technique and Viper. By the time their white knuckle, dancefloor dizzying album ‘Above & Beyond’ landed on Mainframe in 2010, Camo & Krooked they had established themselves as one of the most exciting breakthrough acts and picked up their first of many awards for Best Breakthrough Act in the 2010 Drum&BassArena Awards. How the journey developed… Within months of their incendiary debut album Reinhard & Markus were signed to Hospital Records, one of the largest and most prominent independent labels in the genre. It’s here where they honed some of their most enduring characteristics; their strong sense of musicality, their ability to draw in references such as disco, house, soul, funk and electro, their unique sonic palette and their sense of restraint both stylistically and physically… During their six years on Hospital Records Camo & Krooked reminded us that the best things are worth waiting for, that fans deserve more than being shelled by countless releases and should only be presented by the very best you can possibly release at that time as artists. These indelible traits were established over the course of two albums on Hospital Records; in 2011 came the visceral dancefloor fusion of ‘Cross The Line’, an album that ranged from soulful D&B to necksnapping dubstep via sleazy funk and featured the likes of TC, Jenna G, Skittles and Ayah Marer. While ‘Cross The Line’ sealed Camo & Krooked’s game status, their impact was galvanised and amplified by their fittingly titled ‘Zeitgeist’ album in 2013. An award-winning trip that took every drum & bass rulebook and trampled them into a tempo flexing funky provocative pulp, ‘Zeitgeist’ left everyone under no illusion of Reinhard and Markus’s musical depths and sense of theatre, drama and soul. It consolidated their influence with their now famous ‘anti drop’ arrangement technique that’s now a popular motif across all subgenres of drum & bass. A vast narrative laced with themes and details, ‘Zeitgeist’ was a watermark moment for both Camo & Krooked and electronic music. A moment where formulas were forgotten and boundaries blurred, it showed just how much Reinhard & Markus were doing things their own way and were never going to be distracted by trends.

“In the ever-evolving world of electronic music, each genre has a handful of centerfold acts that have pioneered the movement in such a way that many have brashly followed suit. By paving the creative way and decimating every glass ceiling in their path, these said artists continually construct a precedent that directly reflects the extreme hours and tireless passions spent culminating a production so pristine, yet only a few minutes long. Camo & Krooked embody that.” YourEDM

Live and beyond… During the four years that followed ‘Zeitgeist’ Reinhard & Markus honed their performance craft as one of the most prominent and in demand headliners in bass music. Consistently nominated in the top 10 acts for the Best DJ accolade in the Drum&BassArena Awards since 2012, as DJs Camo & Krooked have been fully integrated in the D&B DJ premiership. Their ‘Zeitgeist’ live show saw them completely deconstruct their material and rebuild it in their own live hybrid that was programmed, built and developed solely by the duo themselves. Another pivotal chapter for Camo & Krooked, the Zeitgeist live tour verified their headliner status and ability to create something that stands out as truly unique in a highly competitive and crowded scene leading to tours across most continents and shows at the most prestigious venues and festivals. Their dominance during these years also lead to a wealth of opportunities to take their sound and vision to the widest possible audiences and markets imaginable. Camo & Krooked music can be found across the pop cultural spectrum from the CSI:Cyber TV series to games such as Golden Eye, Fifa Street and Wipeout 2048. Their music has also been used to unveil new Porsche and Lamborghini models at the Geneva International Motor Show in 2015 while in 2016 Red Bull invited Reinhard & Markus to compose an original piece of music ‘Gravitas’ to soundtrack a unique synchronised skydiving routine. They also remixed artists as diverse and influential as Lana Del Ray, Noisia, Metronomy, Hadouken! and Paul Van Dyk. All the while they were redeveloping their studio tools, reprogramming a whole new technique and redefining their direction for their most game-changing chapter so far. The full picture is revealed…. Reinhard & Markus’s boldest chapter to date, however began in 2016 as they announced Mosaik; the multi-faceted concept that panned out to show an even clearer picture of their musical scope and ambition. Mosaik ran in two narratives: as their own label, in partnership with iconic label Ram Records and major label BMG, and their long awaited fourth album. This was a landmark move for the duo as they presented their latest creations on an even wider scale. Eschewing all popular techniques and trends used in popular electronic music production, they explained in an interview with leading new electronic music platform UKF how they wanted to create their own unique palette. “We just don’t want to be