Henrik Schwarz was once a graphic designer making music casually around his work – so casually, in fact, that he only ever worked in the studio on Sundays. Over the past decade though, things have changed markedly for the German. After such a gradual beginning - “I was doing music as a hobby for 15 years before I released a record,” Schwarz admits – he is now among the most vaunted European electronic producers, merging funk, soul, hip hop and more exotic global influences with a house and techno sensibility. “The first records I was trying to get were hip hop and rap records from artists like A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul. These records were really hard to get in Europe at that time,” he recalls. “From there I wanted to find what the samples were so I went into jazz and funk and soul records and started DJing that kind of music. A bit later I heard Jeff Mills playing and that opened the whole electronic world for me. From that point I was totally into Detroit techno and that’s also when I really started DJing myself.”

Mills’ audacious method of DJing was to have a profound influence on Schwarz, who was immediately taken by the seminal Detroit producer’s fluid approach to a genre that is ostensibly so regimented. “The way Mills played was totally improvised from my point of view,” Schwarz affirms. “He’d throw these records on the turntable and play them for 45-seconds and then play the next one – he was improvising these patterns in a way. That was for me very much a jazz attitude.”

Schwarz’s eclectic and exuberant approach to dance music was first collected on his acclaimed DJ Kicks compilation - widely recognized as one of the best mixes of the series - which pitted staples from D'Angelo and Marvin Gaye alongside cuts from Arthur Russell and Drexiya. It was one of those rare, immediately recognisable mixes that captured the public’s imagination and united people of vastly different sonic persuasions. For his part though, Schwarz has never been bound by the constraints of genre. “From my point of view I think it’s all just dance music, that’s how I put it together, it’s just another form,” he says. “What comes from Detroit can be Motown or it can be Underground Resistance; each has a similar affect, and touches my heart in a similar way.”

This visceral mode of interacting with music underscores Schwarz’s work as a producer, as he explores the oppositional interplay between the fluid framework of jazz and the more structured arrangements of house and techno. “One is very improvised, the other is machine music that is not at all improvised, with the same patterns repeated,” he explains. “You can create a great tension and space if you put these two things together, the very free and improvised on the one hand and the repeating structures on the other. Everything in between makes the space you can use, and that’s something I’m very interested in.”

Though Schwarz explores this space using Ableton, he uses the program in an unconventional and enterprising manner that transcends the limitations commonly associated with software-based production. “There are thousands of little elements, and I just try and improvise with what I have,” he says of his approach to Ableton. “I’ve seen many people using it in the way where you press one button and you go from one step to the next one, it’s all very structured. But that’s not the way I use it. I use it in a very – I wouldn’t say chaotic way, but not in a very structured way. I don’t put everything after one an other, I mix things up and I don’t put all the things together that belong together; often I’m trying to put things together that don’t belong together.”

Schwarz’s willingness to experiment was apparent in his series of performances with Dixon and Ame as the laptop group A Critical Mass earlier this year. While the trio memorably collaborated for the first time on one of 2006’s quintessential house anthems, the Derrick Carter-sampling ‘Where We At?’, their recent project was more of a homage to early ambient and minimal works and again hinged on live improvisation. “We thought it would be interesting to plug everything together and play our stuff in a new way, that’s what the basic idea was,” he says. “We did that for the first time with our mix CD, The Grandfather Paradox - that’s where it all started. We did the mix in real-time and everybody had their own material on their computer; we synched the laptops and immediately had great results, so we thought it would be interesting to bring onstage. Despite his prolific output, Schwarz is still yet to release his debut artist album, with his live LP from 2007 the closest he has come thus far. However, there is a more than ample excuse for the three-year delay. “The concept for the album was ready, and then I became a father of twins, and things changed a lot,” Schwarz laughs. “I had to rethink and reschedule everything - in a way I’m three years behind my schedule! But the album is in the works, and after quite a long period of rethinking and building a new idea I’m now on my way. The next three months are planned for recording with different musicians, so hopefully I’ll have everything ready by the end of April.”