Last year still performing live on the stage of the SAE Convention, today at number 1 in the German single charts: our alumnus Sebastian Smolka is celebrating an extraordinary success with his band DRUCKLUFT. And the connection to SAE is not only on stage. Parts of the technical crew are also SAE alumni.
With DRUCKLUFT, things move forward – sometimes all the way to the top of the German single charts.
The carnival brass band DRUCKLUFT from Cologne/Bonn is a phenomenon. With high energy live performances and positive vibes, they rock stages and even get the most skeptical non-carnival fans into a great mood with guaranteed earworms.
The band’s guitarist is our alumnus and lecturer Sebastian Smolka. The 2026 carnival season will certainly be unforgettable for him. Together with his nine band members, he achieved something quite rare. With their song Karnevalsmaus, the band not only delivered this year’s carnival hit but also reached the top of the official German single charts at the end of February. This makes DRUCKLUFT the first national band to reach number 1 in the singles ranking since Rammstein four years ago. We would like to say a huge congratulations on this outstanding achievement.
Sebastian, known as Basti, studied Audio Engineering at our Cologne campus from 2012 to 2014 and has remained closely connected to SAE ever since. As a lecturer in the Music Business department, he has been sharing his professional experience with the next generation for many years. The fact that the technical director and parts of the technical crew also come from the SAE network makes this success even more special for us.
We met Basti in Cologne and asked him for some interesting insights. You can read the interview here:
https://www.sae.edu/deu/insights/ein-alumnus-stuermt-die-charts/
Picture: © Druckluft
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