Over recent years, Sam Geiser aka
Deetron has emerged as a rising star in the Techno world. His popularity as a Producer has flourished in tandem with his reputation as a dynamic three-deck DJ, and as the latter discipline propelled him across the globe, his work for a growing roster of record labels further cemented his position as a genuine talent within the International scene.
His list of musical achievements stretch back to the early nineties – and on paper it makes for quite an impressive body of work. This is all the more remarkable, considering the fact that Sam is still 26 years of age. This can probably be explained, in part, by his family background.
Born in Bern, Switzerland, Music was a constant in the Geiser family home. Sam's father's activities as a jazz musician ensured that he was surrounded by music from a very early age, sewing the seeds of his own musical interests. But it was Hip-Hop that encouraged this to flourish into an active involvement in music, during his teens. Sam soaked-up the music of Gangstarr, A Tribe Called Quest, and Prince Paul like a sponge, and was quick to realise the role of the turntable within this context, taking up DJing in 1992.
Early Hip-House producers, such as
Todd Terry, also captured his attention, and Sam began to make the transition to more 4/4 orientated sounds – picking up on the now classic output of Chicago and Detroit-based electronic musicians and introducing this into the sets he was, by now, playing around his home town, and further afield in Switzerland.
This led, in 1994, to his first big break – securing a residency at Zurich's reputed club, Trax at the Rohstofflager. Once reaching this position, Sam felt it was time to make his own forays into music production and began building a studio, drawing on his experience as a DJ to create his own tracks. A meeting with Stefan Reisen, head of the fledgling Phont music, led to the release of
Deetron's first single – as Soulmate, in 1997.
Things snowballed from there. Geiser's production activity put him on the map, which in turn assisted the growth of his DJ profile. A trip to Japan led to a collaboration with DJ Shufflemaster (again, for Phont), and pretty soon the requests from other labels began to come in. During the late nineties, his work for other labels saw
Deetron finding his audience (including a string of International club jocks) and developing his own sound. In later years, Sam's production touch has graced labels including Cosmic (as Karakter), Ongaku (the `Lorraine EP') and SLS. In addition, he received a deluge of remix requests – resulting in work for Samuel L. Session,
Ben Sims,
Damon Wild, Steve Bicknell (as Karakter), K-Alexy Shelby, Orlando Voorn, Paul Mac and others.