Word and Interview by Alexander Cheves
Every artist chases something—a feeling in their work. For Andre Zimmer, Canadian-born music producer, DJ, and label owner, it’s “little moments of euphoria”—and, if he’s done his job well, he hopes his followers will discover music from the past that never got a fair chance to shine.
In a music culture of algorithmic streaming and Insta-famous artists, Zimmer feels a little old-fashioned: he wants us to slow down and think more consciously about how we consume music.
Recently relocated to Berlin, Zimmer met me a few times to talk about life, what’s next, and where his passions for digging and curation come from. He’s relentlessly laid-back and polite in that super-Canadian way, with a bit of surfer-boy vibe—there’s no rush. He speaks intentionally and pauses often. He strikes me as very Zen.
“It all started with YouTube,” he says. He was a teenager in small-town Canada watching mini music documentaries about rave culture—and it was the culture, he clarifies, not the music, that hooked him first.
Now, at 26, he’s come to Berlin on a one-way ticket.
That authentic music culture is here, and we have to protect it.
By his own admission, he’s more producer than DJ. His music has been played and championed by artists like Peggy Gou, Job Jobse, Paula Tape, Massimiliano Pagliara, Sally C., Alinka, and Marie Montexier.
As a DJ, Zimmer has played clubs and parties across the world. In Berlin, he’s a regular at Tresor and Sisyphos, and he’s played more than once at the party series Power Dance Club.
In Canada, he’s appeared at Standard Time, Boiler Room Montreal, and Piknic Électronik. His music is often heard in PanoramaBar, Ibiza’s DC10, WarehouseProject in Manchester, Dekmantel in Amsterdam, and elsewhere.
He also runs the label and party series Big Trouble, currently based in Toronto, and hopes to bring the house label to Berlin.
I connected with Andre Zimmer through the Berlin-based label SEVEN. Last year, he released a four-track EP with the label called Wait a Minute. Alongside the title track, he wrote “Ice Lolly” and “Round Two,” choosing Vitess to remix the title track.
In short, he’s a success story at a very young age. He tours internationally and collaborates with artists across the world. Of all the artists I know at SEVEN, Andre is—so far—the only one played on BBC Radio 1, the U.K.’s most popular music station.
For this interview, I wanted to know the person behind the music. We sit on a sunny rooftop in Mitte, and I ask about his last name, which is the German word for “room.”
In Berlin, your name must make people think you’re German. Do they?
All the time, he says.
“My father was born in Germany,” he explains. “My full name is Andre Günther Zimmer. A super German name. But my German language skills are bad.”
He was born and raised in Canada. At a young age, his father left Germany with his family and moved to a small town north of Toronto, near King City. Andre grew up just north of there, in an even smaller town called Bradford. “It was a small farming town,” Andre says. His move to Berlin feels a little predestined—a kind of return.
Let’s talk about your life before music.
After high school, Andre Zimmer left Ontario, where he grew up, to complete a double major in anthropology and sociology at a college in Halifax, on Canada’s east coast.
At the time, I was focused on life in the outdoors. A job in music was far from my mind. I wanted to be a travel photographer or videographer.
Mostly, he just wanted freedom.
“I wanted to be a digital nomad. That was my first step out of my province. And Nova Scotia is beautiful, right on the Atlantic Ocean.”
On weekends, he went on nature trips—camping, surfing—and says those experiences were a big part of his musical development.
“I went hiking with friends for days, always to local, secret spots in Nova Scotia,” he says. “Most of my friends were from a small town on the south shore, so they knew these beautiful coastal trails. It may be strange to say, but these experiences helped me understand more of what I wanted out of life.”
After his first year of college, he took a summer job in the backcountry of Ontario—tree planting.
“If you look online, you’ll see this is one of the craziest jobs on the planet,” he says. “I was outside in the wilderness all day, alone, planting little trees over hectares of land. I spent a lot of time in the middle of nowhere.”
My closest companions were bears, moose, birds, and a lot of biting insects. All this time alone began to feel like meditation, and I listened to music all the time, literally until my iPod died.
After two solitary months of planting trees and listening to music, he packed up his gear and hopped on a bus to British Columbia, where he found a job at a small vineyard in the Okanagan region.
Reflecting on that period, he says, “This time was really special to me because I wanted to break out of normal routines and the lifestyle of working corporate gigs.”
Do you still like nature time?
“I love it. It’s harder to do now, working in music, because I’m always in cities. I wouldn’t say I have as much desire to be a bushwhacker now.”
What is a “bushwhacker”?
This, he says, is a very Canadian term—someone who lives or travels in the wilderness or works in the bush. (I looked it up: it particularly applies to people who work in the logging industry.)
What other Canadian terms do you use that people outside Canada don’t understand?
“We call standard bottle sizes of liquor a two-six,” he says. (I looked this up, too: a two-six is a Canadian slang term for a 750 ml bottle of liquor.) “I think what the British call a pint is a ‘mickey’ to me. Like, if you’re buying Smirnoff or vodka and you get the smaller one, that’s a mickey.”
“But I don’t use these terms a lot,” he laughs. “I’m not a liquor guy.”
His next destination: Halifax, Nova Scotia.
What was Halifax like?
“The city is small, right on the ocean,” he says. “Very laid-back. If you’re trying to cross the street, cars stop to let you cross. In Toronto, it’s life or death. You have to run across the street when you have a chance.”
After four years in Halifax, he needed a change of pace. He moved to Toronto, where he completed a master’s degree in counselling psychology.
“Compared to Halifax, Toronto is very metropolitan,” he says. “Lots of accounting firms, private equity firms. It’s the corporate world.”
Do you ever miss Bradford, the small town where you grew up?
Not much—but he misses his mother, who is from Newfoundland, and the rest of his family. I tell him my ex-partner is also from Newfoundland—a small, remote island off the eastern coast of Canada.
“It’s the only place in Canada I’ve never been,” he admits. “I’ve driven across the whole country, but I haven’t been there, because you can’t drive there. It’s a long ferry ride from the mainland. It’s far.”
How did you start in music?
He laughs. “Through the internet. When I was in high school, there were videos online of music festivals.”
He calls these “after movies”—“Basically, they were short movies showcasing what the festivals were like. It was the first kind of internet production related to music festivals, concerts, and shows, before there were live-streamed sets. I saw those videos and was more attracted to festival culture than to the music itself.”
He admits he knew little about music at the time.
I went on a deep dive into rave culture instead of digging for records. It was the culture around electronic music that brought me into it.
He shakes his head and laughs. “I was living vicariously through reading about the culture and finding documentaries on it. But it took a while to find good music. Being from North America and growing up in the millennial/post-millennial era, there was so much bad music.”
What was some bad music you remember?
“Maybe not bad music, but very commercial music,” he says. But soon he started digging through record shops—what would become a lifelong passion.
“I still dig. Record shops are where it started. I am constantly discovering new labels, new tracks, and new sub-genres, even outside electronic music. My influences now come from so many kinds of music: Balearic, drum and bass, jungle, UK garage, and UK hardcore. And so much else.”
With so much music out there, what is the Andre Zimmer method of choosing what to listen to?
“I like it to be instinctive,” he says.
I hate algorithmic music suggestions. Even at record shops, if there’s something unique that draws me to pick up a record, some mysterious feeling, that’s a good instinct to listen to.
“For me, it’s often just a random connection,” he says. “It’s great to pick up a random record I don’t know anything about and just listen.”
He says if anyone reading this has a chance to visit Toronto, they should visit a record shop called Invisible City and go digging.
“Most of my favourite records are from their ‘$5 or less’ house, techno, and electronic bin.”
These days, a lot of his digging happens on YouTube.
“There are many record collectors and proper music heads with YouTube channels, and they upload their collections. It’s not like having an algorithm-fed song. It’s more like having an insight into someone’s taste, seeing what they bought and chose to upload.”
Andre tells me he’s subscribed to over 100 audiophiles’ YouTube channels.
