Chris Helmbrecht

23/08/2026

Some Sundays you just need to leave.
Ammersee. Pizza Napolitana, beer, a beach at the lake. In that order.
The waves are small, but they keep coming with this calming sound and after a while you stop thinking so loud. That’s the whole trick.
Mountains behind the lake, light going gold, glass cold in my hand. Stayed until sunset.
Back on the train, back into the noise. Slightly drunk, a lot calmer, not feeling my pain anymore.

15/08/2026

Here's my latest djset: PLAY the eclipse.

Something different to what I usually play. Some may call it "commercial", but keep in mind that "cool" producers and djs like Tim Engelhardt or even Dixon play this stuff now. Times change and we need to adjust and explore new territory, otherwise it gets boring.

Hope you like it! Enjoy!

On Wednesday (Aug 12th) evening, we saw a partial eclipse in Munich. Here is an Eclipse edition of my PLAY series, where I always play around and feature new music and styles. This is not a club set,

26/07/2026

The Friedland recording is up. One night, old train station, open sky — now on SoundCloud.

Der Mitschnitt aus Friedland ist online. Eine Nacht, alter Bahnhof, offener Himmel — jetzt zum Nachhören.

Voll aufdrehen.
Turn it up. Link in bio.

🎧 Friedland 2026

FRIEDLAND! It was a pleasure to be back at this years "Gleis Kultur" Festival. What a great audience! And what a stage and soundsystem. Mairos and I enjoyed so much to play this. Here is the recording

17/07/2026

Had a booking in London this weekend. Drove 800km with an electro car the other way instead.

Friedland. An old train station in the northeast, almost at the Baltic, slowly turning into a festival. My second time there. Warm night, open air, no clouds worth worrying about. Great people.

MAIROS from Berlin opened — tech house with edges, nothing off the rack. I took over after. Friedland took what we brought and danced. Not the polite city nod — real dancing, good mood, people who actually wanted to be there.

1,600km there and back for one night. Look at the faces and the maths works out. Every time. We will be back next year.

📍 Friedland · with

07/07/2026

Played the Munich subway again — this time for the opening of Corinna Rosa Falkenberg's exhibition (Corinna-Rosa Falkenberg), last Thursday. Unfortunately not in the subway platform itself (like on the cover), but the entrance just a floor above.
You don't get to play a subway station legally every day. Creative Sounds for Creative People and by passers. No chill-out though — that would've been too boring 😉
Already looking forward to the next one.

Playing in Friedland Mecklenburg Vorpommern this Saturday Jul 11th (Summer Open Air).

And mark the date: Sat Aug 1st - LUMA @ Loden Frey Park in Munich!!!

Write me for more info and guestlist (its a closed event)

Played the Munich subway again — this time for the opening of Corinna Rosa Falkenberg's exhibition, last Thursday. Unfortunately not in the subway platform itself (like on the cover), but the entrance

07/07/2026

GLEIS KULTUR – Open Air N°001

Es ist so weit, Friedland! Am Samstag, den 11.07. verwandeln wir den Alten Bahnhof in eine Open-Air-Bühne für elektronische Musik unter freiem Himmel. 🖤

Melodic Techno // Indie Dance – von Sonnenuntergang bis tief in die Nacht. Mit dabei:
🎧 Chris Helmbrecht (München)
🎧 Mairos (Berlin)
🎧 Chio-Music (Pinneberg)

Dazu Cocktails, Streetfood und kühle Getränke – alles, was so ein lauer Sommerabend braucht.

📅 Sa, 11.07. // Start 20:00 Uhr
📍 Alter Bahnhof, Friedland
🎟️ Vorverkauf 10 € · Abendkasse 12 €

Schnappt euch eure Leute und kommt vorbei – das erste Mal seiner Art, und das direkt vor eurer Haustür. Wir freuen uns auf euch! ✨

02/06/2026

Four days in Lido di Camaiore with my daughter. That’s it. That’s the post.

