Frank Bretschneider
There are artists who make records, and then there are artists who quietly change the definition of what a record can be. Frank Bretschneider belongs to the second category. He’s been very influential in my own musical journey. Not in the casual “influential” way where you throw the word around because it sounds nice. I mean it literally. His work helped shape how I hear. How I think about rhythm. How I think about restraint. How I think about the difference between sound and music, and the rare moments when they become the same thing.
I’ve been lucky to spend time around a lot of artists, producers, and thinkers. And still, there are only a few people who feel like they exist on a different plane, not because they’re trying to, but because the work they’ve done made the ground under everyone else shift. Frank is one of those people. A living legend, yes, but also something more rare: an artist who has remained curious, deliberate, and human in the middle of a world that constantly tries to turn pioneers into monuments.
And maybe that’s why this conversation meant so much. Legends can often be distant. Frank was present. Thoughtful. Precise. Open. Still building.
THE EARLY DAYS
Frank’s story doesn’t begin with a neat musical origin myth. It starts with art, and with a kind of quiet realism about the environment he grew up in. East Germany shaped the boundaries of possibility. Not only politically, but structurally. What you could become, how you could become it, and what you had to do in order to be “allowed” to participate in public life.
But what stood out immediately is that Frank doesn’t perform the past for you. He describes it with nuance. He talks about a happy childhood, stability, education, and then the slow shift that happens when you get old enough to notice contradictions. The distance between daily life and official narrative. The way that pressure isn’t always a fist. Sometimes it’s a constant, dull insistence that you should fit neatly into a mechanism.
And that’s where the seed of independence appears. Not as a slogan, but as a survival instinct.
“I started doing music in 1985. I never thought I would become a musician one day. I grew up in East Germany, where opportunities were limited. To become an artist, you had to attend a conservatory or something similar in order to be able to perform in public. I had always had a strong interest in art, literature, music, and painting, but I never received any formal musical training. Music was something I had always loved, but I thought I wanted to become a visual artist, study art, become a painter, or something like that.”
“I was a happy child and had a lucky childhood. My father was a miner, he earned good money, and we had a pretty good life. The GDR invested a lot of money in education. I had a brand-new school and a brand-new kindergarten. It wasn’t so bad. It was only later, when I got older, as a teenager, that I noticed the differences between normal life, what you experience every day, and the life described in the propaganda.”
“At some point, I’d had enough. I wanted to be independent. I didn’t want to be a cog in the wheel. And art was something that could make me independent.”
That last part hits hard because it’s bigger than the politics of a time and place. It’s the reason so many people make art at all. Independence. Authorship. The desire to live a life that feels like your own.
TAPES, RADIO, AND FEEDBACK
What I love about Frank’s beginnings is how unromantic and true they are. No pristine studio. No perfect gear. Just experimentation and necessity. Tape machines. Cheap instruments. A small mixing desk. The willingness to try things that might not even qualify as “music” yet.
And crucially, he didn’t just make work and keep it hidden. He sent it out. He wanted feedback. Not validation, but contact. Proof that this strange new language could reach another person’s ears.
That impulse feels foundational to everything he became. Because it’s not ego-driven. It’s curiosity-driven. It’s basically the scientific method applied to sound.
“They were simple experiments. For example, I played guitar and recorded it on tape, then taped together a tape loop and played it continuously. I then mixed that with sounds from another tape machine onto a third device. So it was a kind of ping-pong technique. I had a few microphones and a small mixing console, all of very low quality, but somehow it worked.”
“I spent four or five hours every day listening to the radio. West German radio was not only a source of information but also of music. They played whatever was new. That was my inspiration.”
“It was important for me to get feedback. It wasn’t really music, but more like a kind of sound collage, strange stuff. So I recorded cassette tapes and distributed them to see if anyone could relate to them. Radio in East Germany was conservative and controlled, but when the situation became more unstable in the 1980s and people wanted more freedom, certain things like broadcasting opened up a bit, and I sent tapes there too. And the feedback I got motivated me to keep going.”
There’s something deeply moving about that. The idea that a pioneer, early on, is just someone trying to see if their weird little signal can be received. And when it is, they keep going.
A BAND, THEN A BREAK
From those tapes, a band emerged. Friends came in. Sessions became rehearsals. Rehearsals became songs. Frank describes it as something that “slowly starts,” which is often how the real stuff happens. It doesn’t arrive fully formed. It accumulates.
