Daniel Paul

As the wall comes down in 1990, new exciting possibilities open up
for the young Daniel Paul Hoffmann, then 20 years of age.
The early 90s bring a fresh zest of life to Berlins club culture
(particularly in the eastern part of the city): lots of underground – cult
places like Tresor or WMF come to life, introducing people to a new, vivid
club culture and numerous fascinating music styles.
Under the influence of his nighttime excursions, the east-berliner Daniel
Paul gets more and more interested in electronic sounds, especially in
acid-, detroit- and chicago-house, jazz and techno.
With the wish to produce music himself, he builds up his first own studio,
bit by bit and modestly financed. Things start to get serious as he begins
to work as a
DJ at the clubs he used to be one of those early 90s fancy dancers (Tresor
for example). In this time, he gathered experience of the changing sounds
and trends of the music, gradually found his own style and soon became
well-known for it within the club scene.
Through various contacts, which he has from his days in the Civil
Service, he also gets to know his future co-producer Jens Augustowsky
(aka DJ Zky). They hit it off right from the start, and in 1995 found their
own Label, Cabinet Records.
The first releases, co-productions from the label founders Daniel Paul and
DJ Zky, again reflect strong influences from Detroit-and Chicago-House. In
the meantime, the Label soon developes its own musical style described as
one of the earliest minimal progressive house with jazzy remains.
Inevitably, the Label soon won a lot of attention in the music scene.
Acts and Projects like Horseshoe, The Poor Knight, Honesty, Aka Elektrik and
Melt Brothers are signed and “Cabinet -House” gets known as a free and open
style of music.
It was just this variety that awoke the interest of the Jazzanova – crew and
their .
freshly founded Label Sonar Kollektiv in 1997: soon after meeting the
Jazzanova crew,Daniel Paul becomes a member of Sonar Kollektiv and begins to
work on
his own Label Mermaid Records, one of those famous Sonar Kollektiv –
affiliated labels. With this Jazzanova / Sonar Kollektiv background, he
finally is able to release his jazz influenced productions, among them the
results of working together with DJ Honesty as Slope.
Daniel Paul and DJ Honesty have produced their first album for the Berlin
Label Interfearence. Slope will more and more become the main focus of
Daniel
Pauls work. After the first remix for Freestyle Man in May 2002, a
second work follows in October for the Jazz legend Paul Kuhn on the
revisited series of the berlin based label Crippled Dick Hot Wax.
Enthusiastic reactions from international press and DJs followed.
After the release of the highly acclaimed “Para los Pinchas” in 2001 and
remixes for Daniel Magg (on Compost records), the first Slope album on Sonar
Kollektiv is released in spring 2003: “M” also gets rhapsodic feedbacks from
djs all around the world, and is very well accepted by the home – listening
people. After moving to a new studio in early 2004, Daniels and Hans
production – labour for the new album of italo – western – scorewriter
legend Alessandro Alessandroni, is finally finished. Expect this very
melodic, strongly jazz – infected album for this years fall on Crippled dick
hot wax. Remixes of “M” will be released in June 2004 on Sonar Kollektiv,
featuring Yannick L., Innocent Sorcerers and Lars Behrenroth.
With all this “Sonar Kollektiv” and “Slope” – talk, one may tend to forget
the zygote where everything came from: what’s going on with cabinet records?
Well, don’t worry, after a two – years break, new stuff is being released.
Four new eps have emerged since fall 2002 (including such great artists as
Daniel Paul, DJ Honesty, Yannick Labbé and DJ Zky feat. Paul Kalkbrenner).
At the moment studio preparations are being made for the second Slope Album,
for Sonar Kollektiv which is planned to be publicised in the Spring 2004.

Furthermore there are plans for various re-mixes, for example, Robag
Wruhme´s KTB on Sonar Kollektiv.

Yannick Labbé