Fjaak

German electronic duo FJAAK craft propulsive and high-energy dance music that spans introspective house and intense warehouse techno while occasionally incorporating touches of U.K. garage, dub, and breakbeat hardcore. Their sound remains raw yet seductive because every track is built exclusively on analog gear. Emerging in the early 2010s, the group quickly issued multiple club favorites, among them the 2014 single “Don’t Leave Me,” and established themselves as a compelling live attraction. Their wide-ranging self-titled debut LP arrived via Modeselektor’s Monkeytown Records in 2017; thereafter most of their material has surfaced on the two labels they operate themselves—SPANDAU20 and their own FJAAK imprint—which in 2023 put out the duo’s ninth self-titled single.

The Berlin-based trio of Felix Wagner, Aaron Röbig, and Kevin Kozicki had already been collaborating on music since childhood, yet they only began shaping techno as FJAAK toward the close of the 2000s while still in their teens. Their earliest outing was the 2012 digital EP Introduction on Baalsaal Records, followed the next year by the first vinyl pressings, Remember Me on Klasse Recordings and Mind Games on Baalsaal. After one further Klasse release, 2014’s Po’ Folk, the group joined Modeselektor’s 50 Weapons roster and delivered several 12-inch singles, one of them a split with Rødhåd. When 50 Weapons ceased operations in 2015, FJAAK transferred to the main Monkeytown label, where the single “Wolves” surfaced at the end of 2016 and subsequently appeared on their self-titled debut album in early 2017.

The second album, Havel, came out on the artists’ own imprint in 2018. Later that year Seilscheibenpfeiler, another Modeselektor-run label, issued the EP Drugs. Early in 2019 Kevin Kozicki departed to focus on solo work, leaving Röbig and Wagner to continue as a duo; they began issuing white-label 12-inches on FJAAK and SPANDAU20, including multiple volumes of their white-label EP series along with the 2021 releases Your Time Is Ov3r on Seilscheibenpfeiler and WH?T on Tectonic. SPANDAU20 008, a split EP shared with Dajusch and Fadi Mohem, preceded the 2023 arrival of FJAAK009.