using sounds that everyone else is using. We’ve been getting simple sounds and making them stand out as well as possible. It becomes easy to make sick basslines with presets etc – they’ve lost value. Everyone has rinsed and used those sick noises so it’s important to go back to making nice tones and make them as warm as possible. We want pure tones, pure sounds, something that doesn’t sound outdated or overdone in a year or two. We’ve also created lots of Foley sounds, especially for percussion. There’s more character in that than any kind of sample especially when it’s recorded in the room we sit in all day. It feels intimate.” Camo & Krooked The album ‘Mosaik’ lived up to the high expectations the duo had set themselves; musically it achieved the holy grail of albums by sounding familiar to fans of their previous work yet entirely refreshed and redesigned and exciting. Confidently leftfield in its scope, textures and flow it featured a range of vocalists from exciting newcomers such as Joe Killington to fellow Austrian runaway success James Hersey as it flowed from evocative, barbed soul bangers such as ‘Black Or White’ and ‘Ember’ to rich, dynamic departures such as the tribal call to arms ‘Witchdoctor’ and the authentic bass slapping raw funk of ‘The Sloth’. It felt like the sound Reinhard & Markus had always wanted to achieve but finally had the time and position to truly explore and execute without compromise. “Mosaik wasn’t just the peak of Camo & Krooked’s epic year, it was one of the key musical peaks of the year for drum & bass full stop. At a time when many behind the scenes are lamenting lack of innovation in the genre, the Austrian duo came through with an album so musical, textured and creative it blew most of us away.” UKF The title and concept of ‘Mosaik’ wasn’t a coincidence. This was the broadest, most accomplished portrait Camo & Krooked have painted to date: Whether you zoom right into the smallest minutiae or zoom right out as far as you can to take in everything Reinhard & Markus have achieved so far, there’s a consistency of detail, determination and a musical dexterity that lives in its own lane, its own time and its own class that transcends tempo and genre and is the reason why the duo were voted by the public for three trophies in the 2017 Drum&BassArena Awards: Best Album, Best Producer and Best Track (for ‘Ember’) They also came second in the Best DJ category after Andy C. The importance of this achievement is not to be ignored as Reinhard & Markus continue to push their unique fusion and powerful melting pot to larger and larger audiences around the world. The journey continues… Which is where we find our protagonists right now. Having teased fans with a new live hybrid for their Mosaik shows that takes their performance signature to whole new levels with live improvisation and treasured analog instruments, Camo & Krooked have returned to their foundations. Preparing for another creative voyage of discovery as they develop their next musical manoeuvres, the Austrian A-list producers have enjoyed time on the road as DJs, headlining all major electronic music festivals. Re-rooting with the culture that brought them together and inspired them so much in the first place, Reinhard & Markus are working on a whole new vein of compositions. Having curated one of 2018’s most prominent various artist albums ‘Mosaik Remixed’, 2019 saw them re-route from the often-isolating creative process of album writing to focus on the dancefloors they came from and play to every weekend. The result has been string of heavily-supported singles that not only hit the dancefloor but take their sound in a host of exciting directions. “Musically we were behind the curtain for a while, trying to learn and move forward. Now we’re confident, we’re coming back with some next level Camo & Krooked music. We just want to see how far we can stretch our sound and how it still sounds like us. We’ve stared a lot of collaborations that are really exciting for us. We want to make stuff that piques our interest in something we might want to explore for an angle.” Camo & Krooked Delivered throughout the year, each track really does stretch and develop the Camo & Krooked signature sound. Kicking off the year with ‘Atlas’, the launch track for UKF’s massive decade-long celebration series ‘UKF10’, Reinhard & Markus have delivered some of the most innovative creations of their career: the Haitian-inspired ‘Loa’ marked their return to Hospital Records, while ‘Kallisto’ and ‘Sidewinder’ saw them recalibrate with their equally decorated Austrian kindred spirit Mefjus in two very different ways that even the most attentive fans couldn’t forecast. ‘Set It Off’ saw them sign out another exceptional year in their career with another genuinely unique hybrid with certified hip-hop royalty Jeru The Damaja. A powerful statement to end a decade, leaving no clue as to which way they’ll take their sound next. Over 10 years deep into their unique stratospheric rise, Camo & Krooked continue to pull, push and turn electronic music inside out… They remain one of the most important, in-demand and vital acts of their generation.