FRANK
BRETSCHNEIDER :
BOSTON'S WEEKLY DIG (US)
MICRO-ECONOMICS
by Susanna Bolle
"I
would not use the word minimal to describe my music," declares
Berlin based musician Frank Bretschneider (AKA Komet). "This
is a fixed term for other music from other times. I'd rather
call it economic and, maybe, microscopic." Later, by way of
explanation, he adds, "I'm a really lazy guy; I don't want to
have to expend too much to build a track." The result of Bretschneider's
sonic frugality is a cool, intricate music, composed of often
delicate pinpricks of sound (soft clicks, hissing static, gentle
pings) echoing keyboards, and the occasional undulating bass
line and/or snippet of melody.
"I
like it when my music sounds as if it could have come from outer
space."
Bretschneider
prefers to work with highly synthetic, artificial sounds. "The
basic sounds are created from a computer-aided virtual modular
synthesizer system," he explains, as he describes his working
methods. "My favorites are clean sine waves and white noise,
which are both simple and clear. I like precise, short, impulsive
sounds." Throughout the composition process, which he likens
to painting a picture, Bretschneider tries to incorporate the
accidental, setting-up systems of modules to create unintentional,
random sequences. "I connect the different modules&emdash;LFO's,
oscillators, filters, envelope generators, logic modules&emdash;as
unconventionally as possible to see what the machines will do
(instead of wasting time with composing). After the system creates
some nice sequences, I record it to hard disk for further treatment.
At the computer, I build the track brick by brick from the recorded
sequences, like a construction kit. I cut, loop and filter,
…using plug-ins to add random structures; again, hoping
some unexpected things will happen, looking at what the software
will do." In the end, however, while Bretschneider's work contains
many random elements, it's very much, as he puts it, "constructed
music," with its overall structure informed by the conventions
of popular music, most often dub and hip-hop.
"I've
been making electronic music since 1984. I started with tape
machines, treated guitars and a Korg MS-20 synth. In 1986 I
founded a band called AG.GEIGE."
It
was as a child growing up in East Germany that Bretschneider
was first exposed to electronic music. "I guess the first time
I heard electronic music was at the age of nine or ten," he
recalls, "when I listened to science-fiction radio plays and
watched sci-fi movies. I was really impressed by the soundtracks,
with their simple sine waves, echoes and treated noises. Later
I discovered these [same] sounds in psychedelic rock
and the electric music of Miles Davis." It was only with the
explosion of punk and new wave in the 1980s, however, that Bretschneider
began making music, experimenting with tape machines and eventually
forming the band AG.GEIGE, which he describes as "heavily influenced
by Dada, the Residents, and [ Soviet science fiction authors]
Arkady and Boris Strugatskii."
After
the break-up of AG.GEIGE in 1992, Bretschneider and bandmate
Olaf Bender (a.k.a. Byetone) decided to continue their musical
experiments, but had difficulty finding a label to release their
work. So, in 1995, they formed their own label, Rastermusic,
which forged a distinctive aesthetic, producing abstract, yet
accessible electronic music, such as Bretschneider's early Komet
full-lengths, Saal and Flex, as well as records by Tol, Kyborg
and Produkt. "We had no philosophy [per se], but did
have a few ideas about [what] our sound [should
be]: it should be purely electronic, without the use of
lyrics or vocals, simple and clear without being stupid, rhythmic
or techno. We were interested in new, unused sounds and we wanted
to utilize the vast possibilities of the computer for sound
design."
"I
guess the visual aspect [of electronic composition]
is a big influence on my music…. Early on, I started making
music on a computer and I always had this visual sense of my
music on the screen; the moving bars, dots, lines…"
In
1999, Rastermusic merged with artist Carsten Nicolai's (a.k.a.
Noto) Noton label to form Raster-Noton. Since the merger, the
label has focused both on sound and art design, releasing four
different series of CDs (20' to 2000, Clear, Static, and the
older Raster), as well as constructing art installations and
multimedia performances. The label's various projects, including
art, design, science, performance and, of course, music, are
chronicled and critically examined in a recent book, Oacis (with
companion CD). For Bretschneider, who trained as a graphic designer
and painter, the points of intersection between visual art and
music explored by Raster-Noton have long been of interest. Indeed,
he explains, the visual aspects of composing electronic music&emdash;the
images on his computer monitor, the blinking LEDs on his synthesizer&emdash;are
an important part of his work.
In
the last year, Bretschneider has been quite prolific, releasing
a justly acclaimed full-length, Rausch, as Komet on 12k and
a stunning new record, using his given name, on Mille Plateaux.
Bretschneider does not see his work as Komet and that as Bretschneider
as separate. Due to a misunderstanding with Mille Plateaux,
his records are released as Frank Bretschneider on the Frankfurt
label, but there are no formal differences aside from the names.
"Later," he says, "I thought it might be a good idea to release
under different names for different projects, but, unfortunately,
I'm not able to maintain such strict separations. Every time
I make music I have to explore new things and so my latest release
as Frank Bretschneider, Curve, is more comparable to the Komet
release Rausch than to the Bretschneider predecessor, Rand."
Currently,
he has a pair of musical offerings set for release: a 12" on
the Dutch Audio.NL label and a three-disc box set with Byetone
and Noto on Raster-Noton. In addition, he is finishing up a
collaborative project with 12k's Taylor Deupree and plans to
revive one of the earliest Rastermusic projects, Produkt, with
a CD currently in the works. Finally, in April, he will visit
North America and has tentative plans to play shows (with Carsten
Nicolai) in Montreal, New York and/or Washington.
