Running Back

Running Back is a dance music label. Perhaps that seems obvious, but even after more than two decades, the German outpost headed up by Gerd Janson remains squarely focused on one key objective: activating the dancefloor. Granted, the how of that objective is a bit more complicated, as Running Back has never stuck to any sort of concrete manifesto, or even one particular sound. House, techno, electro, Italo, disco, garage (the American kind), trance, Balearic… that’s just a partial list of the genres the label has dabbled in over the years. And yet, there does exist a throughline, a kind of classic—or, better said, unclassic—sensibility that harkens back to some of dance music’s most vaunted spaces. The Paradise Garage. Zanzibar. Danceteria. The Warehouse. The Muzic Box. The Starck Club, Front. Ostgut. Panorama Bar. Traces of all these places can be found in Running Back’s DNA, and with each gleaming melody and bouncy groove it brings into the world, the label continues to build on that lineage, one record at a time.