AK
AK - (Aljosha Konstanty) Drum and bass musician from Germany
Person from Germany
Genres: ambient, chillout, downtempo, drum and bass, electronic, instrumental, garage, future garage
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About AK
Kassel - In September, Aljosha Konstanty received a direct message on Instagram that he now says was “a surreal moment”. The electronic musician from Kassel was contacted by the manager of US star Lana Del Rey, who wanted to use part of one of his songs for her new album. Konstanty, whose songs are accessed millions of times on the streaming service Spotify, first had to ask his manager in London whether the news was genuine. It was. Del Rey had taken a liking to his track “Wanderlust”, which Konstanty had already released in 2017 under his stage name AK. A few chords from it can now be heard in “Fishtail” from their current album “Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd”. Konstanty is listed with a songwriting credit. The Los Angeles musician's accolade is the latest chapter in the North Hessian's unusual success story. His ambient tracks, which are as spherical as they are melancholy, have more than ten million clicks on Spotify. Now that the pop duo Milky Chance and singer Lea have long since moved to Berlin, AK is Kassel's most successful musician who actually lives in Kassel. The 25-year-old grew up in several different places. After his birth in The Hague, his parents moved around a lot. The family lived in Kassel for six years. Konstanty completed his A-levels in the Netherlands. He already had a place to study German language and literature in Canada, but then decided to pursue a career in music: “My family didn't always understand that much.” As a schoolboy, Konstanty had played bass in a band in Kassel. He got to know the world of electronic music through a friend at the Albert Schweitzer School. “That was like a revelation,” says the self-taught musician: ”I then taught myself how to make songs on the computer.” He released his first tracks at the age of 16. When he returned to Kassel in 2017 without his family, he was on his own: “I hardly knew anyone here and was pretty isolated. That was good for my music.” He often worked through the night until seven in the morning. Today, he lives with his wife, a US-American, in the front west and has almost as regular working hours as in an office job. He usually works on his computer from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and plays instruments such as synthesizer, guitar and bass. His tracks, which are underlaid with downtempo beats, are well suited as background music. But that's not the only reason why they are played so often. “Music is like a craft,” says Konstanty: ”iPhone users also listen to an AK song when they play a slideshow in the photo app. “When Apple wrote to me about it, it was like a Lana Del Rey moment,” says Konstanty. Other musicians complain that they can't make a living from streaming income and only receive pennies from Spotify. Konstanty knows how difficult it is for many and doesn't want to make a blanket statement about streaming, but he says: “I can't complain. Before the streaming age, I probably would never have been able to sell enough CDs to make a living from my music.” He doesn't even have to give concerts. So he will continue to work on songs in Kassel. He understands that pop musicians like Milky Chance move to Berlin because they “often take part in recording sessions there”. That's not the case for him. That's why he thinks it's “actually nice that I can continue to live in Kassel”. However, his wife has just finished her studies. It is possible that the multinational couple will move abroad at some point. In any case, sounds from Kassel will remain. In some songs you can hear bird noises from the Habichtswald and the squeaking of the KVG streetcar. (Matthias Lohr).
Taken from Last.fm
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