Frank Bretschneider works as a musician, composer and video artist in Berlin, making mainly electronic work based on complex rhythmic structures and interlocking textures, whose many-layered sound is inspired by the experimental set-ups of modern physics, often supplemented by perfectly synchronized computer-generated visualizations. In 1986, he founded AG Geige, one of the most influential underground bands in East Germany. In 1996, he co-founded the label raster-noton and has since released many solo albums.
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CD
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R-M 214CD
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Unequal cycles searching for synchronous experiences: On his new album Pounding, Frank Bretschneider tells of distance, convergence and congruence in a continuous, ever-changing flow of events. What is often considered to be an unquestionable dogma in club music (for which Bretschneider has provided significant impetus since the 1990s) -- the groove -- appears precarious, unstable, and in motion. Pulse and accent are volatile encounters and have to be found again and again for short, delightful moments. Music becomes a constant process of negotiation. In search of new sound spaces, Bretschneider has recently worked a lot with modular synthesizers, both solo and in collaborations, including the project Beispiel together with Jan Jelinek. Pounding was created using similar means -- conceived in 2020 for the Pochen Biennale in Chemnitz, subsequently developed further and recorded in March and April 2023 on a sample-based modular system. And in fact, Bretschneider is once again exemplarily scanning his own sound material, for example Dub effects that listen to themselves crumbling. But also the human voice, or more precisely: the stuttering of fragments of speech, far in the distance but omnipresent, like a mysterious narration. Aesthetically, the eleven pieces form part of a series of works with a focus on percussion. Bretschneider has already perfected this approach with albums like Rhythm (2007) and has been shifting the perspective ever since, for ever-new results. Shifting is the basic principle of Pounding. Bretschneider combines elements that are in different aggregate states, changing their relationship to each other and thus ensuring the complex overall movement. He lets one to two-bar loops run against each other and through manipulations, develops a network of rhythms that creates a hypnotic state in the counterplay of repetition and mutation, between clearly recognizable meter and disorientation. There are comparable approaches in aleatoric music. Bretschneider combines them with sounds and patterns that are reminiscent of step sequencer logic and at the same time go far beyond it. The result is relational techno. Never clear, constantly restless and exciting.
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LP
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R-M 214LP
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Unequal cycles in search of synchronous experiences: On his new album Pounding, Frank Bretschneider tells of distance, convergence and congruence in a continuous, ever-changing flow of events. What is often regarded as an unquestionable dogma in club music -- the groove -- appears precarious, unstable, and in motion. Pulse and accent are volatile encounters and have to be found again and again for short, delightful moments. Music becomes a constant process of negotiation. In search of new sound spaces, Bretschneider has recently worked a lot with modular synthesizers, both solo, and in collaborations, including the project Beispiel together with Jan Jelinek. Pounding was created using similar means -- conceived in 2020 for the Pochen Biennale in Chemnitz, subsequently developed further and recorded in March and April 2023 on a sample-based modular system. And in fact, Bretschneider is once again exemplarily scanning his own sound material, such as dub effects that listen to them-selves disintegrate; but also the human voice, or more precisely: the stuttering of fragments of speech, far in the distance but omnipresent, like a mysterious narration. Aesthetically, the eleven pieces form part of a series of works with a focus on percussion. Bretschneider has already perfected this approach with albums like Rhythm (2007) and has been shifting the perspective ever since, for ever-new results. Shifting is the basic principle of Pounding. Bretschneider combines elements that are in different aggregate states, changing their relationship to each other and thus ensuring the complex overall movement. He lets one to two-bar loops run against each other and through small manipulations, develops a network of rhythms that creates a hypnotic state in the counterplay of repetition and mutation, between clearly recognizable meter and disorientation. There are comparable approaches in aleatoric music. Bretschneider combines them with sounds and patterns that are reminiscent of step sequencer logic and at the same time go far beyond it. The result is relational techno. Never obvious, always restless and exciting.
