Max Graef

Berlin native Max Graef started issuing electronic productions during his late teens and early twenties, rapidly shaping an eclectic style that wove together hip-hop, jazz, and house. Earlier, he had played in an amateur jazz ensemble, yet his engagement with electronic music only took hold once a student exchange sent him to London. Returning to Berlin with fresh enthusiasm for house and hip-hop, he took a position at OYE Records, where he immersed himself in the shop’s stock and connected with the surrounding community. Through those contacts he met several Tartelet Records associates, which led directly to the 2013 release of the Am Fenster EP. At the same time his own imprint, Box Aus Holz, gathered momentum and gave Graef and his immediate circle an independent outlet for their recordings. Even so, he chose Tartelet again for his first full-length effort, the 2014 hip-hop-centric Rivers of the Red Planet.

In 2015 he co-founded Money $ex Music alongside close associates Glenn Astro and Delfonic. Around that period he shifted toward hardware-driven live performances, stepping away from DJ sets built on vinyl in favor of a more immediate stage approach. Late that year he debuted his complete live jazz-fusion ensemble, the Max Graef Band. Their first album, Dog, appeared on Money $ex Music the same year. The following year Graef and Astro issued The Yard Work Simulator, a collection of rough, cut-up house tracks, through Ninja Tune.