And then comes the hinge point: the fall of the wall. The cultural appetite flips. The band ends. Not with tragedy, but with a kind of acceptance. A chapter closes. Everyone goes to find their way.
But Frank doesn’t stop. That’s the key. He carries the instruments forward. Carries the practice forward. Carries the hunger forward.
“I invited friends over to make some noise for fun. I already had my first synthesizer, a Korg MS20, as well as guitars and a few toy instruments. I always recorded the sessions, then listened to them and kept the good takes. That’s how song-like structures slowly emerged.”
“After a year, we had enough tracks for a cassette tape, and I sent it to one of those late-night punk/new wave radio shows. We got really good feedback. Then we got the chance to record in a real studio. Slowly, we became a pretty well-known band in the East German underground scene.”
“In 1989, before the wall came down, we were even able to record an album. But East German pop music consisted largely of imitations and substitutes for Western originals, and after reunification, everyone could now get the real stuff from the US or England. We recorded a second album, did one last tour, and then it was over. But it was good to stop then. Everyone had to find new paths.”
That moment feels important because it shows something about Frank’s relationship to change. He doesn’t cling. He doesn’t cosplay nostalgia. He adapts. He moves. He keeps building.
RASTER AND THE IDEA OF INFRASTRUCTURE
Raster didn’t happen because Frank wanted to build a brand. It happened because they needed a vehicle. And because Olaf understood something fundamental about that era: if you can’t distribute the object, the music can’t travel.
This is the part of the story where Frank shifts from artist to architect. Not only making work, but shaping the conditions under which work could exist and be shared. Pre-internet, this was everything. Press, distribution, mastering, artwork, the physical reality of the thing.
Then Carsten Nicolai enters, and the scope expands. International connections. A deepening minimal aesthetic. New artists. New gravity.
And then, the year 2000 project. It’s almost poetic. A label rooted in future sound asks artists to imagine the future.
“Actually, I wasn’t really interested in starting another label. I preferred to send my demos to other labels. But Olaf convinced me to try it myself, because we had a chance since he worked for a large music distributor.”
“You can make music and produce cassettes and CDs, but without distribution it’s difficult. There was no internet and nothing, there weren’t many opportunities to spread your music.”
“When Carsten joined us, he brought international contacts with him. And artists like Ryoji Ikeda and Pan Sonic. I was immediately fascinated by this minimalist and abstract music.”
“We thought: Okay, let’s invite 12 artists to develop an idea of what music would sound like in the year 2000 or beyond. This 12 CD compilation was awarded the Golden Nica for digital music at Ars Electronica. That made us a little better known, even worldwide.”
What I want to underline here is simple: Frank didn’t just contribute to a genre. He contributed to a whole ecosystem. And that ecosystem still echoes through contemporary electronic music, whether people realize it or not.
MODULAR, OR RETURNING TO THE HANDS
Frank’s first synthesizer was the MS-20. He didn’t pretend to understand it immediately. He learned by doing. By listening. By routing external sound through it. By treating it like a machine for transformation, not a keyboard for “playing notes.”
Then digital arrives and, like many artists, he embraces it. He describes it as a democratization. Professional tools becoming affordable. New freedom. New possibilities.
But then comes the part that I think a lot of people will recognize emotionally. He gets bored with the computer. Not because computers are bad, but because the body goes missing. The hands go missing. The friction goes missing.
And so he returns to hardware. Slowly. Over years. Building a modular system that becomes his instrument. Not a toy. Not a hobby. An actual method of living inside sound.
“I didn’t know what the envelope generator was supposed to be. It’s a strange word. Of course, you can hear that the sound changes when you turn the attack knob. But it took me a while to really understand the concept.”
“I used the CV inputs for external sounds. I played the guitar over it, or vocals, or an entire mix that ran through the synthesizer.”
“The advent of digital technology was incredible. Mixing consoles where you could save your settings. Lossless digital recordings without noise. On top of that, everything became affordable very quickly. It was a democratization of music production.”
“I used software for years. But at some point, it became boring to make music on the computer. It wasn’t as inspiring anymore; it was more and more like programming. I was looking for something I could play with my hands. I’m not a musician, okay. But I wanted something with direct, immediate access to make music.”
“I bought my first modules in 2015, and it took me at least six years to put together my current live setup. I’m very happy with it. It’s a fantastic way to make music.”
That “I’m not a musician, okay” is so Frank. Humble, honest, and then immediately followed by proof that musicianship is not only about virtuosity. It’s about attention.
