Marcel Dettmann (DE)
Marcel Dettmann has spent more than three decades moving through electronic music without allowing himself tobe defined by one part of it. From the early 1990s onwards, his path has been closely connected to Berlin, HardWax and Berghain, yet the musical world behind his work has always reached far beyond techno.
Growing up in the former GDR, Dettmann was drawn early to Depeche Mode, The Cure, Front 242, post-punkand industrial, music whose tension, physicality and emotional directness continue to resonate throughout hiswork. Rather than settling into a single sound, he has built his career on movement: between past and future, rawfunctionality and emotion, the familiar and the unexpected.
That instinct is most immediate in his DJ sets. Dettmann moves freely through different generations and strains ofelectronic music, treating history as material rather than nostalgia. Techno, Chicago house, electro, industrial andthe spaces between them can coexist in the same set. What matters is not where a record comes from, but whatit does in the moment. Reduced, physical and unpredictable, his sets are built around tension, release and thepossibility of taking a room somewhere it did not expect to go.
The same curiosity runs through his work as a producer and curator. His first two albums, Dettmann andDettmann II, appeared on Ostgut Ton, followed by Fear of Programming on Dekmantel, alongside numeroussingles and remixes. His catalogue includes mixes and compilations for fabric, Berghain and Music Man, as wellas !K7’s DJ-Kicks and Dekmantel’s Selectors series. Through his labels MDR and Bad Manners, Dettmanncontinues to connect generations, placing new voices alongside artists who helped shape the foundations ofelectronic music.
His work has long extended beyond records and clubs. Dettmann created the sound concept for photographerFriederike von Rauch’s New Works, collaborated with Sven Marquardt on the audiovisual work BLACK BOX, andworked with Frank Wiedemann and choreographer Nadja Saidakowa on MASSE, a collaboration betweenBerghain and the Berlin State Ballet. For Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix Resurrections, he worked with composersJohnny Klimek and Tom Tykwer on the film’s music and contributed a remix of My Dream Ended Here to theofficial soundtrack.
In 2025, Dettmann introduced My Own Shadow, a new framework for his work.
What began simply as the idea of working under another name gradually became a space in which different partsof Dettmann’s creative life could meet. Music, photography and visual work come together without forcing theminto a fixed format. In many ways, the process mirrors the way he has always worked: intuitively, taking thingsapart, reshaping them and following an idea until it begins to create a feeling.
My Own Shadow is neither an alter ego nor an escape from Marcel Dettmann. It is another perspective on thesame person. The name itself carries that ambiguity: a shadow is always present, constantly changing with itssurroundings and never entirely under your control.
In 2026, My Own Shadow expands into full-length form with Album. Presented as part of ADE ahead, the albumwill be released through !K7 on 13 November.The record takes Dettmann’s musical language into new territory without abandoning its foundations: rhythm andspace, tension and silence, physicality and emotion. It is less concerned with defining where techno ends thanwith discovering what can begin beyond it.
And yet the dance floor remains the point everything returns to. After more than three decades behind the decks,it is still where these ideas are tested in real time, where history, instinct and the unexpected collide, and whereDettmann continues to search for what comes next.