Jan Kincl is a Croatian music producer who has been on the scene since the early 2000s. The last time I visited Jan’s studio, it was his home with shelves full of records and a long table full of music production gear. That apartment is not the same anymore. The post-pandemic situation of Cycle Studio as a music production company looks completely different. He does not live there anymore, there are two music production studio rooms, a lounge, and a kitchen.
We sat in the new, smaller studio room, Jan set up the mic and we engaged in an in-depth interview about electronic music, the Croatian scene, and his career.
THE GOLDEN ERA
In his previous interviews, he mentioned his mom was his biggest motivation to start a career as a DJ because she was crazy about progressive and electronic music, such as Kraftwerk, Grace Jones’ Nightclubbing record, and a lot of house music. From his childhood days, it was obvious that he would go in that direction since he started playing CDs at birthday parties in primary school. Jan’s first gig in Crossroads Club on Krk Island “accidentally” happened when he was 15 and since then he slowly started growing.
Looking back at the beginnings of his career, Kincl points out that his career hit off due to the fact he was so young and strongly believes that each generation likes to support people their age. He was one of the young DJs who were spinning techno at the time and everyone from his high school came to support him on his first gigs. In the early 2000s, the electronic music scene in Croatia was booming.
What was the golden era of electronic music and the party industry in Croatia?
That’s a tricky question. Each generation has its golden era, so it might be unfair to declare one as the best. However, for me, it would be from the early 2000s until the economic crisis around 2008/2009. I believe the early 2000s were the peak.
What was the most interesting part? Which genre/subgenre was predominant in that period?
The entire generation was highly focused on electronic music. It was a “hype” period for the genre, and it would be unrealistic to expect such a phenomenon to last indefinitely. At that time, even if you weren’t a techno or house music fan, you would still attend massive events like Future Shock parties at Velesajam, events at Dom Sportova, and various parties across Sljeme. Parties were happening all over Zagreb, including clubs like Boogaloo (formerly OTV) and Best, the infamous club known for events like Astralis, Perfection, and Kraljevstvo [Kingdom]. It wasn’t unusual to visit Ban Jelačić Square on a Friday or Saturday evening and see a thousand people dressed in the same style, with specific hairstyles and Terranova pants, waiting for trams to go to parties. Techno was the main thing at the time, but there were interesting pockets of house and electro music.
“IT’S NOT GOOD TO CHANGE FOR THE SAKE OF CHANGING”
When you describe your music you say that you are “balancing the thin line between techno, house, and jazz”. How do you balance those genres and what was the starting point?
I don’t think there’s that much of a gap between techno and house, they are the two sides of the same coin. Electro is also in there. Just different colours for different parts of the night. As for jazz, some of my favourite records were the ones which fused electronic music and jazz, like the Underground Resistance „Galaxy 2 Galaxy“, Laurent Garnier‘s „The Man With The Red Face“, or Carl Craig‘s Innerzone Orchestra album. I’m not sure why, but early on I got attracted to the jazz element in the music and it hasn’t left me. It actually led me into a deep rabbit hole of Sun Ra, Tribe Records, Strata and more…
Techno was definitely my first love, but as you grow, your taste expands. You dig, read, understand more, and learn to connect the dots. When you listen to Black music, the continuity from blues, jazz, soul, funk to hip-hop, electro, house, and techno becomes quite obvious. As you delve deeper into electronic music, you start to recognize that DNA in many records, especially those coming from overseas. An obvious example would be Theo Parrish; just listen to some of his recent records.
The market, on the other hand, needs to make sense of all that to sell records. It’s easier if they’re in separate genre boxes. But if you look at it more closely, a piece of music is rarely just one genre; a particular track can have elements of many genres in its DNA, and skilled DJs use that to bridge those records.
What is the quality of a good DJ? As you said before, the audience likes to ‘know’ what type of sound will they hear from a certain DJ so some of them have different artistic names depending on the type of event they are playing on. Is curiosity and changing genres important in a way that you mix and match different types of music or is it enough to stick with a certain style of music/genre that the audience is used to? What is the perfect formula?
