Bluestaeb

Leon Giseke alias Bluestaeb was born in 90s West Berlin, right after the fall of the wall when the reunited city developed its new identity between alternative subculture utopias and post-Cold War neoliberalism. His parents,both architects, raised their only child within these con- trasting realities and in this cosmopolitan environment surrounded by fine arts, music and literature. Mean- while, through watching MTV as a teenager in the mid 2000s, he was captivated by the infectious R&B sounds of the time. Without even fully realizing the impact of su- per producers who shaped the music for artists like Mis- sy Elliot, Kelis and Cassie he got into naive experiments in music production. The evident influence of back in the day productions by Timbaland, The Neptunes and Ryan Leslie on Bluestaeb’s music today are no coincidence. Fast forward to 2015: Influenced by Berlin’s growing beat scene Bluestaeb released his Jakarta Records debut album “Rodalquilar” (2015), which has been labeled as a genre classic by fellow artists and fans. In contrast to anonymous beat tapes of the time this instrumental LP made a bold, artist-centered statement with its conceptual storytelling approach, which circles around his second home in the Andalusian village of Rodalquilar, an antique house his parents had renovated since the late 80s.
The same year, while still finishing his degree in landsca- pe architecture, Leon Giseke sought after new inspiration whilst being fed up with Germany’s petty bourgeois mentality. He relocated to France’s far more metropolitan capital Paris. Well aware of his privileged and urban background Giseke goes as far as calling himself a “proto- type of a progressive, but alienated and over-individuali- zed cosmopolitan”, which he seeks to reflect critically wi- thin his work and his working processes. Today he moves
back and forth between Paris and his hometown Berlin, where he’s running Manolo Purple Studio with friend and longtime musical partner S. Fidelity. In Paris Bluestaeb bonded with label impresario Midori of MENACE and started working with jazz and hip-hop band Underground Canopy, which ultimately resulted in genre bending effort “Bluestaeb & S. Fidelity present
Underground Canopy” (2020). The project he recor- ded, arranged, produced, mixed and art directed with
S. Fidelity became a listener’s favorite with more than a million streams and thousands of vinyl units sold. It was, alongside R&B meets neo soul collaboration “She” with UK singer Harleighblu (2019), solo album “Everything Is Always a Process” (2018) and mini-album “LIT – Lost In Translation‘‘ with rapper JuJu Rogers (2016), a stepping
stone towards Bluestaeb alias Leon Giseke’s path to artistic and technical emancipation. A path, which ultimately led him to the creation and release of his self-titled album “GISEKE” (2021).