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2LP
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KEPLARREV 018LP
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Last copies, reduced price. Keplar releases a vinyl reissue of 2001's Curve, the second album released by Frank Bretschneider on Mille Plateaux under his real name. Curve saw him pick up on the underlying concept of 1999's Rand, but gave his explorations of the sonic and stylistic range of electronic music notably more space and time to unfold. Merging compositional minimalism with sonic complexity, the eight tracks display an affinity for the production techniques of dub music, which had already been a major reference point for Bretschneider's work before. Its subtle grooves, especially in the rhythmically charged pieces towards the end of the album, also nod at the dance music-inspired work of contemporaries such as SND or Vladislav Delay. Produced during a prolific time for Bretschneider, who had previously co-run the Rastermusic label and was at that time still active under his Komet moniker, he considers Curve to be a crucial album in his discography. Bretschneider was an important figure in the 1980s Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz) scene and released his first solo experiments with electronic music through his own klangFarBe tape label as early as 1985. Throughout the 1990s, he was part of projects such as Produkt and Tol and also released solo albums as Komet on Rastermusic, which he had co-founded in 1995 together with Olaf Bender a.k.a. Byetone. At the turn of the millennium, he gradually started releasing more solo records under his real name. After 1999's Rand, followed Rausch on 12k -- with whose owner Taylor Deupree he would collaborate for 2002's Balance, reissued in 2020 by Keplar -- in the following year and, finally, Curve. Produced after he had moved to Berlin, Bretschneider used a Clavia Nord Modular as his primary sound source and the Logic DAW to modulate and synchronize the sounds, adding only drum loops to some tracks in the second half of the album. Curve is a record that is hard to pigeonhole and thus an archetypical Bretschneider album: marked by a meticulous attention to detail, infinitely playful, and fully dedicated to pushing the envelope of electronic music. It is no wonder that it left a lasting mark on the international scene for adventurous electronic music.
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LP
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FAITICHE 021LP
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Faitiche presents a new album by Frank Bretschneider. abtasten_halten was made as part of the raster.labor installation first presented at CTM Festival in 2019. It is perhaps the most radical work in Bretschneider's distinctive oeuvre: abtasten_halten is a self-generating composition for synthesizer modules whose sole sound source is the movement of two VU meter needles. The resulting percussive sounds coalesce into rhythmic combinations -- all random, without repetition. The album resembles a meditation on infinite rhythmic variation. Includes download code.
Frank Bretschneider on abtasten_halten: "abtasten_halten (sample_hold) is a largely self-generating composition for a modular synthesizer system. Self-generating here means that as soon as a current flows, the various modules interact, but within limits set by the composer via the connections between the modules (patches): timing, tempo, timbres, dynamics. These conditions are kept variable to a certain extent or left to chance, so that the composition created is always similar but never the same. On the one hand, the use of random generators opens up possibilities that would not otherwise have been considered. On the other, it offers the fascination of the unfinished and the unique: totally unexpected musical events that you might hear only once. abtasten_halten combines my preferences for percussive music in general and electronic music in particular. Largely avoiding repetitive structures, the piece is more like a free improvisation, quiet and diffuse, but also extremely dense, in ever-changing contrasts and transformations. The tone generators are two modified VU meters whose needles, driven by trigger impulses, create a simple one-bar pattern by hitting against a metal spring that is connected to a piezo element. The tempo is continuously varied over a period of about ten minutes by several mutually modulating LFOs, ranging from about 0.06 Hz up to the lower audio range of about 18Hz. The percussive sounds thus obtained are then passed through low-pass filters with moderate resonance and random frequency modulation to additionally color the sound. Further processing is then executed by an echo module whose tempo and repetitions are again determined by random parameters. Finally, the audio signal is occasionally enriched with reverb to add more spaciousness to the sound."
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CD
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STRIKE 168CD
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Frank Bretschneider on Lunik: "It moves, it sings... but does it swing? Anyway, it represents the soundtrack of my life, my musical influences: some San Francisco psychedelia, some London underground, some Berlin school (old and new). Krautrock from Cologne and New York minimalism. A shot of Detroit grit, a bit of Moscow dust, a splash of Paris charm? Who knows. It's about daily grind, the passing of time, the change of seasons and relations. Reality and fiction and perception. Biography - back & forth." Bretschneider was raised in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz) in the German Democratic Republic. He is the founder of the influential East German underground band AG Geige and co-founder of the prestigious Raster-Noton label. He lives as a musician, video artist, and producer in Berlin.
