David Bay

Bass, guitar and club light from St. Pauli

The music of david bay moves in a luminous strip between the club and the song: bass lines played with the hand of an instrumentalist, silky synthesizers, guitars with an indie pulse and a house energy that looks as much to the dance floor as it does to live performance. From Hamburg, with St. Pauli as his creative base, he has built a language where the analog intersects with the digital, the retro with clean production, and funk with a relaxed way of understanding dance. His identity combines the craft of a producer, band culture and a disco sensibility that avoids flat nostalgia.

Pool as a road school

Before consolidating his solo project, David Stoltzenberg grew up musically in Pool, a band formed with Daniel Husten and Nils Hansen when they were still teenagers. That period gave him hours of stage, studio and road experience: tours across Europe and the United States, opening for The 1975 and a stint at SXSW. The recording of Pool's albums also opened a parallel career as a producer for artists of very different profiles, from independent projects to names like Scooter or Solomun. That experience explains why his tracks don't sound like simple booth music, but like songs taken apart and rebuilt to breathe in the club.

Zissou as his own laboratory

The need to work with freedom crystallized in David Bay and the environment of Zissou Records, a label and dance community he runs together with DJ Dreams. With releases and publications such as Zissou Edits Best Vol. 1, Indistinct Chatter and Zissou Edits Best Vol. 2, he began to outline an aesthetic of warm disco house, frank melody and functional grooves without losing pop character. In comic relief, pieces like 1999, strangers, <3 beat and dancing on the edge condensed that mix of direct writing, seventies brightness and drums designed for club systems.

Toy Tonics, Pacha and a moving agenda

His international projection has been reinforced with Toy Tonics, where he released Mixed Signals EP and Jeopardy EP, material that expands his palette towards indie dance, French disco and sunny electronica in which he plays bass, guitars and keyboards himself. He has also signed collaborations and remixes with Digitalism, Satin Jackets, ÄTNA, Dottie Andersson, Mulay, Quarterhead and LIE NING, in addition to appearing on labels such as Nervous Records, Future Disco and CURATORS. In the booth and live, he alternates DJ sets with a live format of bass, guitar, synthesizers and vocals. His recent journey includes HÖR, Pacha Ibiza, OXI Berlin, Nitsa Club, Golden Pudel, Nachtasyl, Zermatt Unplugged, The Great Escape and dates alongside Purple Disco Machine, placing him as one of the most recognizable European voices at the crossroads of disco, house and indie electronic.