Chapter 1: DeWalta’s debuts
Since his young age, David has been into music interpreting compositions from other artists. Then, one of his goals was to be able one day to compose his own music and create something which belongs to him rather than only play the repertoire of others.
David Koch’s musical journey has began when he was a child. Aged 6 years old he started to learn French horn but his guilty pleasure for jazz music has been stirred by the vinyl collection of his grandfather. This growing passion for Jazz music has led David to learn saxophone. An instrument which symbolizes Jazz culture and which will be used during DeWalta’s live set to work on building a connection between Jazz and electronic music.
His 20’s have been the final chapter of his professional orientation with Berlin’s positive influence coming from its exuberant electronic music scene and his studies of Jazz and Popular Music at the conservatory of music ‘Hans Eißler’.
His experience with classical music has led him to specialize in jazz music because the composition process gives more space to intuition. This is an attribute which is important to consider regarding David’s education at the Waldorf School during his teenage years. This school promotes an education based on the development of oneself through creativity stirred by cultural and handcraft activities.
Chapter 2: Meander and DeWalta
“As with all good artists it’s somewhat indefinable, but it exists somewhere between the rattle and tumble of organic percussion, the vibrant lashings of horns and the warm, rounded electronics.”
The quality of his production has attracted labels such as Vakant, Kalk Pets or Cynosure looking for minimal beats and these fancy musical elements which give soul to a track.
His first LP Wander released on Haunt recordings, a label focused on jazz music reinterpreted by electronic music, underlined his capability to produce tracks between the boundaries of minimal and jazz music. The LP takes you from one atmosphere to another one like a wander through time where some tracks are made of old elements from jazz legacy and other recent from electronic music.
Aside from these labels, DeWalta owns Meander, managed with his friend Fabien Geimer distributing artists such as Cristi Cons. DeWalta has recently defined a new line for the label with the release of two EPs focused even more on explorative sounds. While the EP Lyra is focused on more minimal trippy tracks on the other hand Lyra Pi focuses on more contemplative and ambient work. This breaks with the original line from the label more oriented towards club music.
Chapter 3: Electronic Music, the child of Jazz Music
“There are many parallels between jazz and electronic music in my opinion. High energy on stage could be one aspect, which you will also find in many other music styles as well, but to be more precise I would point out: “scene” / “culture”, “movement“, “nerds” and “dance”! And there are many more parallels!”
Meoko - Talking all that jazz with DeWalta
Jazz is a musical genre to which belongs a large variety of sub-genres which have been refined by the culture of a location or an ethnic group. Each jazz sub-genre has its own scene but it was mainly characterized by places such as clubs, bar, studios or even bedrooms where jazz-cats “nerds” were jamming in with their instruments. The places, the bands and the public all of this wrapped into one community where the sub-culture was nurtured by the music’s vibes.
Since then, a major shift has happened with the Internet we do still have a major defining genre - electronic music - and a lot of sub-genres but they belong less and less to the ethnic group or location their roots grew in. The Internet has made it worldwide but one still has this sense of community and nerds with for instance Facebook Group “Strictly Lo-Fi” where the whole lo-fi subculture has emerged. Yet, today in any city you can find a DJ solely playing g lo-fi sets.