ZERO

Record Labels: Bondage / Decoded / Atonal / 4 Season Music

It may seem so that zero is just a number holding no value. This may be true if you're into math and calculating for a living. But,
if you're into Croatian clubbing scene, there's no calculating about musical values brought in by Zagreb's talent, Jan Kincl - DJ, producer and a label manager also knows as Zero.

Jan's interest in music, although already present from early childhood, got intensified and directed towards techno at the age of 14 with the initial exposure to Zagreb's clubbing scene. Buying records was the next step, and a year later it resulted with a first DJ gig in a club called Crossroad, located on island Krk. The event took place on August 15th, 2000., his 15th birthday, and marked a beginning of a regular summer residency which is ongoing since. Jan's love for music and passion for record collecting went hand in hand with his vanguard mindset. Not wanting to get labeled strictly as a techno DJ, he focused himself to investigate various genres of electronic music, at first in clubs, and a while later with his own production and labels.

Around 2003., he got spotted by a promotor for OTV Club, and booked for his first gig there. A couple of days after the interesting OTV debut, Jan got offered a monthly residency. That particular residency, in at the time one of the two biggest clubbing venues in Zagreb (subsequently renamed to Boogaloo) served in multiple ways and played an important role in shaping his sound. It became a platform which offered to fill the necessity of obtaining adequate experience by performing with the worlds most prominent artists, and gave him a chance to develop a unique set of skills, most importantly the knowledge on how to musically interact in a club environment.

After the exposure that followed the residency, things quickly started to happen. Stars Gathering event in Slovenia's super club Ambasada Gavioli, Exit Festival in Serbia, a couple of gigs in Bosnia, Rabac Summer Festival in Istria, Hartera Festival in Rijeka, as well as bookings for almost every other festival, club or radio show in Croatia. Around 2005. he upgraded his performance setup with several additions in order to expand the possibilities of a very limiting turntable-and-a-mixer-only perspective. Also, the idea of an expanded live performance with his own production was set in motion, to some extent stimulated by an audio engineering study in Ljubljana. It took a year and a half for everything to gain proper shape, and it resulted with an analog-digital hybrid setup utilizing a live musician and a visual artist. Two years later, he started his own label, Bondage. Basically, the purpose of Bondage was to provide a medium for releasing his own, as well as music of other people that fit the label's general profile. Sound-wise, it functions as an open system, ranging from ambient electronica to abstract dancefloor techno, featuring artists like Cortechs, Marko Nastic, Kibz, Shell, Davor Tosovic, Shuma, Aneuria, Dfndr, Dektend and of course, Zero. Most recent developments include starting another label, Atonal, which is a collaborative effort with Dfndr, one half of Speed Progress project from Subotica. The first release is due in spring 2010.