This past weekend, Los Angeles was graced by the presence of Louie Fluttert, better known as Bakermat, at the El Rey Theatre. The event offered some of the best that house music had to offer, with UK producer Alex Adair opening up the night on some sweet soothing tropical house, followed up by the sax-filled funky greatness that would be Bakermat's set.

Bakermat has garnered a lot of attention on the American music festival circuit this year by putting a sexy twist on house music. His ability to make the crowd dance alongside an improvising saxophonist creates a sublime experience for anyone in attendance.

Our idea of the monotonous festival DJ set was obscured after witnessing Bakermat bring down the house at Lightning In A Bottle and Hard Summer this year. There are a couple of points that need to be addressed, though...are we going to see more of him in the future? And just what IS a Bakermat? Before his performance, we had the opportunity to hang out and have a chat with him to clear the mystery surrounding this...

How do you feel about touring at such an early part in your career?

Pretty good, the thing is though that I've been touring in Europe for a while, like 3 years already. But this year was the first time I came to the U.S. because I got a lot of requests. I get emails saying 'PLEASE come play in the states' so I did my first tour back in March for a month, and I liked it a lot. So I decided I'm gonna do this more.

We actually caught your set at TomorrowWorld as well, what did you think about that festival this year? For festival goers it was a bit of a...

Yeah, I know, and of course I was bummed because it was bad news for every artist. But I thought, you know, seeing the whole festival still going on was still pretty good. I had fun, the crowd had fun, in total I was lucky to have a full tent of people that were not pissed off and partying. But I do have to say though that TomorrowWorld couldn't really do anything about it either, the weather can be pretty extreme sometimes and you can't really prepare for that much rain. I get it, it's nobody's fault, it just happens and that's life. But in general, I still had a pretty good day.

It just goes to show that the kind of music you play promotes that happy and chill vibe.

That's the main thing I want to portray in my music.

A certain amount of people that go to festivals in America just want to rage and party hard, so they're not so keen to the "chill factor." They don't want to groove out and enjoy the moment. Do you think people are starting to open up to music like yours?

Well that's coming up. I feel that the United States is kind of moving towards, like, not only drops. Not that *buildup noise* drop and then *buildup noise* drop. They want more stuff nowadays which is awesome and what we're here for.

What makes you so popular out here is that you use live instruments; you've been touring with a sax player which is awesome. What influenced you to implement this into your music and live show?

I was a big fan of house music back in the days when I was still studying. But I was also a big fan of other genres and the thing I missed in house music was the little bit of human touch. It's so...predetermined beats and it's all corrected and it works. And I like a little bit of imperfection sometimes. So I thought like, why not make some songs myself, and get some jazz saxophone solos, flute solos that were played by actual people? Then I made those tracks and so I have house music with a human touch, but now I have to perform it with a human touch as well. So then I met my saxophonist, practiced, and made sure we had chemistry because that's very important. Most of the stuff we do on stage is improv, we just look at each other and it's kind of like "are you gonna go?" or we just do our thing. So that worked out very great.

I agree on that. So do you come from a big musical background? How did you get into music?

Not at all. Well, my mom was an opera singer. She was always singing in the house and she brought me to her concerts, all the classical concerts. But that was it. I didn't do any music until I was like 20.

And that started with production right away?

Yeah I started with FL Studio mostly because I knew the software from playing around with it when I was 17. So I downloaded it again and well...made something.

As you started making music, were you pretty set on house music? Did you try anything else?

I was definitely on the house music thing. I love the kick drum, the four on the floor beat, big snare thing, I need that. I do love other genres as well, and at the moment I'm producing a lot of other genres. Just for fun.

Would you want to take Bakermat as far as it goes and maybe try out another project? Like starting an alias?

Yeah I actually feel the need to work on some other stuff so I'm working on it. I'm thinking about starting an alter ego, but I'm not sure yet.

So tell us what Bakermat is. Coming from America, a lot of us don't know how to say it correctly at first, for example "Bay-ker-mat."

Bah-ker-maht. It's an old Dutch word. It's pretty random, like most Dutch people probably don't even know what it means. It's like a cradle. In a sentence you would say like "Detroit is the bakermat of techno" because it kind of grew up there and has a long presence there. It's kind of hard to define it.

Where do you see Bakermat as a project going in the future?

Well I'm already doing some concerts with an entire band. I really want to push that through because I think that's revolutionary to combine electronic music with live elements in that kind of fashion. I did shows in London and Paris with 7 instrumentalists on stage, we had a violin, vocalist, percussion, singer, and I loved that. The beats are still on point, but there's so much more life to it and I want to continue doing that. But it's pretty hard to tour with an entire band.

What can we expect in the coming months from you?

Well the first album Bon Voyage is coming out, and a lot of new stuff. I didn't release a lot of stuff in 2015 but 2016 is going to be release year, like everything is going to go up. A lot of music.

After this interview it was about time for his set to start. Music was played, people danced, there were some spectacular jazz saxophone solos, it was a great time. Expect a lot of awesome new things to come from Bakermat in the future. A new album, and possibly a whole new live show as well. If you ever get an opportunity to watch him, I highly recommend you do so.

Photos by Conner Lee Coughenor Photography