Interview: Harmonik Kontrol on their live act, Family Piknik, and meeting Carl Cox

Stepping up for the next exploration on the label is the Harmonik Kontrol duo. A welcome addition to the Awesome Soundwave family after many years of friendship on and off the dance floor. The “First Kontrol” album was first heard on the stage of Family Piknik, and since then it has blossomed from a live set in to this fabulous body of work which we are proud to share with the world. We caught up with Tom and Sebass to have a chat around this milestone of our relationship, and to celebrate the process of our journey together so far…

Live and focused.

Tom Pooks and Sebass as their live act.

Welcome to the ASW family guys. We can not wait to release the "First Kontrol" album. Maybe we can kick things off with some information about your journeys. How did you meet?

Tom Pooks : We first met in 1993 in a small club located in Pézenas, next to Montpellier, south of France. It was one of the very first clubs to 100% focus on electronic music. I was a dancer and Seb was a resident DJ and he already produced some music… 

Sebass : Indeed, we met in this club called New York. Tom often came to see me mixing in the booth, we quickly got to know each other and our friendship came to life. I’ve also started to invite him to see me producing in my studio, located next to the club.

When was it you realised that you wanted to launch the Harmonik Kontrol alias together? 

Tom Pooks : We’ve started the project back in 2023 because we had in mind the challenge to create a new Live act to play next to Carl Cox on Family Piknik festival’s main stage. We were blown away by the feedbacks we immediately received by Carl and the whole Awesome Soundwave team, straight away after our performance. It was amazing to feel such a support about something we’ve created in a very short time lapse, just before the festival. 

Sebass : It was our first time together on stage and we even haven’t found any artist name at that moment, it was more a Tom Pooks & Sebass Live performance… A few months after, when Carl Cox & Christopher Coe confirmed they’d like to push our music through their Awesome Soundwave label, we’ve started thinking of the name and strategy. We first had to rework each track from live version to album version. We needed to revamp each track and build new studio versions so we have 12 tracks in the end, while we play with 19 tracks on stage.

The connection with the label was established right on stage at Family Piknik when we heard you play the album first hand, such fond memories of that day. Do you also remember it well? Of course Tom, you and Carl are going way back... 

Tom Pooks : It’s a great souvenir, we’ll never forget that moment when Carl shared his feelings with us about the Live we’ve performed and told us our music was amazing. I’ve known Carl for more than 20 years and he’s the king in our Techno world. His words meant the world to us. I first met Carl thanks to Josh Wink, who introduced me to him In the mid-2000s, I released music on his label Intec, after other releases on Ovum, Kompakt / Speicher, Terminal M and a few other big labels at that period. Each time Carl came to perform in France, I was with him and his French agent, Charles (MK3), booked me several times on the line-ups next to him. I was the French crazy guy making jokes and funny tricks, I made him laugh each time we saw each other and we had crazy moments together in some hotel rooms. At that time, Carl was not as wise as he is now, so we were in phase and we had a strong connexion. He invited me to play next to him at Space Ibiza each summer, we were pretty close and the link remained the same, even if we got to see each other at a lower frequency after I suffered a bike accident that stopped my DJ career for almost two years… I’m so proud to have known him before he gets as popular as he is now, because I saw all the work and efforts he put in his DJ life, in the studio. He never stops and he has got a wonderful influence. I’ve always been fascinated by his simplicity and accessibility, he’s positive, always with a smile and so warm when you talk with him. So when Carl told me he’d like us to create a whole album after our live performance, on stage, at my own festival, it was too much, I’ve hugged him and cried like a child… 

Sebass : I myself never met Carl before summer 2023 and that Live show we’ve experimented on Family Piknik’s stage. Of course, I saw him perform several times and he’s one of the very best, he is a living legend. Back in the years, I played many vinyls from his label Intec, already in the 90s he was an iconic DJ, very influential and one of the Techno pioneers. So when I found myself 30 years later, in Sète, eating oysters and tasting wine in a wonderful villa, talking about music and this crazy idea of creating an album for him, I was speechless and so proud. 

Was their an original concept behind the album as a body of work, or was it something that slowly came in to the picture after some time working together? 

