Chapter 1: The child of Motor City
Danilo Plessow is a House DJ and producer who can be considered as a pillar of the House Music scene as well as a curator of the genre.
He was born in the ’80s in Stuttgart - the cradle of Germany’s automobile industry but also one European epicentre for the emergence of electronic music.
During the ’70s American DJs brang funk and soul music when they came to play for the GIs based there during Cold War. Though, a parallel between Detroit and Stuttgart can be drawn because of the industrial and musical background they share as a Motor City.
Chapter 2: The rise of a young prodigy
Danilo’s parents wanted for their children that they received a musical education by playing one instrument. At 6 years old, the drums have been Danilo’s choice and as he grew music has been more and more central in his life.
Around 10 years old he joined a jazz big band and aside started to compose his first tracks using samples from CDs thanks to a cheap sequencer. At barely 16 years old he released his first EP on Stuttgart’s Pulver Records under his House and Broken Beat project Inverse Cinematics.
Chapter 3: Motor City Drum Ensemble
In 2008, his musical career took another dimension with the kick-off of his Motor City Drum Ensemble project and the five releases of the mythic Raw Cuts series on his label.
The association of Motor City and Drum Ensemble is a direct reference of the roots of the project.
Motor City for the influences from Stuttgart’s American legacy - jazz, soul and funk - and Detroit’s techno and hip-hop scene.
Drum Ensemble for his collection of representative classic drum machines - such as the iconic Roland TR 909 used by Jeff Mills - at the core of his secret recipe to make the magic happened in his compositions.
The Raw Cuts series is the perfect expression of the combination of Motor City Drum Ensemble with only samples from vinyl rips which give this warm crackly thump and the keys, melodies played by Danilo to celebrate his love for soulful black music.
Chapter 4: Danilo's vision of the electronic music industry
Danilo is an activist concerned by the future for electronic music. He deplores the lack of live music and less and less analogical sounds revamped by numerical tracks as well as the American’s EDM business.
That is why MCDE is always playing vinyls because, as a purist, he believes that the soul of the track can really sings through the speakers and disperses this vibe of positiveness. It is not always the case for compressed music due to the loss of sound quality.
Recently, MCDE has done a live project with his idol Leroy Burgess a famous jazzman from the 70’s, 80’s. Together, they have brung back onto the stage a DJ and a jazz band in order to restore this spontaneity and interactions between the public and the musicians. The idea behind it was to come back to the root of disco and soul music - a music played live by a band.