“Sometimes, if I buy a record I like from a store, I’ll search for it on YouTube and see all the channels that uploaded it. Often, these channels are made by people who have uploaded their full collection, so I can see what else they recommend. Since I know they like this record, I’m curious to see what else they like.”
For someone who wants to dig digitally, YouTube is a great place to start, he says. “There’s so much music that isn’t on Spotify. YouTube channels are nice because they are more personal. And it’s faster than going through 200 records in a store. If you know you like one specific record and this channel uploaded it, you can trust that the rest of their uploads might be within the same sub-genre or just aligned with your taste. This is often where I find music that I end up remixing and playing.”
He says there are also Instagram pages that offer something similar—a digger or collector uploads the music they like.
“I’ve become good friends with many people who run pages like this,” he says. “We share music back and forth. It’s a nice way to connect with others who are doing the same thing I am, uncovering old gems and resurfacing records that didn’t get the shine they deserved.”
What’s a music sub-genre you think needs more love?
He says there’s a lot of early-2000s tech house from micro-labels that didn’t make a splash at the time but are coveted by audiophiles now. One label he loves is Oblong Records.
“I’m not sure how much those records went for when they first came out, but now they cost at least 80 euros or more per record on Discogs. They’re very sought-after.”
How did you go from studying psychology to music?
One party changed his life.
While he completed his four-year degree in Halifax, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. He left the city for a bit.
He went to British Columbia and spent a summer in the mountains, in the town of Whistler, which is “more like a village,” he says. Whistler is famous for skiing, mountain biking, and outdoor sports.
“I worked at a golf course and played a lot of golf,” he says. It was a beautiful, solitary experience—until a local friend invited him to a party. Specifically, the party was a “bush doof.”
What’s a “bush doof”?
This, he says, is an Australian term. “Whistler picked up this word because so many Australians move there.”
He describes it as a completely non-commercial—and probably illegal—nature rave.
“We had to drive an hour through the mountains on windy, crazy roads, then 20 minutes up a logging road. We followed other cars, people who knew where they were going, and when we got there, we pitched a tent. There were maybe 100 or 200 people, all living out of vans and tents.”
It was beautiful. “Mountains surrounded us with no people or towns in sight. There was just a little tent with some really nice speakers, and music from 8 pm until 2 or 3 pm the next day.”
The party transformed him. “It was music I’d never heard. Underground jungle, drum and bass, 90s house. I became infatuated with that night and that music, with real raving.”
There was no money—no admission. It wasn’t a festival. “There was no name, no brand, no advertising. It was just community-organised for local people. There was no material gain, just good vibes for the people who wanted to be there.”
Andre Zimmer calls this his “oh shit” moment.
“It was great music. When you put that next to main-stage music, you think, ‘Oh, this is crappy.’ I had a rewiring, spiritually, from that night. To this day, it’s still one of the coolest events I’ve been to.”
It was the first time I saw people being free. Some were not wearing clothes, some were just being. Everyone was present. The best parties have that same spirit. You just have to find them.
Now, when he plays, he aims to deliver a taste of that feeling—that memory inspires all his sets.
You just moved to Berlin. What brought you here?
Though Andre Zimmer hopes to call Berlin home, he has been visiting the city for many years.
“In Toronto, there wasn’t a lot of opportunity in the beginning to get booked, so I had to look elsewhere. Toronto felt like a closed-off circuit. A lot of artists in the city wanted to hold their spots at clubs and didn’t want to share. And that was valid. In the beginning, I had nothing to show. I wasn’t a great DJ. Why should they book me?”
Then, as now, he felt more confident as a producer.
“At the time, my music production was about figuring out how to actually do it, and do it well. I’ve been producing music for over nine years. Once I got into it seriously, I didn’t feel rushed to put anything out until I was certain it was good.”
Andre is a perfectionist. “I wasn’t comfortable putting something out that I didn’t feel fully confident about, or that I didn’t think was quality enough.”
What is the Andre Zimmer sound now?
