Born in Samarkand, Uzbekistan during the Soviet period, Andrew Pekler spent his childhood in Monterey, California, where thrash, college rock, punk, and hip-hop shaped his listening habits and where he first took up the guitar. He relocated to Heidelberg, Germany, in 1995 to pursue university studies and found part-time work at the Vinyl Only record store, an experience that introduced him to trip-hop, ambient, jungle, acid house, and other electronic styles absent from his American background.
While fronting the raucous garage-rock band Mucus 2 as singer and guitarist, he simultaneously began crafting atmospheric downtempo instrumentals alone in his one-bedroom apartment. Under the Sad Rockets name he issued two 7" EPs and the 1997 album Plays on Source Records, the label run by David Moufang and Jonas Grossmann. A second Sad Rockets full-length, Once Upon a Time Called Now, appeared on Morbid Records in 1999, after which Matador Records released both the 2000 album Transition and the Recreation EP. During the same period he joined the experimental electro-pop group Bergheim 34, whose self-titled 1998 EP preceded several further EPs and the 2003 album It's Not for You, As It Is for Us on Klang Elektronik.
After moving to Berlin, Pekler signed with Stefan Betke's ~scape label in 2002. Station to Station, a set fusing jazz, techno, and dub, came out that year, followed in 2004 by Nocturnes, False Dawns & Breakdowns. Staubgold released the electro-acoustic album Strings + Feedback, built from sampler and mixer feedback, in 2005. Kranky issued the library-music-inspired Cue in 2007, and Schoolmap Records put out the limited 2009 LP Entanglements in the Orthopedic Sensorium, a collection of unreleased sketches and fragments. Also in 2009 ~scape released The Martyrdom of Groupshow, the first album from Pekler's free-form improvising trio with Jan Jelinek and Hanno Leichtmann.
Dekorder released Sentimental Favourites, a hallucinatory collage drawn from easy listening and exotica, in 2011. Senufo Editions followed in late 2012 with Cover Versions, limited to 300 copies whose individual handmade sleeves each incorporated a different easy listening record. Groupshow's Live at Skymall appeared on Staubgold in 2013, the same year Planam issued the collaborative Holiday for Sampler with Ielasi. Senufo and Entr'acte co-released the limited 2014 LP The Prepaid Piano & Replayed. Faitiche, Jelinek's imprint, brought out Tristes Tropiques, assembled from manipulated field recordings, in 2016 and, three years later, Sounds from Phantom Islands, a compilation of pieces Pekler had created for an interactive online map of islands once charted on nautical maps yet never verified to exist.