At its core, a DJ’s job is to take music from different time periods and genre boxes and fuse it into one interesting experience. It is necessary to go through different moods, speeds, and rhythms in one night. Just hitting at the same thing for a whole night doesn’t make sense. It isn’t adventurous, and it is not good DJ-ing; it’s like talking about one subject all night.
The best DJs have a way of expressing themselves through different genres, with a common thread running through everything they play. Theo Parrish, again, is a great example of that. Playing like that can be risky, though. You can clear the floor occasionally, which doesn’t make for a great Instagram video, but that’s the only way to develop as a DJ.
To answer the question more clearly, it’s necessary to explore and expand, but not just for the sake of changing. It’s an intuitive thing; you get drawn to something and then spend some time exploring it. If you play a record you genuinely love, it resonates in a very special way, and the audience feels that as well.
How do you comment on trends in electronic music? Nowadays we can say techno is back and 4-5 years ago, the trend was minimal and ro-minimal. Are the trends the main cause of the change of style as a DJ?
DJs at the beginning of their career usually get carried away by trends more easily. Well, at least that was the case in my time. You hear the new music that’s popular, it’s appealing, and it’s somewhat natural to want to see what that ‘trendy’ genre/subgenre is about, so you try it. I did so at the very beginning, only to discover it doesn’t really work for me. That’s also an integral part of DJ-ing. With time and exploring there will be music that stays with you and music that doesn’t, you get to know what makes you tick, what kind of records define you as a DJ, and it gets harder to be swayed by the hot new trend. You just follow your own internal guide and see where it takes you. Sometimes it works well in relation to where the world is at the moment, and sometimes it works against it. At the moment, I’m finishing a bunch of stuff ranging from very jazz-heavy house to instrumental hip-hop and soul, some of which will go on my next album. I know the world is currently crazy about cartoonish techno, but I’m just doing loads of hip-hop and enjoying it very much.
THE EVOLUTION OF CYCLE
You studied music production. When you look back, have you become the producer you always imagined you would be, or were you in a completely different place then?
Completely different place. I started dabbling with production when I was 17. It wasn’t very good, and luckily I didn’t release any of it (laughs). At that point, I was in 100% techno mode; I didn’t have any idea about the music I am making now.
You formed your music production studio Cycle, which has recently become a record label. Your first release on Cycle was last year even though you released many EP-s for other labels before. How come you waited this long for your first release on your label?
It was a problematic record because it got delayed for a year. We had some pressing problems and a glitch that caused a nine-month delay. For my own label, I wanted to have a particular sound that I couldn’t get before. When I made those tracks, I immediately knew that was the right fit for the first release.
I gotta mention that CYCLE-02 is finished, and I’m waiting for the masters. It’s a single 12” by Andrej Lasić from Pula, with remixes from Kez YM and myself. I think we’ll have a digital release before the summer and vinyl after the summer, and I can’t wait for that record to come out.
You have producers from all over the world releasing tracks for your label. How do you find them?
Just reach out. Gene Hunt is a good example; I’ve always been sending him tracks and kept getting cool feedback. I was always in love with his music, so when the time came, I just asked him to remix the “For A Minute” track from CYCLE-01. He liked the track, accepted, and delivered two beautiful versions. It was a similar story with Kai Alcé and Alton Miller. Social media is wonderful in that regard; you can just reach out to those people whose music you love and see if they’d like to get involved. I think it was much harder before that.
In 2018 your EP ‘In Plain Sight’ got great reviews. Laurent Garnier described it as ‘superb deepness’. Was that the turning point in your career?
Definitely. I wanted to do a jazz-heavy record like that for a while, and Regis Kattie was a perfect partner at the time. We had fun making that record and afterwards playing all the live shows. It was a crazy period, and I’m very proud of that record even though there are a few details I would change now (laughs).
Was it the turning point for Cycle as a music production company as well? How do you switch and find inspiration for your own releases, music for other artists who are in different genres, and music for advertising purposes, such as jingles?
That is a relatively new situation. Up until COVID, live shows and DJ gigs were my primary source of income for the past 20 years. After the pandemic hit, I realized I needed to change that and build a structure to protect myself in case something like this happens again. I went with my skill set – I know how to write music, produce, engineer, mix, and I’ve been in this for long enough to have a solid overview – so there must be a financially viable way to do it. I made a couple of calls and told some friends from the advertising industry that I’m interested in that type of work. Luckily, the first project was a big one, a Diesel campaign, and after that, other projects started coming in more and more. It started in this room, actually, which is currently a live room that doubles as the second production room, but back then, the whole studio was crammed into this small room. At some point, I had to move out and turn the whole place into a professional studio environment, hire an additional engineer (shout out to Lovro), and learn to run a sustainable business. My musical output took a hit for a year or two, but it was worth it. We have a great team, and Cycle Studio Zagreb is functioning at full capacity even if I’m away for a month or two. We have a very organized way of working on the client side of things, so I have more time than ever to work on my own music.
THE CROATIAN SCENE
Is it challenging to be an electronic music producer in Croatia?
Yes. It’s challenging to be an electronic music producer everywhere. It’s a volatile industry in that trends tend to change quickly and unpredictably. It’s wise to have a backup plan. I know it doesn’t sound romantic, but there needs to be a way to sustain yourself even when the music you’re excited about isn’t paying the bills. Especially if you live in a country like Croatia, where the clubbing industry is almost non-existent.
You say Croatia has a non-existent clubbing scene, but it’s a very popular festival and clubbing destination among tourists. What is, in your opinion, the main reason for such a paradox?
We’re a small country, and the festivals are peak moments. You assess the state of a country by observing the state of its villages, so we should assess our nightlife scene by the off-season, which is objectively at an all-time low in terms of both quantity and diversity. There are some great examples, like Peti Kupe, Dva Osam, and a couple of small things, but that’s it. During the winter, almost nothing is happening on the coast, which wasn’t the case before. The current situation is in great contrast to what we described in the early 2000s, which I guess confirms that it really was a hype wave. In any case, I am happy that I DJ’d during that time; trust me, it was wild… (laughs)
But I think it’s due to the fact that we’re a very small country, just 4 million, and whatever new trend comes, it attracts such a high percentage of young people that there’s not enough interest left to sustain the other genres in the amount which would make a regular and healthy scene.
‘A HOME AWAY FROM HOME’
This winter you did your first tour in South Africa. How was it, how did it come to it and what were the highlights of the tour?
It was amazing. I’m going back in August for three weeks and then again in December. I fell in love with that place. I wasn’t aware of what was happening there besides some basic things, and when I released a couple of records for Deep Inspiration Show Records, Rene and Konstantin, who run the label, basically explained how things work there as they’ve been touring South Africa for years. That country lives and breathes deep house. A year and a half ago, I started getting glimpses and a few invites to come, but at that point, COVID was still ongoing, so it wasn’t possible. Last summer, I got in touch with Gary, a friend and a local producer, and he basically set up the biggest part of the tour. It was just before the release of my then-new record on Deep Inspiration Show Records, titled “3300 Gratiot Ave,” and the track featured Gary, so it all made sense. The whole experience was something else, and I don’t even like to describe it because every time I try, I fail to do it justice. People are beautiful, DJs are amazing, and it’s a completely different experience than a typical European party. Music is slow, deep, and soulful, and the quality of DJs on every lineup forces you to do your best. I also learned how to drive on ‘the wrong’ side of the road there.
STAYING ON TRACK
Jan started teaching at EMI a decade ago, and now is a regular professor at United Pop. His first courses were about the history of electronic music, but after COVID he started the lectures about DJing and music production. For the final question, we asked Jan how did his teacher career shaped him and what would he advise to the young people starting their career in electronic music.
“Being around young people is a good thing. You learn a lot in that dialogue, and your beliefs get challenged all the time. These youngsters will call you out on your bullshit (laughs).” Jan explained and finished this interview with the best advice he can give: “Just keep in mind that music is a long-term game.”
