“This is a drive with automatic transmission. You can go from standing still, all the way up through the gears until you reach top performance, and then all the way back down to a standstill without ever taking your hands off the wheel. Your view remains focused on the road.” It is with these words—from a time when you could still smoke on airplanes—that derkalavier’s second instrumental tape begins, before the sound of a saxophone cuts through the light reverb hanging in the air, and the vehicle starts moving as if by magic. The indicator is on and the windows are down. Slowly but surely the vehicle gains momentum and the landscape begins to fly by. With a tank full of fuel, the car follows the route from the country road, over the highway, to the tiny trails that lead toward the sunshine. Along a never-ending alley of streetlights whose yellow light is reflected by the wet surface of the streets at night. On the right a family of five, huddled under a raincape, overtakes on a scooter. In the moonlight, the trees and fields have turned into neon ads and palm trees as if by themselves. A look at the map shows that we’re rolling towards the center of Vietnam’s capital—just as a star from long-forgotten times sings an ode to precious friendship and love in Hanoi.

Automatik is an instrumental tape for listening, nodding, and driving. It’s an ode to being on the move. It tells the story of an endless journey, full of ups and downs. Created somewhere between Amsterdam and Hanoi. On the road.

derkalavier is a pianist and producer without genres or boundaries. His multifaceted work encompasses diverse album productions and piano compositions, as well as works for theater, dance, and film. The composer and instrumentalist received 13 years of piano lessons from a jazz pianist and soon began searching for his own path on the instrument, far away from well-trodden paths. It is here, at the piano, that he can be himself completely. Already as a child he enraptured listeners with freely composed pieces for piano that created wondrous pictures in the mind’s eyes of his listeners. Soon he began composing pieces for theater and writing his own works. Later he discovered a love for hip-hop and music production, which led him to study Keyboards and Music Production at the Münster Music Conservatory, where he completed his final exam with distinction. During his studies he was already performing exclusively his own repertoire at festivals and in concerts from Hanoi and Beijing to Berlin. At the same time, he developed a name for himself in the hip-hop scene through collaborations with established producers and rappers such as Figub Brazlevic or AzudemSK.