An
electronic music artist from
Cologne,
Germany. Known for his
minimal "Cologne-techno" characterized by
blunt and
repetitive figures and
unexpected sounds/
effects. He always
pushes the
envelope further, sometimes by borrowing
elements from other
genres like
jazz, making his every new
record sound
fresh and
exciting.
Before becoming a
master of
minimalism, Brinkmann was
involved in
different types of
art, ranging from
acoustics to
visual art. He was also into
experimental electronic music way back in the
70s. His experiments included for example
cutting records with a knife to
form monotone sequences.
Brinkmann says the got
bored at music in the
80s, and
concentrated on other art projects instead. What got him back was hearing the
Studio 1 releases by
Wolfgang Voigt, and
Ritchie Hawtin's Concept project. He paid
homage to them by
remixing them using
a self-designed two tonearm turntable. The two arms
playing the
track simultaneously from two different
positions extract previously
nonexistent patterns from the music.
Although Brinkmann is also into creating music which forms
geometrical pictures on the
vinyl, he is certainly not
limited to
technological gimmicks and remixes. In the past few years, he has released a
large amount of
original material on
several self-run
labels such as
Max,
Ernst and
Max Ernst & Freunde. Thomas sometimes uses the
Ester Brinkmann alias, which is a homage to his
dead sister.
(whose name was actually Eshter, by the way)