- Thomas Brinkmann has led a double life as an artist. Fans of his most recent albums might've been surprised to see Ricardo Villalobos warm up for him at Säule back in October. (Stranger yet, Jackmaster played afterwards.) While Brinkmann is best known in dance music circles for deconstructing minimal with a two-armed turntable, much of his output has little to do with the club. His LPs for Editions Mego and Frozen Reeds run from ascetic noise to abstract guitar workouts and Nancarrow-school piano pieces. It's uncompromising stuff that might disturb some fans of his club material. Yet few artists with roots in techno can touch Brinkmann's experimental credentials. Even fewer evolved into such distinctive composers.
Despite Brinkmann's ease with abstraction, he's always had a foot in techno, albeit an extremely quirky one. The 28-track Retrospektiv, a compilation that spans most of his 20-year career, shows just how much range he has in this department. It's a lot to digest—even though the music has a reductionist mentality, it traverses extremes. In addition to the sheer volume of music, it veers from stark and austere to fruity and funky. Brinkmann has a trickster sense of humour. After a few tracks, you come to expect the unexpected. He engages in a sleight of hand, setting the scene with, say, a wiggling tech house groove, only to confound expectations with absurd samples. Where many dance music producers avoid humour like the plague, Brinkmann uses it as a weapon.
"Sweetback" is a good example. The groove could have been elaborated into tripping minimal tech house. Instead, Brinkmann edges it toward a carnivalesque atmosphere, with clipped guitar and fruity samples that could've come from a blaxploitation flick. The vibe is cheeky, a little sleazy and the opposite of pretentious, which is quite a feat for such odd music. "2suns" is completely different but has a similar affect. Rhythmically, we're in mutant dancehall territory, while the bendy, buzzing lead sounds like Errorsmith after a fat spliff. To top it off, Brinkmann starts singing like a bloated Nick Cave. "That's Wild" coins a disturbing hybrid of lounge jazz and tech house. It could be the perfect warm up for your next electro swing set, or the soundtrack to a bout of ketamine psychosis. It's schmaltzy, even tacky, which seems to be just the way Brinkmann likes it.
When he keeps a lid on the quirks, Brinkmann can knock out some serious minimal techno. "Odecca" could be a long lost cousin of early 2000s bombs like "Linguini Al Denta." "Drops" skips ahead effortlessly while all manner of IDM-school squiggles scurry and sizzle (the titular drop in the back third is glorious). "Loplop" trips like it's 2002. Brinkmann structures it in indefatigable style, burrowing steadily into a curious world where soft-edged synths cheekily conspire to play tricks on their visitors.
These functional moments, though, are outweighed by Brinkmann's outrageous artistic voice. The crystal-edged, metal guitar riffage of "On Edge" really shouldn't work but, somehow, it does. "Lovesong" is a contender for the most twisted techno track of all time, coming off like Guy Tavares and Alec Empire sparring in an elevator. This will to be weird was reflected in the greater minimal landscape, but Brinkmann is the greatest space cadet of them all.
Tracklist01. Crazy Remix_Sheets Blankets
02. Sur Ace
03. Souls
04. 2suns
05. Olga
06. What You're Doin
07. Sweetback
08. 8 Ba
09. That's Wild
10. Hal 2010
11. Isch
12. Mexico
13. Tina
14. Ulla
15. On Edge
16. Loplop
17. Dyr Bul Scyl
18. Drops
19. Walk With Me
20. Lovesong
21. Blackhill
22. Tilt
23. Don't Fake The Cake
24. The More You Ignore Me
25. Margins
26. Odecca
27. Cheap
28. Zeichenkette