Tom Pooks : Seb is a very complete producer and musician, sound engineer and a hard working composer. He’s made music in studio since 30 years so he has all the background and knowledge needed to push this project. I invited him to play live at the festival in 2019 for the first time. At that time, I used to play B2B DJ sessions with Joy Kitikonti, who was my studio soulmate, and I already identified his huge talent and potential as a Live act. During COVID, we’ve pushed him through a special live video broadcast and I once again was impressed by his musicality. When we challenged ourselves to create a common project, a few months before the festival, I immediately understood that the connexion in the studio would be easy. I started a sequence and he ended it the way I would have, but he made it in a very short time while I would have needed hours… We were looking for sounds and we always agreed without arguing. The connexion is fluid, we love the same harmonic atmospheres and the same energy for techno. We felt like having a kind of Harmonik Kontrol when we are together.

Sebass : Initially, I had my own live set in my computer, so when Tom challenged me two months before to change everything because he wanted to perform next to me as a Live act, it was a bit surprising but I quickly accepted because I understood how much he wanted to perform Live with me next to Carl Cox. It was something he really cared about, so we’ve worked hard together, for weeks, until we build something we both 100% like and assume. We’ve updated the music and we played 90 minutes before Carl, it was just magic. 

Let's talk live. How is your current set up looking? Who is in command of what?

Sebass : We use Ableton Live with controllers : 2 APC40 Akai, 2 Novation Launchcontrol, our set up is optimized with a MIDI mapping that allows us to customize all the settings track by track, depending on our real time feeling. We also use a few virtual instruments, loops and a TR8 to add drums, as well as one Pioneer RMX1000 to trigger effects.  Our whole set-up is linked to a Pioneer V10 and a hardware processor. 

Tom Pooks : Seb is the Tech commander, he supervises the live sequences, controllers and synth. I look after the effects, the live mixing and the live energy.

How important is it for you to play live? Do you think it is something that is needed to keep real music alive? 

Sebass : The advantage of performing Live is being able to play with each part of each instrument composing your track, with real time adjustments. It is a real creative process, you can go far in the process, with no boundaries. You can also control the emotions and the feelings you spread to the dancefloor. For sure, the real difference is that you only perform your own music, so crowd reactions is much more grateful, it gives us shivers to hear the crowd enjoying our own music through our live. 

Tom Pooks : Two years ago, I came to see Carl launching his Hybrid Live show in Amsterdam (Awakenings x ASW Live, Ziggo Dome) and London (ASW Live, Wembley). It was a key moment in his legendary career. During the sound check in Amsterdam, I asked him if he felt some stress before the show and I tried to understand why he challenged himself so much through this new Live set up. He answered that he never has been so excited to perform a show because he felt like being able to break DJ boundaries, create music in a Live way, add some leads, filters, triggers… I told him it was crazy and he said that what was crazy was the evolution of deejaying through the years, with social networks taking over music, new superstar DJs being manipulated and disconnected from music and passion. He wanted to come back to music only, artistry and devotion. I had a flash in my head after that discussion and I wanted to challenge myself and try to quit simple deejaying to be more creative on stage. In 2023, on Family Piknik’s Sunday, our main stage was meant to be 100% Live, so it was the best timing for me, thanks to Seb’s help, to introduce our own Live act. 

Do you have any exciting shows coming out where we can catch you? 

Tom Pooks : We had the opportunity to play our live show in a few countries this year, in Andorra at Hibernation Festival, in Cyprus and France of course. October will be a key month for us, because we’ll perform Live for Family Piknik big closing event in Béziers Arenas on October 5th and we’ll showcase our Live during Amsterdam Dance Event on Thursday 17th of October, at Boom Chicago. We hope that the upcoming album release will give us even more opportunities to play our Harmonik Kontrol Live show around the world. 

Last of all, let's talk a bit about the legendary Family Piknik, how are you tied with this, and what we can expect in the years to come. 

Tom Pooks : I’ve launched the festival in 2012 straight after my bike accident. The idea was to find a way to re-launch my DJ career and invite to play all the great artists I’ve met in my career. Over 12 years, the festival grew year on year but we always tried to have a balance between headlining acts and newcomers. Since 2018, we’ve opened our stage to Live acts, so when Carl launched his Hybrid Live after COVID, we even increased the amount of Live acts we push on stage. I personally love to welcome my masters and favorite artists at my own festival. In 2023, when we had the chance to have Carl headlining, we rented a villa in Sète and we had Carl, Christopher Coe, Josh Wink and Marc Romboy enjoying Mediterranean life for 4 days. Nakadia, Patrice Bäumel and other friends came to the villa and it was a great way to connect each other even deeper. Real life, with real humans, family vibes. It’s what we’ve lost the more through the years in our scene, so creating this again, bringing back human connexion at the forefront, is something I really care about.

▶ Harmonik Kontrol’s debut album' FIRST KONTROL on ASW will be released on Friday 20 September.