Crucially, he never wants his sound to be signature.
“There are a lot of artists where, when you hear one of their records, you know who it is. It’s a DVS1 record, or a Peace Division record. But my focus is to produce whatever I want and not stick to a particular sound.”
Here, Andre clarifies: “Nonetheless, DSVI and Peace Division are some of my favourite artists, and I deeply appreciate how they have helped pave fresh paths of sound in electronic music.”
But the focus on finding a “signature” sound, he says, can be an inhibition for many artists today. For some, when something works, they try to repeat it.
Why would I repeat something just because it worked? To me, the whole point of making music is to step out of your comfort zone.
More than anything, he loves incorporating “little moments of bliss”—sweet little piano riffs, euphoric breaths—into his tracks.
“As much as I love techno and grungier stuff like UK grime and darker styles, the real excitement for me is that moment of piano bliss in the middle of a track.”
What music are you loving right now?
“I’m really inspired by Peace Division tribal tech house. It’s the good kind of tech house that hasn’t been ruined. I always love classic house, Italo house, with a lot of M1 synthesiser. A lot of that is infused into my productions in many ways.”
You like happy music. Does this reflect your inner state?
He says he is generally a happy person, but he’s not trying to tell a personal story with his music.
“A lot of producers say there was a time in their life where they felt down or unhappy, and that you can hear that in their music. I would not say that about myself. Music for me has always been about escapism. Even if I had the worst day, producing made it better.”
No regrets about leaving counselling and psychology to be a music producer?
“I liked the idea of being a therapist, because I like connecting with people and helping them. But, as with most creative jobs, the lifestyle of being a music artist was a big part of the attraction for me, aside from the creation itself.”
I didn’t want a life of waking up every day to do the same thing. I love the fact that I don’t have to live a life already laid out for me.
Zimmer wants to tour more. But he confesses: “You know, I’m more introverted.” This is why production—time alone in the studio—is his home base, his centre.
Would you ever bring your mental health training and your music together?
Absolutely, he says. “Mental health in the music industry is becoming a big subject.”
I tell him: Sometimes it seems like we’re not doing so well.
“With the fun lifestyle, the bush doofs, the nights that change your life, if you have too many if those, it can stop being healing and become challenging. It’s good to have those nights, but within reason.”
Even so, his outlook on the scene is positive. “There’s a good reason these things are part of the culture. It’s escapism, and it’s nice to have that.”
Some substances and environments can genuinely change your life for the better. Some people literally go home from a party, quit their jobs, and follow their dreams. That matters.
But it should stay within limits, he says.
“It’s easy to have fun, but hard to know when you’re having too much fun. It can be hard to find the line between a lifestyle that’s joyous and one that’s unhealthy.”
Besides Big Trouble, you’re starting a new label. I know it’s early, but can you tell me more?
“Yes! It’s called Lost and Found. I’m still running Big Trouble, but this is more of a sublabel. I’m so passionate about digging and finding old music, and there’s so much great music from the past, especially in house, techno, and electronic genres, that exists only on vinyl or on obscure CD compilations. Some never made it to vinyl at all. A lot of those tracks are hidden gems that deserve proper releases. That’s what Lost and Found will do.”
Andre tells me that, for much earlier electronic music, vinyl pressings were limited to a few hundred copies, or else the music came out on tiny labels that no one remembers—and most did not survive.
“For me, this project is about research, digging up music that deserves to be heard again. The hardest part is tracking down the rights holders. That gets complicated.”
He’s been able to reach most people he wanted to get in touch with—sometimes by messaging friends of the artists on Facebook.
For readers who may not know how music rights work, can you explain it?
“There are different rights in music,” he says. “When I sign my music to a label, there are master rights. The label either owns or licenses those from me for a set amount of time. As an artist, you try to negotiate that down so you can eventually get your masters back and re-release the music later.”
Then, he says, there are publishing rights.
“You always own your publishing if you wrote the music.”
I must have looked confused. He guides me through an illustration: “If I had you on my label doing a vocal, or if we sampled your voice from this interview, you’d own the publishing because it’s your creative work.”
