The vinyl sets of DJ Fucks Himself defy genre categorization – they are a symbiosis of UK jungle, trance and happy hardcore, infused with pop culture references and ironic samples.»I believe that this backwards approach, this striving to recontextualize music, is crucial to my sound,« says Niklas Fucks, who categorizes his style »in the broader sense of the hardcore continuum« – usually at a tempo between 160 and 180 BPM.
His musical curiosity is fueled by his study of history and a “general fascination with the past. This, he says, has led to his »various obsessions with niche genres from the past«. He is particularly interested in electronic music »that exists in dialog with other music«. For him, having fun is the most important thing. An example of this is »It Takes Two«, the EP produced together with LV4P – distorted vocals, nostalgic 90s trance elements, dreamy synths.
A second, currently rather dormant alias is The Dadbod Experience, under which he played trip-hop and ambient for HÖR’s »relaxed montage«, among others. »Both genres are an old passion of mine,« he explains, »but at the time I couldn’t imagine playing them under the same name as the DJ Fucks Himself album.«
Obsession with the Past
»I listened to everything from rock to house, but for a long time I was obsessed with East Coast rap and British trip hop,« he says. He discovered 1960s/1970s funk and soul through samples. His passion for vinyl developed while working in music journalism and record stores – and while digging: »But I didn’t want to get up at five in the morning, so I had to take what was left over. Luckily, the others knew little about 12″s and electronic music – so I started digging Italo disco, electro, techno and drum’n’bass every Sunday in Wedding.«
He started DJing in 2016/17. Together with Young Lychee, Max Harder and Helmut Cool he organized illegal open airs – as a counter-model to the »completely techno-dominated« Berlin mainstream, »this very serious Berghain sound bored us«. He later co-founded the Raiders collective, which is now also a label for vinyl-oriented DIY releases in the area of breakbeat and leftfield club music.
In 2025, after an intensive tour of Asia, he wants to concentrate more on his own productions and take a more conceptual approach to his releases. At the same time, more gigs are in the pipeline. At the moment, however, he is mainly busy recovering from the tour: »I really don’t know how people keep this up for six months of the year.«
The explanation for his stage name is surprisingly simple: his real name is Niklas Fucks, like the German word for »fox« but written with »ck«, and he thought it was obvious to use it. Today, he is not quite sure if that was such a wise decision, he says with a smile, because: »The algorithm hates the name. If I play a livestream, YouTube immediately thinks it’s porn.«
