Thomas Brinkmann

German musician Thomas Brinkmann began experimenting with turntables and remixing on the EPs later collected on Variationen (Profan). He then used those techniques to craft minimalist dub-techno singles a` la Pole, such as Monika / Nicola (Ernst), Anna / Beate, Clara / Dorris, Erika / Frauke, Inge / Jutte, Yvette / Zora, Olga / Petra, Ulla / Vera, Gisela / Heidi, Karin / Lotte, Susie / Trixi, Wanda / Xenia, Tina / Argo, etc. They would be partially collected on Rosa (Ernst, 2001).

Under the moniker Ester Brinkmann, he released the albums Totes Rennen (Suppose, 1998), Weisse Naechte (Suppose, 1999), Der Ubersetzer (Suppose, 2001). The last two are built around manipulations of vocal fragments.

Brinkmann's legendary status as a remixer was sanctioned by his reworking of Plastikman's singles (in 1996). That project revitalized his career.

Brinkmann's fame was finally justified by Klick (Max Ernst, 2001), his most complete and mature work, transposing the minimal aesthetic of glitch music into the subliminal ideology of dub music, the ideal link between sound sculpting and dance-floor beats.

Row (Max Ernst, 2002) collects some more singles, including Mexico, Corvette, maxE.3, Loplop.

Soul Center is a project of postmodern rivisitation and deconstruction of soul and techno music over three albums titled Soul Center (WVB, 1999 - 2000 - Mute, 2002) and two EPs collected on General Eclectics (Shitkatapult, 2011). Far removed from Brinkman's experimental work, Soul Center offers propulsive music that somehow harks back to the roots of dance music while hinting at its future.

Tokyo+1 (Max Ernst, 2004) collects some of his most innovative sounds.

Lucky Hands (Max.E, 2005) sounds like a minor work by an unfocused Thomas Brinkmann.

Klick Revolution (Maxernst, 2006) continued the program of Klick with another set of subliminal, anemic, dilapidated techno music assembled out of defective vinyl records.

When Horses Die (Max Ernst, 2008) is a mediocre collection of dub-tinged songs, a bad idea gone worse.

Then came: the 77-minute ambient piece of The Mortimer Trap (2012), a collaboration with Oren Ambarchi that would lead to Ambarchi's album Quixotism (2014), What You Hear (Is What You Hear) (2015), which sounds like a half-hearted attempt at imitanting Ambarchi's style, the double-disc A Certain Degree of Stasis (2016), containing two glacial unnamed 48-minute compositions, A 1000 Keys (2016), another silly experiment, Raupenbahn (2019), a collection of small pieces inspired by machines of the early industrial age, and the 53-minute piece of Fair Game (2023).