20th of MAY 2005 **SON KITE, Seb & Marcus, ZD-Code

[men@work]

Behind the successful production of Son Kite are Sebastian Mullaert and Marcus Henriksson. With different origins they got together in 1996 and are today working full time as producers in their High-Hat Studio in Malmoe, Sweden.

 

Sebastian started to play the organ at the age of eight, which also led him on to taking piano lessons. He was still playing the organ when he started to play the violin at the age of nine and he continued to play these two instruments until he was around 17. During this time he played in different ensembles, took lessons in how to play other instruments, gave lessons in how to play the violin and so on. So until the age of 17 one could say that he followed the path of a classical musician. The change came the same year when Sebastian and 4 friends formed a pop band called DIM, where Sebastian played the violin using effects to create sounds, which resemble the electronic sounds that he makes today. They made a couple of demos but a difference in ambition to take the music to a new level led to a split up after three years.

 

Marcus was never into playing instruments but he was very into listening to music and unlike Sebastian he has been into electronic music since his very first record. It was synth such as Kraftwerk and Human League which he stuck with until the beginning of the 90´s as the whole thing was turned upside down when he went to his first techno party. He managed to get a pair of pitchable turntables and started buying records and made mixtapes for friends at school who wanted to hear the new music. Later he moved on to play out in parties, first being a resident at the parties he was involved in promoting, but with the reputation he got, led to more sets at different parties all over the south of Sweden. This is where he first met Sebastian and they became friends. After about a year they combined Sebastian’s musical knowledge and perspective as a musician with Marcus´ DJ skills and experience from the techno scene into producing. They started out with some simple fragments that were tried out in Marcus´ DJ sets and these moments became a very important source for feedback that led to their development. With the acquired experience they put some tracks together under the project name Trimatic. The tracks were pressed as a whitelabel for promotion and to find distribution for their own label Baluns records but at this stage it seemed like neither the music or the market were ready for each other .

In the summer of 1998 a new turn was taken in the production and they decided this was to be a different project and so Son Kite saw daylight. In August they got their first proper booking to play live and with a lot of new music they demounted their studio to go to Copenhagen and play live for an overwhelmed crowd and this gave them the inspiration needed to make a second send out to find a distributor for Baluns records. Instead of finding a contract for distribution of their label it turned out that one of the distributors was also managing a label. They were more than thrilled by this new sound and this was the beginning of the successful Son Kite.

 

Since that September day in 1998 many things have happened both with Son Kite and the other projects in High-Hat studio. At the end of 1999 Son Kite released their debut album “Minilogue” on the german label Novatekk and this album has by many been called a milestone, released in a time of stagnation for trance music. The two year period after the first album was a very productive time and they had a lot of releases on labels like Flying Rhino , Novatekk, Transient, Iboga, Spiral Trax and of course their own label Digital Structures. In May 2001 the second Son Kite album, “Perspectives of …” was released and got a massive response from all around the world and yet again Son Kite had shown a path for the progress of trance with their unique sound and production.

 

In 2002 a lot of time was put on working with the labels and this of course meant less time for making music and strangely as it seems the limited time they had in the studio for producing exclusive music actually resulted in more remixes for other artists than original tracks because of a very big demand. Among the remixes they made, the one of the old classic Vernon “Wanderer” originally released on Harthouse, became a big hit on the trance scene in 2002. During this period they also started their side project Minilogue that shows influences from a vider scale of genres than Son Kite. Especially Minilogue shows more of Marcus & Sebastians house influences. Minilogue have had several releases on house labels like Baroque, SOG, UCMG and Vsual. After producing under the name Son Kite for several years this was a great step for their creativity and nowadays Minilogue is starting to get a crowd almost as big as Son Kite. In the future Marcus & Sebastian want to put more effort it to evolve Minilogue into something new and very on the edge.

 

Today, after 2 albums, 20 singles and 50 or so compilations, Son Kite has appeared on more than 200 000 sold records and are an institution in themselves. They have received support from all the major names on the DJ circuit as their music finely hovers between commercial and underground – always ahead and the next thing to be picked up. With a global following of fans Son Kite have toured the world over and over, playing live for hundreds of thousands fans since the end of 1999. They have played in everything from a private birthday party in Manhattan to a festival in Acapulco with more than 30 000 people attending.