katja ruge I photography I music I portrait I hamburg

CAN LOVE BE SYNTH

band, synth music lovers , dj katja ruge (synthpop, dark disco, spacepop, new wave, Italo, disco, ebm, 80s & electronics)

Hailing from Hamburg Katja Ruge & Frank Husemann are better known as Can Love Be Synth.

They are in love with old analogue machines and define their specific sound in the legendary Synthesizer Studio Hamburg. A synth collectors paradise owned by Frank & Sunny and hidden behind the big grey walls of the Bunker and the club Uebel & Gefährlich between the Reeperbahn and Schanzenviertel district.

Katja ran her party series „Kann Denn Liebe Synthie Sein?“ for many years and continues to play the music that she loves as a DJ. Her sets combine Italo, New Wave and Cosmic Sounds to Dark Disco. She invited Essaie Pas, Cosmetics, Josh Cheon (Dark Entries), Wolfram, Italo Brutalo, Curses, Neil Landstrumm, The Emperor Machine, Perel, Local Suicide and many more.

Frank played in several bands and was running a store where he sold analogue gear. He also works as a sound technician in clubs as well as for important projects like the Fridays For Future Movement.

The two got together to enjoy the machines and sounds in the Synthesizer Studio but started quickly doing remixes for artists such as Erasure, Cerrone, Ruede Hagelstein or Polly Scattergood. In 2017 they had their first own release with ‘Megapulser‘ on Bordello A Parigi, continued in 2020 with own releases on Ombra INT. and TAU.

In 2021 BUNKER on A CLEAN CUT saw the light."The sound of two craftsman knocking steal bolts into the crane in front of our studio window at the bunker. It is our protest to the gentrification of this building with a another tourist attraction hotel and ignoring the needs of a whole district in Hamburg and their community“