Thomas Brinkmann

Thomas Brinkmann ranks among techno's principal innovators, generating an extensive catalog that stretches from conceptual undertakings to abstract disco-house. During the late 1990s Brinkmann established recognition inside experimental and techno circles through complete-length reworkings, which he labels “variations,” of pieces by Richie Hawtin and Mike Ink. These variations arose from playing the source discs on a custom turntable Brinkmann engineered, fitted with dual tone arms that supplied independent outputs for the left and right channels. He later secured both critical regard and dance-floor traction via his more approachable Soul Center project, introduced by a self-titled album in 1999. While continuing to issue minimal-techno twelve-inches and albums under his own name alongside scattered experimental outings as Ester Brinkmann, the producer moved toward vocal-centered post-punk with 2008’s When Horses Die… Apart from occasional singles, the bulk of his 2010s releases turned away from club formats toward modern-classical-inspired pieces or rhythmic investigations, among them Editions Mego titles such as 2016’s A 1000 Keys and 2019’s Raupenbahn.

Brinkmann had already explored carved-groove discs beginning in the 1980s. He pursued art studies at the Düsseldorf Academy yet was said to have been dismissed owing to his convictions. Shaped by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Steve Reich, Panasonic, and Dan Bell, Brinkmann found decisive impetus in Mike Ink’s Studio 1 singles series, prompting him to commence serious recording. He adapted an existing turntable by installing an additional tone arm, assigning one arm to each output channel, then slowed the source material to generate his own variations. Upon hearing the results, Ink issued two EPs of the material on the Profan label, later compiled on the 1997 CD Studio 1: Variationen.

Brinkmann introduced his own productions in 1998 by establishing the Max Ernst label, which put out several sharply etched minimalist dub-techno singles aligned with the approach of Berlin’s Basic Channel collective and its associate Stefan Betke, known as Pole. He also created two subsidiary imprints—Max, whose track titles employed men’s names, and Ernst, whose titles used women’s names and which contained only Brinkmann’s own productions—while placing further experimental material on Supposé and Noton under the Ester Brinkmann alias, taken from his sister. Brinkmann additionally reworked the twelve twelve-inch singles that Richie Hawtin had originally released as Plastikman throughout 1996 in a project titled Concept 1. After journeying from Cologne to Hawtin’s Canadian base, Brinkmann impressed Hawtin with the outcomes, leading by early 1998 to the release of a CD of Brinkmann’s Concept 1 variations on Hawtin’s M_nus label under the title Concept 1: 96:VR.

In 1999 Brinkmann adopted the Soul Center pseudonym to craft house tracks steeped in funk, soul, and disco. The project’s debut album appeared on Brinkmann’s own W.v.B Enterprises, with its follow-up arriving in 2000. Brinkmann persisted in issuing experimental work under his own name and his sister’s, releasing the turntable-derived full-length Klick and the compilation Rosa—drawn from his twelve-inch singles—both on Max Ernst in 2000. Although the more accessible Soul Center material garnered greater recognition than any prior output, the project secured a deal with NovaMute, which issued its third album in 2001. After several further years of twelve-inch singles, the 2002 compilation CD Row, and a limited collaboration with Markus Nikolai and Dominique Petitgrand, Brinkmann issued Tokyo + 1—a solo album constructed from field recordings made in the Japanese capital—in April 2004. Traum Schallplatten simultaneously released Brinkmann’s mix CD Tour de Traum that same month.

Brinkmann’s experimental techno aesthetic shifted toward greater accessibility with the subsequent release, 2005’s Lucky Hands. Brinkmann provided vocals on one track while several others featured Tusia Beridze, also known as TBA, including a cover of Morrissey’s “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get.” He returned to turntable experiments on 2006’s Klick Revolution yet also released a twelve-inch containing his remixes of the band Suicide. He probed his 1970s and 1980s post-punk influences further on the 2008 album When Horses Die…, a downtempo, lyric-focused work that included a song penned by Tuxedomoon’s Winston Tong.

Following the techno twelve-inches Isch and Walk With Me, Brinkmann delivered the fourth Soul Center album, General Eclectics, on Shitkatapult in 2010. He next joined Australian experimental artist Oren Ambarchi for the extended drone composition The Mortimer Trap, issued on Ambarchi’s Black Truffle Records in 2012. After two techno EPs on Third Ear Recordings—Guy Martin and When the Music…—Brinkmann moved to Peter Rehberg’s Editions Mego for 2015’s What You Hear (Is What You Hear), an intense, quasi-rhythmic noise work. The label also released Brinkmann’s 2016 recording A 1000 Keys, a dissonant set of piano compositions dedicated to Conlon Nancarrow. That same year the Finnish label Frozen Reeds issued Brinkmann’s double-CD A Certain Degree of Stasis, accompanied by artwork from German conceptual artist Agnes Lux. Retrospektiv, a five-LP box set released by Third Ear Recordings in 2017, gathered dance tracks spanning Brinkmann’s career. He returned to Editions Mego in 2019 with Raupenbahn, comprising unprocessed recordings of rhythmic machines.