Well — almost. Giorgio and Anna were there too, old friends from Moscow days, both living in Tuscany now. They showed us their spots, took us to good restaurants, came to the beach. That kind of friendship where years pass and nothing feels lost.

We did one day in Florence. Beautiful city, always has been — but something’s gone wrong with it. Lines to get into shops. Lines for ice cream. Mass tourism turned the whole place into a queue. We didn’t love it. But we found a small restaurant five minutes’ walk from where we were standing, quiet and good, found it with AI of all things — and that saved the afternoon.

There was also a Carrara marble detour. White mountains, broken open for centuries. I kept thinking — in a thousand years, will they have taken the whole mountain?

And on one of the mountain passes, we drove through Retignano — a tiny village where I played an illegal festival in 2000. Ten thousand people showed up by 2001. Police shut it down. The village is still there, perfectly quiet, completely unbothered.

Pizza, pasta, beer. A nice hotel with genuinely kind staff. Charlotte telling me to stop being careful.

02/06/2026

First time doing a long haul in an electric car. Timmelsjoch to Tuscany. Took us two, maybe three hours longer than usual — charging stops, mountain math, the whole thing. But honestly? The stops were good. The mountains were better.

Charlotte had the right idea pretty early. I said something about saving energy, driving slow, being efficient. She looked at me and said: f**k that, let’s have fun. So we did. Flew up the passes. Marmots scattering. Electric motor absolutely ripping through the switchbacks.

On the way back — Stilfserjoch. Highest pass in Italy. Second highest in the whole Alps. 2,790-something meters. I was half convinced we’d run out of juice halfway up. We didn’t. And on the way down, the car regenerates energy from the braking. What you burn going up, you partially win back coming down. Still blows my mind a little.

Then Reschenpass. The church in the lake. Reschensee. That one never gets old.

Final stretch through the Inn Valley, a left over the Fernpass, and then — finally — German Autobahn. We both exhaled.

Oh, and somewhere in Garmisch, my uncle Wulf cycled out of a side street. Just like that. Completely by accident.

Six days. Two on the road. Worth every minute.

21/04/2026

My spot: Cihangir.

If you know New York’s East Village before it got too clean — or Camden decades ago — you’ll get the idea. Artists, cafés, small galleries, people who don’t really fit anywhere else. Still a bit raw, not fully polished yet. But you can already see where it’s heading.

There’s a bakery there — no exaggeration — best sourdough I’ve ever had. Period.

You spend your days walking, sitting, watching, eating.
And eating again. Because food here doesn’t miss. Street food, small places, restaurants — it’s just consistently good without trying too hard.

Nights go long. And when they end, you’re climbing those hills again, slightly drunk, slightly tired, and somehow completely fine with it.

This trip wasn’t just about the city.
It was about her. And about the strange reality of meeting halfway between worlds.

I’ll be back soon.
For the city.
And for the people — Turkish, Russian, and everyone else I’ve met along the way.

Istanbul stays with you. Whether you plan it or not.

21/04/2026

Istanbul does something to you. You arrive, and within a few hours you’re already part of its rhythm — fast, loud, chaotic, and strangely calm at the same time.

I first came here in 2019. Also because of a woman.
Now I’m back. Same story, different chapter.

This city sits right on the edge of Europe, but it doesn’t behave like it needs approval from anywhere. It’s half Europe, half Asia — geographically, culturally, mentally. You feel it everywhere. One street feels conservative, the next one completely open, almost rebellious. Somehow it works.

People talk about crime, but honestly — I’ve seen worse in cities that pretend to be “safe.” Here, people look at you, talk to you, help you. It feels alive, not polished.

And then there’s the constant up and down. Hills everywhere. You don’t walk here, you climb. I still don’t understand how they built half of these houses. But it gives the city its shape, its chaos, its views.

Istanbul isn’t trying to impress you.
That’s exactly why it does.