I ask him if, in this context, I could publish that vocal work elsewhere. Then I clarify the question:
What do publishing rights really mean?
He laughs. “In this context, not much. Usually, we either clear the master or buy it out. Most of the time, it’s a license, like five or ten years, depending on what the artist prefers. We’ve done both.”
Andre Zimmer tells me that a lot of the older producers—the “old heads”—are very protective of their work.
“Many of them were taken advantage of by record labels in the ’90s and early 2000s, which was the peak exploitation era. Now, with tools like ChatGPT, even artists without lawyers can run a contract through it and have a clearer idea of what they’re signing.”
He adds:
Young artists often sign what they’re handed because they want to release music and don’t realise contracts are negotiable. But they always are.
Lost and Found will exist to bring back great music in a modern context. “The music is so good. The sound from back then isn’t easy to replicate now because the music was analogue-driven, not digital.”
He wants to showcase these moments—different times, artists, and sounds—and curate them into a modern collection. “It’s about bringing these selections back into circulation, remastered and high-quality.”
Will you release Lost and Found on streaming services?
I instantly sense this is a contentious topic.
“I’m still deciding on that,” he says. “Part of me wants to make the tracks more accessible, but the audience for this music will mostly be vinyl collectors anyway. Maybe we’ll put one song per release on streaming, just to market the label. As much as I dislike streaming, it’s still a necessary part of music promotion.”
He hopes the first release will come out in December, but it may be in early 2026.
“Vinyl pressing takes time. So does mixing and mastering, and we still have to finalize the art. I like to move quickly, but I’m at the mercy of other people’s timelines. You can’t rush it.”
I was told you have strong opinions on streaming—in particular, on radio edits.
Oh, fuck radio edits.
Can you explain to readers what radio edits are?
As he settles in for a short lesson, I realise Andre would be a great teacher.
“A house record can be five, six, seven minutes long, and that’s how the artist wrote it, so that’s how it should be. But labels want shorter versions for streaming, since shorter songs on Spotify and other platforms get more plays. The algorithms on these platforms record how long a song is played before people click to the next track, and which songs are played to the end. This data bumps songs higher in the algorithm, meaning they get suggested to more people. This means shorter songs perform better. They’re easier to listen to the end.”
Trimming a piece of music that the artist meant to be a certain length is a way of gaming the algorithm to get more plays and boost your profile on Spotify.
He tells me that, if a song is six minutes, it’ll perform half as well as a three-minute track.
“Some labels even forbid long versions. But I don’t want to chop up my art just to fit a commercial system.”
Was there any piece you loved that got trimmed to a radio edit and ruined?
Yes, he says. “I had one song that was about seven minutes long. The label cut it down to four minutes and twenty seconds. We lost three minutes of transitions and moments that made it whole. Looking back, I’d rather have fewer streams and preserve the song as I intended it to be.”
It’s capitalism applied to art. Not only do algorithms reward shorter lengths, but on top of that, a few people handpick editorial playlists, and being on a handpicked playlist drastically impacts a song’s commercial success. “Songs generally have to be under four or five minutes to make it in those curated lists,” he says.
Editorial placement determines everything, he says. If you make it onto a playlist, you’ll get hundreds of thousands of streams. If not, maybe ten thousand. Making it worse: just a handful of people at Spotify control these decisions.
I have a suspicion that many artists on Spotify don’t really have fans. They just have playlist placement.
It impacts the way music is made, he says—artists plan release schedules around playlists instead of making art.
“That’s why I’m starting Lost and Found,” he says. “Spotify editors won’t care about this music. They can’t even find the artists online. But it’s great music, and it deserves to live again.”
Was there any piece you wish had gotten more attention, but didn’t because of the algorithm?
Yes—a piece called “Cinema Paradiso,” from his EP Midnight Spritz.
