Three decades after his acid house days as The Mage, Claudio C.P. steps into a solo chapter with two beach inspired singles and a plan to keep new music coming every month.
German DJ and producer Claudio C.P., who cut his teeth in the 90s German dance scene as one half of the live act The Mage, is back with two new solo releases, Last Sunset on the Beach and Morse Code, both out in August 2026. It marks his first new music under his own name in years, and he is now working with MN2S Label Services for distribution.
From Mannheim’s Dancefloors to The Mage
Claudio’s introduction to music came at around nine or ten years old, through Jean-Michel Jarre and Kraftwerk records his father played him. Sven Väth’s 1992 album Accident in Paradise proved the pivotal moment that pulled him toward techno, and he started DJing professionally in 1993 at Mannheim’s Coco club, working up to bigger events like Sirius 4 by 1995. From 1994 his career widened out across clubs and events in Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland, and he began working with labels including Silvereye Production, Overdrive and Eye Q Records, the latter alongside Ralf Hildenbeutel, known for his work with Sven Väth. Alongside a production partner credited as B-Holder, he formed the live act The Mage, and in 2000 the pair released Acid Phase 2000, built around Emmanuel Top’s original “Acid Phase,” on Logic Records, a Frankfurt label operating as a BMG-affiliated sub-label. It was reissued in 2002 on Save The Vinyl, owned by fellow DJ Marc Spoon. The track brought national radio play on Hessischer Rundfunk’s HR3 Club Night and HR3 XXL, shows that also featured Sven Väth, Pascal F.E.O.S. and Marc Spoon, and he shared bills with artists including DJ Misjah, Earth Nation Live Act, Tom Wax, Awax Live Act, Mario de Bellis and Commander Tom, at clubs such as Omen Frankfurt, E-Werk Berlin and WMF Berlin.
Two Singles, Two Different Stories
After stepping back from music under his own name for a number of years, Claudio returns with two singles that each tell a distinct story. “Last Sunset on the Beach” grew out of what he calls a mental journey back to the 90s: summer evenings on the beach, someone with a ghetto blaster, congas around a campfire, some dancing, some talking, some just sitting there, all wrapped in a feeling of freedom he wanted the track to capture. “Morse Code” takes a darker turn, telling the story of a beautiful night on the beach that was interrupted when an ambulance arrived and paramedics tried to save a drowning victim. Since Morse code is best known for the SOS distress signal, Claudio worked a version of it into the track itself.
A Sound Built on Contrast
Claudio’s approach has always been about contrast, pairing soft sounds with aggressive rhythms and basslines, or taking the edge off something sharp with a gentler rhythm underneath, and letting the push and pull create something new. “That’s always been the case, and it hasn’t changed,” he says, “except that today, I’m Han Solo.” It’s an outlook he’s held since those early days in the 90s, when his style came from “that versatility and free spirit where everyone could find something,” and he remains wary of being boxed into one genre; if he has to put a label on where the new material sits, he’ll go with trance, but only loosely. His advice to anyone starting out in music carries the same thread: “Do something new, something that doesn’t exist yet. Be yourself, not someone else. Don’t stick to any boxes, especially the ones other people try to put you in.”
What’s Next
Claudio is already planning two more tracks for October, this time inspired by time spent in Ibiza this year, with the focus shifting to the musical side of that experience rather than the storytelling approach of his last two releases. He’s aiming to keep up a release schedule of two new tracks a month going forward, alongside a longer-term ambition to develop an album that blends his electronic roots with other musical traditions.