TOUGH AT THE TOP - Steve Bug

Poker Flat will turn 10 years old at the start of 2009 – an impressive feat in the electronic music industry! Here Steve Bug looks back at his successes and looks forward to one big party.

Let’s start with what we might know already: Poker Flat is about to release its hundreth 12” inch and at the beginning of next year, the label will celebrate its tenth anniversary, which in the electronic music scene really means something. There aren’t many labels around that have lasted like this neither in quantity nor in quality. Being one of the first labels around focusing on a minimal kind of dance music, Poker Flat became famous with their very first release (and Steve Bug’s hit) ‘Loverboy'. Their success carried on from there and so it’s highly likely that some of your favourite tracks over the last 10 years have come from the Poker Flat family. Whether it’s a Martin Landsky, Märtini Brös or an Argy-piece, a single made for the clubs or a compilation for home-use like Bug’s Bugnology-Series or an artist album: all of them feature what the label stands for.

“All the artists are unique in their style yet still there is a bond that makes them work for Poker Flat” explains Clé from the duo Märtini Brös, who just finished working on their new album, The MB Factor. “It’s kind of a traditional label focusing on a lasting value,” he adds.

The best proof for this might be the single Loverboy. It was not only a massive hit ten years ago, but some weeks ago it was still in the top-ten download charts of Beatport and in some years this single sold better than a new EP. Poker Flat’s contribution to electronic music history started 1999, when weird versions of techno music and trance where still circulating through the European charts. The label’s aim was clear already: Offering quality music that was entertaining. Since then, the label became present around the globe, getting more popular from release to release. Poker Flat became a DJ favourite and a party must-have.

And there they are, still in the record bags of all the big name DJs, almost ten years after their beginning. The man himself, Steve Bug, puts it this way: “At Poker Flat, I can simply do what I want music-wise. It’s the perfect surrounding for our output. There is not a word or genre that describes the Poker Flat music at all. There is just a certain sex in the groove.”

Although Poker Flat has a core brigade of artists, there is room for a new sound, Ryo Murakami from Japan, (one of the few not living in Berlin), or Argy who is from Greece for example. Both belong to the younger generation of the label, but fit in perfectly nonetheless. “The personality of our artists is important”, says Steve. “Actually, I wouldn’t publish a track by a person whom I dislike. You have to work together, so you have to get along. We keep it fresh and are always developing, without following a trend but sticking to our own sound aesthetic. If the label and I wouldn’t keep changing, I would get bored. I don’t like doing the same over and over again.”

Being open to the new, while sticking to a concept makes Poker Flat a constant that does fit into music-trends at the right moment, but without being too trendy. Since most of their artists
are international DJs, there is a connection to the target group. The musicians and DJs know early what the party-crowd is longing for, what works in clubs and where there is room for experiments.

Beside all the fun and creativity, it is a business. “Of course we are aware of the future. And I know that there are not many big DJs playing or buying vinyl anymore. I am not worried about our sound itself, but the whole market of course.” Selling digital music, which is much cheaper, can’t fill the vinyl-hole yet. “We are thinking of new ways to make people buy our releases”, says Steve. “At the moment, I don’t want to do something else except music! So I have to work out how to keep earning money with it,” he explains without the usual criticism of consumers, but with an openness that reflects his music policy.
But no matter in what way the industry will develop within the next months or years, some things are for sure - a super hundreth Poker Flat release, and a big bash to celebrate it.

www.pokerflat-recordings.com