About
Producer, live act and mastering engineer. Born in Poland, raised in Cologne, living on Malta. Making music since 1990, known as Rob Acid and as Robert Babicz on stages across six continents.
01 Where it started
In 1980 Robert moved with his parents from Poland to Germany and grew up in Cologne. He started out as a programmer. One night a bug he could not find drove him out of bed, and out of frustration he opened the tracker on his Commodore Amiga. His first record came out in 1992. Soon after, “Happy Answer” from his Pro Deux EP entered the UK dance charts, and Sven Väth invited him to play the Omen in Frankfurt.
02 In numbers
03 Three names, one sound
Through the nineties Robert released hard acid techno as Rob Acid, a name he still plays under today. In 1999 he put his own name on an ambient album for Mille Plateaux, and as Robert Babicz he has since released progressive house and techno on labels such as Kompakt, Bpitch Control, Treibstoff and Audiomatique, and on his own Babiczstyle. DICABOR, Rob Acid spelled backwards, is his ambient project.
04 Live, not a DJ set
Robert is known as a live performer rather than a DJ: he brings synthesizers and live equipment and improvises in every set, all night long if the night allows. He has played every major German techno event from the Love Parade to Mayday.
05 Remixes and collaborations
His catalogue includes remixes for Way Out West, James Zabiela, Hardfloor, Tom Middleton, Deep Forest, 2raumwohnung, Phonique, John Digweed and Nick Muir and Paul Rutherford; with Marc Romboy he remixed Carl Cox's “Ice”. He has worked with Gui Boratto, Joris Voorn, Timo Maas, Dr. Motte and Mijk van Dijk, among many others.
06 The engineer
Next to his own music, Robert works as a mastering engineer and sound designer. Roland and Native Instruments have asked him for sounds; for Roland he built a Rob Acid collection of 32 kits and 32 patterns for the TR-909. In his own studio every record passes through real microphone preamps and an analogue master chain, and that chain is what PRE/BUS captures: seven preamps and a transformer pair recorded at 96 kHz, modelled with a neural network and matched by ear.
“Every track is like a movie scene or a theater scene and every sound is an actor or a requisite.”
Robert Babicz, fwd.dj
“Hardware is the reference and starting point, not the limit.”
From the manual, section From the Studio
07 Sales and support
BABICZ Mix Tools are made by Robert Babicz under the manufacturer name BABICZ TOOLS and sold by SINEE. SINEE handles the checkout, the invoice and support; replies come by email.
BABICZ