Bringing decades of experience and musically diverse backgrounds to his several brands of music, Marcus Schmahl already has releases on uncountable labels. He produced music for film, broadcasting and advertisement companies, pop, dance, techno, house, ambient, downbeat and electronica music, just to name a few.
With nearly 30 years of professional studio experience, Mainz’s Marcus Schmahl has grown up surrounded by music. And with his latest exciting projects, his unique style has already topped the charts and earned praise from well-known acts around the world.
But before he already had a successful solo career. Marcus toured heavily both as Broombeck — playing live techno at clubs like Berghain and touring with Monika Kruse — and in the early 2000s as Guardner and Rauschfaktor, which saw him playing live downbeat and electronica around Europe at sold-out venues and cinemas, while mixing his own custom visuals on big screens. He is running the successful ywc. (Yes We Can) imprint. He produced music for several well-known dance acts (e.g. Gestört Aber GeiL - „Geh Nicht Weg“ - 6 million plays on Spotify). Not long after, his next chapter of techno 2pole and melodic house & techno APNOEA was born. On top of that he built up a big music community with his Twitch channel (marcusschmahl), showcasing his music workshops, music making, talk shows with well-known acts and DJ sets.
Marcus has been a professional composer, producer, sound designer, mix and mastering engineer since 1993. He was raised playing classical guitar. Though it was his uncle who shaped young Marcus’ music tastes, introducing him to the early sounds of hip hop, downtempo and drum & bass. “He was my music god,” Marcus says about his uncle. And after he heard Paul Hardcastle’s 1985 anti-war breakbeat anthem “19,” Marcus was hooked on the electronic sound. From there, he began building a studio, and today Marcus writes for artists, TV shows and advertising, and has gold records to his name. He also plays many instruments, including guitar, bass, flute, keyboard, drums, percussions, and more. Next to his music company he studied electrical engineering, which helped him to understand the electronic side of music production.
His obvious technical abilities and deep understanding of musicality and song structure are evident in his productions. For example: it was during those first days with his production Partner Mark Ullrich bonding over music in 2018 that led to their „2pole - Alone EP“ on Suara in 2018. The title track from that EP spent over three months at the number one spot on Beatport’s top 100 chart, and racked up more than 400,000 plays on the Suara YouTube channel and 1 million play on Spotify. “Alone” features original vocals from powerful American downbeat icon and slam poet Ursula Rucker, and was produced using a myriad of hardware, including the Minimoog, Novation Peak and the famed Roland TR-909 drum machine, to name a few. Drumcode’s Adam Beyer has been hugely supportive of 2pole’s work, such as other international big players showcasing, which respect their love and flair for musical storytelling.
But the Marcus Schmahl story has only just begun. And with so much history already written, and so much early success to his latest projects, the future is looking long and bright indeed.
