Get up, get dressed, quickly pour a coffee, a quick check in the mirror, door shut, smartphone on, two likes here, a few Stories there, just managed to catch the Underground. Work begins, the day ends. In between: rushing about, thinking, swiping, talking, a message here, a kiss there. And then all over again. On repeat. It is “the two sides of speed, both in real life and throughout the online world” that Silvan Strauss is preoccupied with. On the one hand: “a craving for action, variety”. On the other: “being driven, running away from something”. With his new album Sprinting, the Hamburg-based drummer and producer captures this ambivalence musically.
Drumming like a machine
For Strauss, Chicago footwork is a key starting point for translating the accelerated pace of the present day into music. He discovered Da Mind of Traxman Vol. 1 by footwork pioneer Traxman more than ten years ago. He was particularly fascinated by the programmed drums – and began to recreate them on the drum kit. In the years that followed, Strauss lost sight of footwork for a while. It wasn’t until the release of Da Mind of Traxman Vol. 3 in 2025 that his enthusiasm “really kicked in again”. The challenge for his own interpretation: programmed beats know no physical limits. “It’s always very exciting for me to find ways to get as close as possible to that sound using my repertoire on an acoustic drum kit,” says Strauss.
Sprinting
Footwork: Dance
His previous albums Facing and Flukin’ were even more heavily influenced by soul, hard bop and instrumental music. On Sprinting, producers from the Teklife scene come to the fore as points of reference, and Strauss experiments more extensively with electronic production techniques. “On a very basic level, this has also made the music much faster.” But here, speed also means movement: music and dance are closely intertwined in Chicago footwork. For the visuals for Sprinting, Strauss is therefore collaborating with dancers from Brussels to Bangkok, who discover facets in his music that had previously been hidden from him. Strauss sums it up: “Something is coming together that has always belonged together.”
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