“I released it on my own label. It didn’t get editorial support on Spotify, probably because it’s slower, around 118 BPM, and not as club-oriented as my usual releases. It’s deep and emotional. I pitched it to playlists, but the editors wanted the usual high-energy stuff. It didn’t stream well, but it’s one of my favorite songs I’ve made.”
The people who know it love it, he says. “I guess it’s not meant to have a million streams. It’s meant to be a mindful, relaxing piece inspired by Italian dream house, that lush, euphoric ’90s sound.”
If you’re at Panorama Bar in the morning when the shutters open and an Italian dream house track comes on, you’ll never forget it. That’s what my song was about.
Let’s talk love: I hear your girlfriend is also a DJ.
Here’s how they met: They were both playing at a warehouse rave in Montreal called homeby6.
“She has the desire to grow as a DJ, but she’s more of an all-around creative. She models, does creative direction, and so much else.”
They support each other and go to each other’s gigs. “Neither of us is a big party person,” he says. “Which is good. We like to party, but when we go out, it’s just for the music. We have similar tastes—we go to record shops, share music, and support each other.”
Have you and your girlfriend ever played B2B?
Yes, they have.
My girlfriend and I played B2B at a club in Montreal called Salon Daomé. It was fucking amazing. We barely spoke the whole set. We were locked in, back-to-back for six hours.”
If you move to Berlin, what will your girlfriend think about the long distance?
He reminds me that, even if he were still in Toronto, they’d have a long-distance relationship—she’s in Montreal.
“With all the travelling I do, there’s always some long-distance element in our relationship. There’s long-distance in most DJ relationships. I’m in Europe all the time.”
“We’ll figure it out,” he says.
I ask everyone: Who is the most inspiring person you’ve met?
Andre doesn’t want to meet the people who inspire him the most.
You know the saying, never meet your heroes. I think that’s true. Everyone in the creative world has some darkness. Some let it show more than others.
How do you define success?
“When I was young, like every first-time DJ, my dream was to play on a big stage.” That’s still a dream, but not the dream—not anymore.
My goal now is about finding ways to contribute to cultural movements and help shape the scene. That’s why I love Berlin.
“You have everything here, and for underground house music, Berlin is like stepping into a time portal,” he says.
“The cultural movements I read about when I was young are alive and protected here, at least for now.”
He says the impulse to treat music like a popularity contest is still rampant, and in his eyes, it ruins the industry—the same way it ruins any creative community.
I agree: journalism and publishing have been all but destroyed by Insta-writers and celebrity authors—by capitalism over quality of work.
“A lot of artists are just chasing clout,” he says. “They want to be the cool kid in the spotlight. For many, it’s more about seeking validation than pursuing passion.”
It’s necessary to give his music a platform and share it, and that requires “marketing, campaigns, photo shoots, all that.” But he cautions:
If you’re trying to be a successful artist, you should ask yourself why you’re doing it. If it’s just for likes on social media, not to truly share a creative work you’re happy with, what’s the point of that?
This, he says, is why so much music “can’t be differentiated”—why it all sounds the same.
“Everyone wants to copy who’s big, make the same music, wear the same streetwear brands. I think it’s important to find self-expression that’s fulfilling because it’s fulfilling for you, not because other people think it’s cool. When you do that, people will be more attracted to it. Because it’s unique, fresh, and exciting.”
Love, not likes, makes good music.
What is the Andre Zimmer advice for young artists?
“Don’t worry about what other people are doing. This sounds generic, but it’s true and fundamental. The moment you start studying what others are doing, you lose the clarity of your own work.”
He lights another cigarette—his last before this talk ends—and drives his point home.
“If you’re trying to make a song that someone else has made, you’re focusing on everything you can’t do instead of working in your own flow state. It’s fine if your track sounds different from your favourite artist. It’s fine if your song sounds like shit. As a producer, I make shitty music all the time. So does every other producer. Some of the best producers in the world make bad tracks regularly. That’s the point. You just keep doing it. You don’t have to make a hit every day—you just have to play.”
Words and interview: Alexander Cheves
Images: Mara Menzel, with additional photos provided by Andre Zimmer
