Paffendorf is a German

electronic dance music Electronic dance music (EDM), also referred to as dance music or club music, is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres originally made for nightclubs, raves, and List of electronic dance music festivals, festivals. It is generally ...

project. The group consists of

Ramon Zenker Ramon Zenker (born 11 November 1968) is a German music producer, songwriter, Audio engineer, sound engineer and remixer. He is a member of Hardfloor, Fragma, Paffendorf and E-Trax, who had a UK Singles Chart, UK #60 hit with Let's Rock (song), Let ...

, also producer of

Fragma Fragma is a German Vocal trance, vocal trance music group, originally comprising three producers. The group was successful in the early 2000s when they released several singles that charted successfully across Europe, especially the United Kin ...

, Gottfried Engels and Nicolas Valli. The project is represented by the Cologne DJ Christian Schmitz, active on Tiger Records. Paffendorf is best known for their 2000

hit Hit means to strike someone or something. Hit or HIT may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Fictional entities * Hit, a fictional character from ''Dragon Ball Super'' * Homicide International Trust or HIT, a fictional organization i ...

, "Where Are You", although they have had various successful hits across

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, their best known in the UK being "Be Cool," which peaked at number 7 in the UK Singles Chart in June 2002. Their song, "Under My Skin", had become an Internet meme, featuring Momo, a character from the anime series ''

Sumomomo Momomo is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Shinobu Ohtaka. It was serialized in Square Enix's manga magazine ''Young Gangan'' (first named ''Gangan YG'') from January 2004 to February 2009, with its chapters collected in 12 vo ...

'' repetitively imitating a train engine with her hands and jumping up and down. The song had been sped up to sound similar and rival to a more popular Internet meme,

Caramelldansen is the first track from Swedish music group Caramell's second and final album ''Supergott'' released on 16 November 2001. It became an Internet meme in the mid-2000s after a nightcore, sped-up version of the song was attached to a video loop fro ...

History

was involved in a number of dance music projects in the late 80's, including

Interactive Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but mo ...

("Who Is Elvis"). Engel's and Zenker's Samba dance project Bellini, centered around three female singers, began in 1997 with the release of " Samba de Janeiro"

Discogs Discogs ( ; short for " discographies") is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. Database contents are user-generated, and described in ''T ...

Bellini
/ref> in various versions. It became an international hit (#2 in Germany) and was followed by an album and more singles. The trance project Paffendorf debuted with "Smile" (#22 in Germany) in 1998. "Ruf Mich An" / "Call Me Now" and "Terminator" achieved

Top 50 In the music industry, the Top 40 is a list of the 40 currently most popular songs in a particular genre. It is the best-selling or most frequently broadcast popular music. Record charts have traditionally consisted of a total of 40 songs. "Top ...

status. In the year 2000 they continued in that vein and made their breakthrough: "Where are You" went into the German Top 15 with "Everybody Scream" also making the Top 50. Their hit album, ''Dance City'' was also placed firmly in the Top 50 of the album charts. The track "Rhythm And Sex" continued the run, whilst "Be Cool" went to #7 in the UK Singles Chart in June 2002. At the same time Zenker co-founded and produced the Fragma ("Toca's Miracle"). Their thirteenth single release, "Under My Skin", was successful in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, particular in the

video hosting service An online video platform (OVP) enables users to upload, convert, store, and play back video content on the Internet, often via a private server structured, large-scale system that may generate revenue. Users will generally upload video content vi ...

NicoNico Douga , known before 2012 as , is a Japanese video sharing service based in Tokyo, Japan. "Niconico" or "nikoniko" is the Japanese ideophone for smiling. As of 2021, Niconico is the 34th most-visited website in Japan, according to Alexa Internet. Th ...

. It was first shown in a fan-vid featuring the character Momo from

, plus the Jens O Remix version of the song that was shortened and played twice. Westerners sometimes called this the "Paffendorf Dance". Another version of this video involved characters from Lucky Star.

Discography

Albums

* 2000: ''Dance City'' * 2001: ''Be Cool'' * 2007: ''Planet Dance''

Singles

Videos

* 1998: ''Smile'' * 1998: ''Ruf Mich An'' * 1998: ''Terminator 2 Theme: Main Title'' * 2000: ''Where Are You'' * 2001: ''Rhythm & Sex'' * 2002: ''Be Cool'' * 2002: ''Crazy, Sexy, Marvellous'' * 2005: ''On & On'' * 2006: ''La La La Girl'' * 2006: ''Where Are You 2007''

References

External links

* German Eurodance groups German dance music groups {{Germany-band-stub