After one year and 2 great EPs that have taken dance floors down all over the world Munich-born ROLAND APPEL needs hardly introduction anymore! Just 2 words will suffice: Dark Soldier. This stunning track was a secret hit at the 2007 Miami Winter Music Conference, and found its way into the bags and the charts of the biggest DJs in the world such as LAURENT GARNIER, TIEFSCHWARZ, MICHAEL MAYER, HELL, EWAN PEARSON, DIXON, GILLES PETERSON, AGORIA, KIKI and DJ T amongst many others. Even UK’s most important music magazines like Mixmag, Fact and I-DJ acclaimed it and made it track of the month last summer… Not bad for a debut solo E.P.!
But ROLAND APPEL is far from being a newcomer in the world of music production. On the contrary the JAZZANOVA crew knew the made the best possible choice when asking him to release his solo tracks on Sonar Kollektiv. Indeed ROLAND started Djing and writing music in the early nineties. With his long-time partner and friend CHRISTIAN PROMMER he founded the band FAUNA FLASH and himself a name with 3 full-length albums and many 12“, remixes and appearances on great labels such as Compost Records, G Stone Recordings and !K7. He was also of one third of the famous TRÜBY TRIO, whose album Elevator Music has been an outstanding success in Germany and beyond. Together with CHRISTIAN PROMMER and PETER KRUDER he formed the project VoomVoom, releasing on !K7. With such a high profile ROLAND APPEL toured all around the world and played in the best clubs such as Fabric in London, Cielo in New York or Yellow in Tokyo and at the biggest music festivals such as Roskilde festival, Sonne Mond und Sterne, Sunflower, Big Chill Festival, 10 days off and Montreux Jazz Festival.
ROLAND started to work on his solo project in 2004 with the aim of bridging the gap between a song and the feelings it carries and a banging house track that could make people dancing for hours. For Dark Soldier (SK158/elektrish) and Unforgiven (SK168/elektrish) he teamed up with sound engineer JAN KRAUSE and delved into his diverse influences from Detroit Techno to Folk over to Soul, Disco and House and produced neo-romantic deep-house tunes with enough drama to tear up the dancefloors. In his third single called Inner Soul (SK178) ROLAND APPEL tells us the origin of his inspiration in musical way. His creativity comes from his inner soul. „Creativity is love-making with your soul“. To put this adage into music, ROLAND kept this dreamy deep-house touch intact with once again a grandiose orchestration made of live drums, flourishing layers of strings and pads, soulful female choirs, arpeggiated and modulated stabs of synths and a magical break that will certainely take the crowd to the 7th heaven. Once again it’s ARABA WALTON whose voice underlines and strengthens the feelings of the track.
On the flipside ROLAND goes a bit more moody and uptempo with the track New Love. Over a pounding 4/4 bass drum beat, soulful vocals and over his now-trademark live house beats ROLAND added some very dirty stabs of synths and pourred a few drops of acid just when it’s time to break loose. More than a simple B-side New Love is a killer track that will make people fall into ecstasy on the dancefloor from Berlin to Barcelona!
