The Taste of House: How Hamburg Duo GOME Turned Cooking Into Music

Over a video call on a late autumn afternoon, GOME are under the blankets of a hotel bed in Barcelona, recovering from the night before. They’ve just played at Tunnel, one of the city’s key underground spots – an exhilarating night midway through their latest European tour.

GOME are Robin Townshend and Julian Marks, two Hamburg-based producers whose music sits somewhere between disco joy and house euphoria, stitched together with humour, friendship and a deep love for food. They’re one of the most compelling emerging acts in Germany’s ever-active electronic landscape – a DIY project that embodies Hamburg’s open-hearted scene. Julian sips a green detox smoothie and grins: “I felt very shit, but now I feel great. Let’s do this!”

Their story as musicians began in 2014, when they moved into a shared apartment in Hamburg. “We both had these tiny Korg Volcas synthesizers,” Julian recalls. “We’d sit in our tiny kitchen, just jamming, sometimes smoking a joint”. Their first gig was a chaotic experiment. “We thought we’d be Kraftwerk. Each of us with a desk, a tiny synth – very German,” Robin laughs – but it got them a booking at Poland’s Garbicz Festival. “We didn’t even have tracks,” Julian remembers. “Three days before the gig we started making them – naming things like House 1, House 2…” Robin interrupts, laughing: “But his House 1 was my Stoned – so we were shouting at each other for an hour and a half.” They were improvising, dropping kick drums in and out and feeding off the crowd’s chaos. “I remember cutting the kick for twenty seconds, bringing it back in, and everyone exploded.” Julian says. “We had no idea what we were doing – and it was perfect.” 

Both born and raised in Munich, the pair found their creative footing further north, in Hamburg – a city that offered them community and time to grow. Unlike Berlin’s sprawling intensity, Hamburg’s scene felt close-knit and humble, where experimentation thrived quietly. It was there that a small stroke of luck helped them take their first real step: when veteran producer Erobique lent them his studio for two weeks while touring, they turned it into a playground, recording late into the night and discovering their sound in the process. One of those sessions would become their first record, later remixed by Erobique himself. “He’s a fucking legend,” Julian says. “He gave us the confidence to put music out.”

Hamburg isn’t just Robin and Julian’s base – the city’s quiet pulse has shaped their identity. Since 2022, they’ve been giving something back to the city through GOME + The Gang, a residency at Golden Pudel – a former barracks squatted on the Elbe docks. “Those nights are special,” Robin says. “We play a lot internationally, but coming back there is a real reset. It grounds us.” They’ve been part of the crowd at Golden Pudel long before they ever played there, regularly visiting before they started making music.“The mood is always beautiful, the crowd too. There’s this warm energy every time – it feels like home,” Julian adds. “I remember dancing and thinking, one day I’d love to stand up there and play. Now, almost once a month we’re the ones behind the decks,” Julian says.

A couple of shows ago, they played from ten until seven the next morning – exhausting, but amazing. “We could set the tone of the whole night,” Julian says. “It’s so open – you can get deep, play whatever you want. Sometimes we’ll drop a jazz record mid-set, and people just go with it.” The final hours, they say, always carry a special magic. “They open the windows, and you can see the sunrise. It’s beautiful – people melt into it”.

Outside the clubs, their process stays intimate and genuine. They now have their own studio. “It’s not a proper engineer’s room – more like a living room. It feels cozy,” Robin says. The space is warm and messy: packed with synths and instruments they’ve collected over the years. “It’s an addiction,” Julian admits. That setup itself shapes the music: “You can make everything with a laptop,” Robin says, “but analog gear has a soul. Each machine does one thing really well – and that changes how you play.” “Usually I’m late,” Julian laughs. “Robin’s already jamming, then I jump in.” Robin says he often starts with a clear idea, but that can be limiting. “Then Julian comes in with something different, and suddenly the track becomes something else – something better.” That tension between control and chaos, planning and play, runs through everything they do. “Every new thing is just a failed copy of something you love,” Robin says “You try to imitate, but in failing, you find your sound.”

A turning point came when the duo decided to build something of their own: a record label. They started Snackwax in 2023. “We wanted to release music from other artists too. We’d had some shitty experiences with labels before, so we thought: let’s make a place that’s fair, without shitty contracts,” Robin says.

