Producer / DJ / Radio Host / Record Label Owner

Kyle Brinkmann is nocturnal – getting to talk to him before 11 in the morning is a challenge. Hardly surprising since he’s one of South Africa’s leading exponents of dance music and spends most of his nights on the decks in clubs.

The 23 year old producer, DJ, radio host and record label owner has more projects on the go than most people would be able to deal with, but a combination of youth, drive, enthusiasm and skill allows him to juggle them all successfully.

“I’ve been making music from the age of 13. It was only about four years ago that I started putting tracks out and playing the clubs,” says the Capetonian who goes by the name of Das Kapital. (When he was 18 and deciding on a name, he was reading Karl Marx’s 1861 book. “Also,” he says, “I’m half German and it looked good on a flyer – so it worked.”)

“My days are very full,” says Brinkmann. “I spend my time doing remixes, creating new music, attending meetings and preparing for my radio shows. I take my work very seriously. There are a lot of guys who roll out of bed, do a club gig and act like it’s a job – actually making a career out of this is hard work.”

When he’s not headlining festivals, dominating playlists and writing music for movies, he demonstrates his brand savvy by working with companies like Adidas, Nokia and Puma. He has also recently been a speaker at TEDxUCT, sharing his insights about the dance music industry.

Brinkmann says there’s a huge demand for content to fuel the boom in dance music.

“My focus right now is on finding new artists who are making new music, and to push this hard through remixes and collaborations. Actual physical sales of music are down but there is a lot of opportunity in the digital and online space, which gives artists from anywhere a global audience,” he says.
— Greg Gordon

Twitter: @iamdaskapital