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12"
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STRIKE 167EP
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Frank Bretschneider on the tracks: "It moves, it sings... but does it swing? Anyway, it represents the soundtrack of my life, my musical influences: some San Francisco psychedelia, some London underground, some Berlin school (old and new). Krautrock from Cologne and New York minimalism. A shot of Detroit grit, a bit of Moscow dust, a splash of Paris charm?" Bretschneider was raised in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz) in the German Democratic Republic. He is the founder of the East German underground band AG Geige and co-founder of the Raster-Noton label. He lives as a musician, video artist, and producer in Berlin.
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CD
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R-N 157CD
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Raster-Noton co-founder Frank Bretschneider's new project Sinn + Form (Meaning and Form) is based on the conflict between the fundamentally chaotic world described by mathematical and physical theories and models (dynamical systems, probability theory, stochastic systems) and the constant human attempt to recognize, describe, predict, control, and change this world. Musically, Bretschneider simulates this concept with a modular synthesizer system, in which various modules produce a constant flow of randomly generated data that modulate the decisive musical parameters (pitch, note length, volume, tone). Sinn + Form, in this context, attempts to transform this stream of events into a musically relevant system of chaos and order, dynamics and statics, content and form, by means of an improvised but deliberate process of constant control and influence. Aesthetically, the project recalls the electronic music of the mid-20th century, exemplified by such studios as the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique in Paris, Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm, Studio for Electronic Music of the West German Radio in Cologne, and the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York. Sinn + Form captures the dynamics and energy of a spontaneous improvisation as a reaction to a complex world, a world in permanent crisis. Recorded in July of 2014 at Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm, using Buchla and Serge analog synthesizer systems.
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CD
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R-N 149CD
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Super.Trigger is an absolute trove of percussive tensions and frequency-driven finesse and deals mainly with the basic principles of any modern music: rhythm. Frank Bretschneider takes his, never simple, but all the more heartfelt relationship to rhythm and its complexity to an intense inventory and, this time, works less out of suspenseful abstract sounds, than out of grooves. There is a real sense of perpetual evolution and coiled tightness to the pulsating rhythmic programming, while the subtle sheets of noise that fill the void behind the beats compete against the rhythm and their own sonic purity for a higher state of energy -- a constant flux of tension and release. Super.Trigger comes again in Bretschneider's signature style of ultra-clean bleeps and bouncing machine beats with terseness and precision, and a preference for high-voltage sounds halfway between noise and tone. The combination of programming, composition and construction is connected with his very idiosyncratic aesthetic of digital sound: controlled and objective. The whole follows simple mechanical states -- on/off, up/down, soft/hard, slow/fast, loud/quiet -- and is characterized by the absence of any romanticism. Still this return to the elementary, the fundamental, does not diminish the music to dancefloor functionality; instead, Bretschneider always stays emphatically musical and manages to generate sophisticated and complex rhythm-structures, which respectively induce minimal deviations in frequency and timing relationships to generate a surplus of funk. In all, Super.Trigger is Bretschneider's most straightforward, clear and compact work yet. Frank Bretschneider works as a musician and composer in Berlin. Since 1996 he has published a number of albums for Raster-Noton, such as Rhythm and EXP (R-N 108CD). Super.Trigger is essentially a collection of various studio improvisations and was created between 2012 and 2013.
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2CD
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R-N 108CD
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Audio CD + data CD. Berlin-based Frank Bretschneider is a musician, composer and video artist who co-founded the Raster-Noton label in 1996. EXP is a music-visual work based on the idea that fine art should attain the abstract purity of music. An attempt to assimilate the qualities found in music -- including movement, rhythm, tempo, mood, intensity and compositional structure -- within visual phenomena. The music for the project was composed of specific generated and selected waveforms, feedbacks, impulses, clicks, the sound of mechanics, electricity, magnetism, light and other radiation. In addition, since the animation is mainly driven by sound frequency and intensity, the sonic quality of these sounds makes it possible to obtain an optimal effect on the graphics motion. In combination with several other ways of controlling the animation -- from MIDI programming to applying motion curves -- the visualization represents an exact reproduction of the audible occurrences. As a consequence, the computed images often attain an unexpected beauty, from simple geometrical patterns to extraordinarily complex forms. The data CD is an 18-minute video generated from the realtime live visualization of EXP.
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