As Jan Schulte has an ace new album out on Dekmantel we thought he'd be the perfect person to do our first 'A Day In The Life' feature... Over to Jan...

If you are at home what time do you wake up?
Since I quit my day job last year my sleep rhythm within weeks got pretty offbeat… Within the week it depends on how long I have been enjoying my studio, and on the weekends it depends on the travel schedule.

Do you have any family / kids / pets that wake you up?
Sara (my girlfriend) and me have a couple of pigeons that love to wake us up at sunrise by having ridiculously loud sex on the balcony right next to our bed.

What do you first look at on your phone? Email? Instagram? The news?
Checking the time on my phone and doing my best to ignore my messages or mails first, heading to the fridge to see if we have any juice left... and then back to bed for a bit haha.

How long do you leave it after waking up to do this?
Again this depends on a few things, such as how hard was the past weekend, how long was my studio session last night and how hard will be my upcoming travel schedule.

What do you have for breakfast?
I am not really good in planning food things, so it can be anything between some juice leftovers, an apple, or a bag of pistachios.

How long do you generally sleep for?
This might be the most variable component in my week. Coming home on Sunday evening I might sleep 15 hours until Monday afternoon, on a weekend it might be a lot less, plus some naps in airplanes, cars, random rooms.

Where is home? What is the area? Whats the space like?

I am very much enjoying living in Düsseldorf, the city I grew up in. Nobody knows where I would have ended up without finding the Salon Des Amateurs... But as I found my musical home and surrounding there I never thought of leaving. After living for a few years in a rough neighbourhood close to the main train station, which I enjoyed a lot as it was possible to get drinks and good Turkish soups 24/7, I moved together with Sara and we found a magical apartment. I almost did not want to have a look at it, as the neighbourhood is kind of bourgeouis and pretty dead at night. So after being the most normal person in the house I lived in before, here I am the freak.

BUT… The Apartment consists out of two former single apartments – one in the normal house and one in the back house, both connected by a long hallway with a few steps down. So after walking past our living rooms down the long hallway, down the steps and then to the very end there is my most favourite room in the world: The Wolf Müller Flanger Studio. It is where I keep all my records and instruments and where I spent all the time I can find.

Once up and about how do you spend your day?
In the best case I don't have much paperwork to do so I can go on working on music. All my records are in my studio as well so if I arrive at a point in a production where I need a break or an idea I just turn around and go to some territory of my records that I didn’t touch in a while and then either rediscover a record for my sets, or even find a weird sample to use or to help me get new ideas and directions for my production. As it is the first time in my life with a home studio, gear and time do work in it I am having a really good time at the moment! Music and sound is still discovery for me and I feel like I just got started with a lot of things in it.

When do you get to lunch?
This whole differentiation between lunch and dinner always confused me to be honest – I get food when I am hungry haha. We mostly cook at home, but sometimes I love to go out, especially for all kinds of noodle soups.

How do you find music to play for gigs etc? Is it a regular digging thing or do you keep it more about buying online and then going through your collection?
Finding an obscure record or compact-disc in a thrift shop or record store still is my favourite way of discovering something. This feeling of coming home and having the first listen with mostly just a loose guess what to expect is still very special to me. Of course it got harder to find places where you can really dig records the old school way but I am still often enough having discoveries that make me happy. For example finding a cd of a local percussion group from the early 90s, or even just another Jacques Fred Petrus production i did not have or know before. And of course I have evenings where I end up doing hours of research and exploring in the internet. There are so many CD-only releases to still discover, haha. I am also often rediscovering bits of my own collection these days. Records I mostly saved for a specific track in my head, or discovering great wrong speeders in my jungle collection!

Have you got many record shops nearby?
Unfortunately Düsseldorf doesn't have a very high density of record shops. The city has a lot of good flea markets though so the first years of collecting I would regularly get up at 4 in the night to maybe be the first going through a private seller's box of vinyl. One of the guys that I met in that time, a notorious digger who almost always was there before me, just opened a record shop here which I recommend highly: Throwback Vinyl, Am Straußenkreuz 21, 40229 Düsseldorf.

How do you manage going through the digi stuff you get sent?
To be honest, I am constantly overwhelmed and miss out on a lot of good stuff, also from friends as my email is constantly overflowing. I am a real pro at missing WeTransfer expiring dates... In general I love how diverse and productive and creative the music scene around us is at the moment! It's just great that music does not have to follow much rules these days, and that there is so many ways of production to choose from. I totally don't care anymore how any music is made, it just has to catch my ears attention.

Anything you’ve watched recently of note that you are enjoying? Neflix series / films / documentaries?
For the first time in my life I got me a game console and I can really recommend Zelda - Breath Of The Wild, it's a beautiful world to get lost in, and great sound too! I am desperately searching for a new cartoon to get deep with, since my favourite one Adventure Time is finished. So if anyone has a good tip hit me up (I know all the obvious ones tho haha please no Rick and Morty lead haha)!!

Photography of Jan Schulte by Alexander Romey & Franz Schuier.