PROCESS, REPETITION, AND THE MOMENT IT CLICK
Frank describes his process as a blend of two modes. Sometimes blank page. Sometimes a concept. Sometimes pure exploration. Sometimes a defined constraint.
He tells a story about trying to make extremely minimal drum loops, short loops, repeated until your perception changes. He tried it on the computer. It didn’t feel right. He rebuilt it on modular. Suddenly it worked. Quickly.
That detail matters because it points to a truth about tools. The tool isn’t neutral. It shapes the result. It shapes the feel. It shapes the energy in the room when you perform.
“It’s a mixture of both. My 2020 album ‘abtasten_halten’ was based on a concept for a label installation. But besides the conceptual work, I like to turn on my modular system whenever I’m in the mood to improvise spontaneously.”
“For the last album, I had the idea of producing short drum loops, no more than two bars long, that repeat over and over again. Repetition fascinates me, as do patterns. Drum patterns are ideal for building patterns, whether static or moving, stable or flowing.”
“I initially produced these drum loops on the computer. But when I played the whole thing live, it didn’t work.”
“Then I started from scratch and produced everything with a modular system. Two sampling modules that I can use to play, manipulate, and reconstruct loops.”
“In two months, I had more than enough material for an album. It was incredibly fun, and it sounds much more lively and organic.”
That’s one of the most valuable creative lessons in the whole conversation. When something doesn’t work, start again. Not out of perfectionism, but out of respect for the feeling. Respect for the listener. Respect for the work.
AI, ETHICS, AND WHAT MATTERS
Frank’s view on AI is careful and, honestly, wise. He doesn’t do the easy thing of either rejecting it completely or romanticizing it as salvation. He frames the issue as a question of voice. If you’re an artist trying to find yourself, how helpful can a pattern engine be?
At the same time, he acknowledges the utility for certain kinds of work. And he’s open to new tools, especially if they function like instruments rather than replacement machines.
But he also speaks to the real fear here, which we share: theft. Likeness. Sound. Identity. Exploitation disguised as innovation.
Then, in a very Frank way, he brings it back to practicalities. Stereo in. Stereo out. Knobs. Hands-on manipulation. Make it something you can actually play.
“One day, artists will be able to transfer their ideas directly from their minds, their imaginations, into tangible or intangible works of art. Certainly with the help of something we now call AI. And it is likely that art generated entirely by AI will also exist: strange, beautiful, and bizarre music, films, stories…”
“But I am convinced that even in 100 years, it will still be humans who decide what is art and what is not. And that AI will not replace human art.”
“Today and now—and as far as I’m concerned, I prefer AI with lots of knobs, buttons, and sliders.”
This thought is almost a manifesto. Make tools that preserve agency. Preserve authorship. Preserve the human center.
LOOKING FORWARD
Frank isn’t done. He’s actively working. Collaborating. Performing. Building new projects out of field recordings, train stations, sound design work, and modular chains that become new musical language.
What I love is how casual he is about it, which is often how you can tell someone is the real thing. No marketing voice. No forced hype. Just the next set of materials to shape.
“I’m working on a project with Pierce Warnecke, a Franco-American colleague. Over the past few years, I’ve been doing field recordings at large train stations from time to time, and he happened to be doing the same thing. So we thought about how it would sound if we played and manipulated the material together in a session.”
“I recently developed a sample pack for the S-4 sampler from the Danish company Torso. I used software for sound generation and played the rather static sounds through a modular effects array. It worked well and was really fun.”
“Right now, I’m working on a track for a 12” that will be part of a sound installation in the Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.”
“And every now and then I also play live, in October with Jan Jelinek in Hamburg and in November solo in Berlin.”
That’s the throughline. Fun. Play. The hand on the machine. The curiosity intact.
CLOSING
I wanted this profile to reflect something simple and true: Frank Bretschneider is a living legend, and we feel incredibly honored to share space with him, even briefly. Not because he needs flowers, but because it matters to say it out loud when someone has contributed this much to the culture, to the craft, and to the future.
Frank’s work helped define the aesthetics of an era. But more than that, it helped define an ethic. Discipline. Minimalism as intention. Rigor without sterility. Precision without losing the human pulse.
And that’s why I’m grateful.
Because the best artists don’t just make music. They make it possible for other people to imagine what music can be.
—o—
You can follow along with Frank and all he has going on below: