Frank Haag
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Haag’s history takes us back to the south of Holland where he grew up with his two elder brothers and sister. Coming from a family that is very involved in classical and jazz music, harmony and funk is automatically embedded in his roots. At very young age – through his older siblings – the solid beat was discovered and made a huge impact on innocent little Franky: Motown and over-produced `80 bands like Toto became his favourite listenings. Michael Jackson impressions were a daily routine.
It didn’t take long before he would discover his talents as a musician when he picked up the bass guitar. As a bass player in search for boundary breaking rock without losing the funk, he played various gigs around the south of holland in the midst of the 90’s grunge movement. He had reached an age where exceeding sounds were becoming more and more important. When not rehearsing with a band, Frank’s musical curiosity continued.
Probably as a result of being used to hearing so much acoustic and “humanly” composed music, he became more and more consumed by the machine made and electronic sounds of house, techno and IDM. Especially when hearing Underworld on the radio for the first time it made him realize that emotion and harmony can go together with pumping techno. Out of all this, techno music touched his teenager body, mind and soul the most. It almost had become obsessive bassdrum behaviour. This music encouraged him to start collecting records and to make his own sounds on his dad’s computer. His father didn’t always approve because of all the sound files swirling around on his workstation.
His first proper gig came a year later where he found his musical past and ability to anticipate the crowd coming together in the form of a seamless and thumping techno set. Interest in the more abstract electronic sounds was now growing exceedingly. And it still is actually. Heavily influenced by Richie Hawtin’s DJ set approach (combining electronica with turntables) last few years contained a lot of experimenting with different software and hardware.
Typical for Frank Haag’s style is an always dark and substant approach. Energetic pumping subbasses. Subtile altering drumpatterns with heavy percussive content. It is music with a deep cinematic touch and a story, and often combining the organic with the sonical abstract. Studying Sonology at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Frank is experimenting with analog and digital studio techniques by making mutiple channels compositions. As
Frank Hagemans, his real name, focus lies on concrete music, also seen as sound art. Under his moniker Antonius Macht, Frank explores the sounds of dub techno or techno with an old school touch. His uses this moniker to not constantly having to focus on one style of music and to broaden his horizon even further.
Played next to: Onur Ozur, Mathias Kaden, Dan Berkson and James What, Marc Antona, Mark August, Smirk, 2000 and One, Raresh, Ricardo Villalobos, Pherox and Ahmet Sisman, to name a few.
Today we find Frank residing above an art shop and next to a brothel in the centre of Amsterdam. He is known as one of the few forward thinking underground techno producers in Amsterdam that challenges the minimal fad with a deeper sense of understanding. No surprise that his performances comprise of a combination of abstract minimalism and rhythmic funk with deep traveling sounds which give creed to the motto “The dance floor is for the feet as well as the mind”.
Supported by artists such as Mark Henning, Someone Else, Ahmet Sisman, Pherox, Andre Crom and the Amsterdam based Sandrien where his tracks are on heavy rotation.