In the world of German electronic music there are few talents as prominent as Michael Mayer. Over the course of a 25 year career, he’s juggled roles as a DJ, producer, remixer, promoter and record label owner. Today, he is one of the most recognisable faces of German techno. On 25 September, Mayer will mark his Shanghai debut at The Shelter, as the marquee headliner for the Sound of Cologne. Sponsored in part by the cultural program of the German Pavilion at the World Expo, this event will highlight a few of the western German city’s artists over the course of several days at various venues around town.

Through the influence of his signature ‘techno with pop-undertones’ sound and pioneering record label Kompakt, the Black Forest native helped put his adopted city of Cologne on the global electronic music map. Mayer’s musical creed has always been “anything goes as long as it's 4/4 and fun”. By the late 1990s, he established himself as one of the dawning decade’s superstar DJs – running Cologne’s most popular club night, Total Confusion, tending to international residencies in Barcelona and Geneva and globetrotting the world’s best clubs.

Often, his music is not easily definable; interspersed with pop hooks, it treads the line between house and techno. Mayer says, “As opposed to the purely functional and rather serious attitude techno largely is known for, I'm more interested in the emotional side. Techno, like pop music, can be a great conveyor of the whole spectrum of human emotions: melancholy, drama, happiness, whatever... Pushing boundaries in this regard is my mission at Kompakt and even more so as a DJ.”

Kompakt is the record label he founded in 1998 with two friends; it is to Mayer what the Factory was to Andy Warhol. “We started Kompakt in order to create an independent platform for us and like-minded musicians. It's an artist-run business and every decision is taken from an artistic perspective. Its combination of artistic integrity and pioneering spirit with a rock-solid infrastructure is hard to find in this industry.” Today, Kompakt’s distribution wing has ballooned into a network of over 130 labels responsible for thousands of releases. Without the label’s presence and influence, the German music scene would be a very different animal.

When asked what he expected from his Shanghai debut, Mayer replied, “There's an expression in German called shanghaien which means getting someone drunk and then kidnapping them. Apparently it was done to sailors in the Shanghai harbour at some point in history. So all this sounds very promising!” Let's not let him down.

DJ Michael Mayer @ The Shelter. 25 September, 10pm. RMB 60. 5 Yongfu Lu, near Fuxing Xi Lu. Tel: 6437 0400. Email: [email protected]