Tic Tac Toe & Connect Four

Tic Tac Toe Records was started in 2004 by the Danish DJ, Patrick Bateman.

The aim from the beginning was to focus on all the Danish talents that Denmark had to offer at that time, but who didn’t have places to release their music. The Danish producers didn’t have much network outside of Denmark, and there wasn’t any local labels that were releasing techno/tech-house/minimal, as we wanted to do. Besides releasing music from the Danish producers we also wanted to spice it up with remixes and producers from Bateman’s big network abroad. We also wanted to keep the release schedule steady, so we would keep the hype going.

The first 2 years we had a big focus on Hansen & DJ Daniel, Theodor Zox, BrightLight and Trentemøller. From abroad we took on Ryan Crosson (later on M_nus), Pheek (Archipel), Mike Shannon, Shadi Megallaa, Mikael Stavöstrand and a few others.
On the remix side of things we had Marek Hemmann & Mathias Kaden remixing Trentemøller, Brian Aneurysm (Iron Box Music) and Maetrik (Treibstoff) both remixed Theodor Zox (the Maetrik remix got licensed to Tiefschwarz Fabric mix cd). Gabriel Ananda, Frankie and Kaito remixed Hansen & DJ Daniel.

After this period new artists arrived as well as new Danish labels also saw the light. We had releases with Maetrik, Danish Cant, Italian Nperfectduo, label owner Patrick Bateman and Jack Rock. On the remix side of things we had a Guy Gerber remix of Jack Rock, a Massi DL remix of Patrick Bateman, a Ryan Crosson remix of Ecco and Benno Blome, Ink & Needle and Nino Raro did a great remix package of the Noughts And Crosses compilation.

The third period of the label focussed on the Danish artists Blagger, Mathias Mesteño Trentemøller & Patrick Bateman. From abroad there were Swat Squad, Big Bully & Rufas, Maetrik & Orlando Voorn. Remixes coming from names like James Teej, Maetrik, Sarah Goldfarb, Ed Davenport and many more.

The fourth period of the label is in progress now. With release from artists like Miro Pajic, Benjamin Fehr, Berkant Suer, Blagger, Patrick Bateman, Mark-Henning, Maetrik, Delete and many more. The label has taken a turn back to more dark and minimal sound again, which goes hand in hand with the new super simple logo.

In 2007 Connect Four was born, sub-label of Tic Tac Toe Records, started by Kenneth Broxgaard (aka Patrick Bateman) in autumn 2006.

The idea is to release top quality deep minimal house that would be deeper and slower than the usual stuff on Tic Tac Toe.

We started off in first half of 2007 with 4 top quality releases from Satoshi Fumi, Sian, Murat Özer and Jonny White. All of them were top quality, but after rethinking the idea we came to the conclusion that the output on Connect Four needed to be deeper and/or more housy, so that’s why we had a 1 year break.

Since late 2007 the labels has been run by Lars Gregers and Kenneth Broxgaard together and we finally found the right deep sound for the Connect Four, which includes artists like James Teej, Liapin (Afrilounge), Dana Ruh, Matthew Burton, Mathias Mesteño and a few other very interesting new signings coming up very soon.

Lars will be responsible for the Connect Four A&R and also for updating the layout/graphics for both labels.

Now a days the labels are running a “3 digital releases & 1 vinyl compilation” format, a new system that was thought out during the summer of 2009 and put in effect in the autumn of 2009 together with the new logo.

So all in all it has been 5 great years so far, and we will continue to give you new exiting music the coming many years.

Lars Gregers & Kenneth Broxgaard