Frank Bretschneider
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
ian. He works primarily with sine wave
Sine wave
The sine wave or sinusoid is a mathematical function that describes a smooth repetitive oscillation. It occurs often in pure mathematics, as well as physics, signal processing, electrical engineering and many other fields...
s and white noise
White noise
White noise is a random signal with a flat power spectral density. In other words, the signal contains equal power within a fixed bandwidth at any center frequency...
as his source material. He also releases material under the name Komet.
Bretschneider was born and raised in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz
Chemnitz
Chemnitz is the third-largest city of the Free State of Saxony, Germany. Chemnitz is an independent city which is not part of any county and seat of the government region Direktionsbezirk Chemnitz. Located in the northern foothills of the Ore Mountains, it is a part of the Saxon triangle...
) in the German Democratic Republic
German Democratic Republic
The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...
(East Germany). In 1984, inspired by science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
radio plays and films, he began experimenting with tape machines, synthesizer
Synthesizer
A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
s, and modified guitars. In 1986 he formed the band AG. Geige (German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: work group violin), which was influenced by the Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
art movement, The Residents
The Residents
The Residents is an American art collective best known for avant-garde music and multimedia works. The first official release under the name of The Residents was in 1972, and the group has since released over sixty albums, numerous music videos and short films, three CD-ROM projects and ten DVDs....
, and Soviet science fiction. AG. Geige disbanded in 1992.
In 1995, Bretschneider and fellow AG. Geige band member Olaf Bender founded the Rastermusic
Raster-Noton
Raster-Noton is a German electronic music record label founded in 1996 by Olaf Bender, Carsten Nicolai and Frank Bretschneider. Based in Chemnitz, Germany, Raster-Noton merged in 1999 from separate labels Rastermusik and Noton .The collective label's aesthetic focus is rhythmic, minimal electronic...
record label. In 1999 this label merged with Carsten Nicolai's Noton label, to become Raster-Noton
Raster-Noton
Raster-Noton is a German electronic music record label founded in 1996 by Olaf Bender, Carsten Nicolai and Frank Bretschneider. Based in Chemnitz, Germany, Raster-Noton merged in 1999 from separate labels Rastermusik and Noton .The collective label's aesthetic focus is rhythmic, minimal electronic...
. Bretschneider has released material on record labels such as 12k
12k
12k is an independent record label, based in Pound Ridge, New York, USA. It was founded on January 1, 1997 by Taylor Deupree. The label focuses on experimental electronic music, specifically on digital minimalism and contemporary forms; as of January 2007, it has released over 40 CDs and become one...
, Raster-Noton
Raster-Noton
Raster-Noton is a German electronic music record label founded in 1996 by Olaf Bender, Carsten Nicolai and Frank Bretschneider. Based in Chemnitz, Germany, Raster-Noton merged in 1999 from separate labels Rastermusik and Noton .The collective label's aesthetic focus is rhythmic, minimal electronic...
, Mille Plateaux
Mille Plateaux
Mille Plateaux is an influential electronica record label founded 1993 by Achim Szepanski in Frankfurt, Germany. It is known for mostly releasing minimal techno, glitch music and other experimental electronic music.-History:...
, Fällt
Fällt
Fällt is an independent publishing house specialising in experimental music, fine art, design and criticism.Established in the mid 1990s by W. Conrad Röntgen and Christopher Murphy as a publishing vehicle for experimental interdisciplinary works, Fällt is now jointly run by W. Conrad Röntgen and...
and Bip Hop.