Snackwax has become a home for groovy tracks and edible ideas. True to their love of food, the duo decided to weave it into the label’s identity – each release features a different ingredient on the cover, sometimes even paired with a dish or product inspired by it. For the first releases, they celebrated with dinner parties in Hamburg, cooking grünkohl, a hearty local kale stew, for sixty people over two nights. The prep was chaotic, but the energy was pure joy. As Julian puts it: “We just did it without thinking too much – and it worked”.

Food has always been part of GOME’s story, long before music became their full-time obsession. “When we moved together we were both studying and working in gastronomy,” Julian says. “I was doing internships in kitchens; Robin was mostly in service.” Out of necessity, it turned into a hustle and they started a kind of catering service with zero budget. “We printed flyers and asked a newspaper guy in a fancy neighbourhood to slip them in. The next day we were flooded with calls,” Robin recalls. “Cooking and producing music are kind of the same,” Robin says of their second love. “You mix ingredients, layer flavours and build texture. It’s not so different. Music and food just go so well together.” Snackwax became the bridge between the two worlds.

From that came their online series ‘If this song were a dish, what would it taste like’, where they literally cook songs. A hit like Music Sounds Better With You by French house icons Stardust became a glossy tarte tatin, layered and caramelised like the track itself. Over time, the format grew into collaborations. “It’s fun to have other artists cook their songs,” Julian says. It’s a door opener – “Almost every DJ loves to eat. When we tell them, we want to cook your track, everyone’s in. We met Butch in Ibiza recently – he’s been our idol forever. We cooked one of his songs in his house, ate together, then went to the studio and made music.”

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During recent years, GOME have spent a lot of time touring the world, but they’ve always found the space and time to return to the studio – cooking up grooves and ideas just like they do in the kitchen. Now, there’s plenty to be excited about. This month the duo has a four-track EP coming out on Heist. The single dropped last week, with the full release scheduled for the 28th. For them, it feels like a full-circle moment: “We’ve been playing tracks from that label since the beginning,” Julian smiles. “One of the tracks is quite old – You’re My Baby, which we made with our friend Michael Cignarale, a great singer from New York. The other three were born out of jamming – House Music, Cut the Midrange, Keep Funkin – and they became songs quite fast.” 

As always with GOME, that’s the essence: doing things with heart, not in a hurry. Whether that’s cooking kale for sixty people or a groove from scratch, it’s the same intuition guiding them – a blend of playfulness and care. Maybe that’s what makes GOME so special: their House sounds like home. 

GOME’s Favorite Dishes on Tour

• Rio de Janeiro: Cheesecake with miso caramel. Came totally unexpected, but amazing combination of flavours. 
• ⁠New York City: Smoked sturgeon bagel at Barney Greengrass. This place is always crowded for a reason – never had sturgeon on a bagel before, but definitely will again.
• Amsterdam: Dover sole with caper butter. The best Dover sole we ever had – such a delicate fish, with such a rich, yet not overpowering butter sauce, cooked to perfection.
• ⁠Amsterdam: Pad kra pao. Amsterdam has some of the best Thai food, incredibly rich, authentic taste. Can’t wait to be back to try the rest of the menu. 
• Hamburg: Cured salmon sandwich. A true Hamburg classic is the fischbrötchen and this one’s our favorite.
• Tbilisi: Tomato and cucumber salad with walnut dressing. The first time we came to this magical city, this simple salad completely blew us away – a reminder that quality of ingredients is key.
• ⁠Barcelona: Catch of the day at Cova Fumada. A place where the fisherman walk directly into the kitchen, and whatever they bring is served minutes later. Doesn’t get fresher, doesn’t get better.
• ⁠Paris: Jambon beurre. We turned the whole city upside down on the look out for the best jambon beurre sandwich, and would do it again any day of the week.
• London: Crispy aromatic duck. A true classic in Chinatown, and one of our favorite dishes in the world.
• ⁠Vienna: Bosna sausage with mustard and coriander. This one found us by surprise, unexpectedly, at night after a gig, but hasn’t left our hearts since.⁠Tuscany: Roast cinghiale. When this dish [of wild boar] was served to us in a restaurant, we were already completely full from the two starters and three pasta courses that had come before but it was so good, we couldn’t resist licking the plate clean.

Camillo Vegezzi is a freelance music writer based in Milan. He has collaborated with various music magazines and is a contributor to the cultural section of Il Manifesto. Read more of Camillo’s writing on Something Curated here.

Lorenzo Villa is a writer and editor based in Milan. He writes about lifestyle for Harper’s Bazaar Italia and collaborates with the literary magazine Galápagos. Read more of Lorenzo’s writing on Something Curated here.

Header photograph by Florian Thoss.