Mindcast.48 || Frank Bretschneider

After one month of a melting summer break, we’re more than happy and proud to continue the MINDCAST series with an episode by legendary FRANK BRETSCHNEIDER, whom we admire and respect as an artist and as a person. In our eyes, he doesn’t need much of an introduction, but here are a few facts about him and his artistic milestones.

Frank is a Berlin-based musician, composer, and video artist whose aesthetic got shaped and developed in his youth when he listened to pirate radios and smuggled Beastie Boys tapes in the former East Germany. In 1984, after studying fine arts and collecting inspiration from science fiction radio plays and films, he began experimenting with tape machines, synthesizers, and modified guitars. At the same time, he started exploring the possibilities of exchange between visual art and music by various means such as film, video, and computer graphics.

In 1986, Frank established his cassette label klang FarBe and founded AG Geige, a successful and influential East German underground band. Though limited to the East before the wall came down, they were invited to perform across Germany and internationally after 1989 and released three albums before splitting in 1993. Two years later, Bretschneider and fellow AG Geige member Olaf Bender (aka Byetone) founded the Rastermusic record label, which eventually merged with Carsten Nicolai’s Noton.archive to form Raster-Noton in 1999. Following the dissolution of Raster-Noton in May 2017, the label was reorganized as Raster-Media.

Most of Bretschneider’s early solo albums—about half a dozen—were under the alias Komet. His first release, Saat, appeared in 1996 and was followed by many others on various labels, including 12k, Line, Mille Plateaux, and Shitkatapult, which published his latest album Lunik at the beginning of this year. In this mix, Frank put some of his longtime favorite tunes together with a couple of currently unreleased tracks from his upcoming VA Sichten 1, which will be released via Raster. ENJOY !!!