Biography
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Born
24 August 1950 (age 73)
Zeus B. Held (born 24 August 1950 as Bernd Held) is a German music producer and musician, known for his work in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. He was involved with several artists of the Krautrock, Disco and New Wave era, such as Birth Control, Rockets, Gina X Performance, Dead Or Alive, John Foxx, Fashion and Men Without Hats on their successful album Pop Goes the World.
Besides being an experienced producer and soundcreator his musical education on piano and reed instruments also made him also a well respected arranger. Spending 6 years as keyboard player and multi-instrumentalist with the German group Birth Control (6 LPs) gave him the experience as a touring musician. After these years on the road he worked as producer, session- musician, programmer and engineer in German and French studios before moving to London in 1982.
His production “……combines electronic Teutonic sounds with a soulful sensibility for melodic expression…”. (NME, June’82) After writing and producing the groundbreaking album by Gina X Performance Nice Mover, (followed by three more Gina X albums), his first UK production credits were with Fashion and Dead or Alive, he produced Pete Wylie's Sinful album and an LP by Men Without Hats for Polygram US which yielded a number one in many European countries and a US Top 20 hit with Pop Goes The World. This was followed by 2 albums with Transvision Vamp on MCA with a top 5 single and a No 1 album. Zeus went on to write and produce two successful albums with Nina Hagen (Nina Hagen 1990 and Street 1991), Udo Lindenberg's Casanova, Win, National Velvet, Spear Of Destiny and two albums with Mark Parrot. He has produced and co-written an album with South African group Shikisha, an EP with Victoria Wilson-James and recorded and produced an album with rock legends Hawkwind - Distant Horizons.
In 1995 he wrote and recorded the music for a worldwide advertising campaign for Swatch. His mix of Gary Numan's Cars hit the British charts again in March '96 and gave Armand Van Helden sample food for his year 2000 hit.
After extended traveling round the world he produced his own two projects: No Sweat, a jazzy hip hop album with diverse guest singers and assorted samples and involving his collected samples Inma Wiru, his Australian project under the banner of Digital Dreaming, distributed by Warner Music. During his long stays in Australia Zeus also toured and recorded with Aboriginal Singer and Gitarrist Frank Yamma and his band.
In 1999 he co-wrote Nina Hagen’s single Der Poetenclub which also features the voice of Falco (of Rock me Amadeus fame). His production and arranging skills led to intensive work on audio-visuals and soundtracks. One of which was a British film shown at Cannes 2001 festival “Mad Dogs”.
Since 2003 he divides his time between working in his Freiburg, Germany based studio and his London KGBeat studio and production setup. From 2005 Zeus he also worked with Jazz & Rock Schulen Freiburg, where he created and realised the 3 year project "EuroPop", which was a musician's network, events (EuroPop Festival in Neuf Brisach) and education program founded by the European Union. His latest musical ventures involve Big Bands and orchestras.
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