Frank Bretschneider
Interview (2023)
Let us start by asking you about your origin. Can you tell us about your background, such as whether you were exposed to art and music from an early age, and what kind of environment and community you grew up in.I come from a working class family. My father was a miner when I was born, in uranium mining in the Ore Mountains/Saxony. My mother was employed in the geological department of the same company. My father then studied and made a career as a union official in the mining union. He was very interested in art and literature, and we had a large library of fiction, but also all kinds of encyclopedias and art books. For example, about the Bauhaus, where I first saw illustrations of paintings by Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, or the architecture of Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius.
I grew up in the dawning space- and atomic-age, a time when people looked with optimism to a promising future. So I had a happy childhood in a modern, bright and friendly neighbourhood.
You grew up in the former East Germany in the 1980s, which is a very different historical background and situation from today. Please tell us about the people and works from that era that influenced the development of your aesthetic and sensibility.When I started making music in the 80s, on the one hand I was influenced by modern European art of the 20th century: expressionism, dadaism, surrealism, and the whole Avantgarde. On the other hand, I grew up with popular music: blues, jazz, rock, hip-hop, new wave, electronica. I also had a preference for adventurous music and electronic sounds from an early age. So I listened to everything mixed up: Frank Zappa, Ornette Coleman, African Head Charge, The Doors, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Bela Bartók, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Can, Eric Satie, Sun Ra, Soft Machine, The Residents, Brian Eno, Krzysztof Penderecki, Beastie Boys, Weather Report, Terry Riley, Amon Düül II, Laurie Anderson, Johann S. Bach, Larry Young... I could continue the list endlessly.
Literature was an influence too, I am an avid reader, especially of all kinds of fantastic literature, to name a few: Ray Bradbury, Franz Kafka, Edgar A. Poe, James G. Ballard, Jorge L. Borges, Stanisław Lem, Christian Morgenstern, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Cordwainer Smith.
In 1990, East and West Germany were reunified, and a few years later, the dawn of the Internet arrived. I am sure that many changes came to you during the transformations of those times, but what was the biggest change that led to your current activities?The biggest change came in 1996 when I made the decision to quit my well-paid job as a graphic designer and just make music.
You have a wide range of experience as a musician, including your band activities as AG Geige and the establishment of your labels. What is it that you have consistently pursued since the beginning through your music production? What has motivated you to continue creating music?It’s a game, it’s great fun to take a handful of sounds and then see how they organise, move and find their place. It can also happen that the piece itself automatically takes a certain direction at a certain point. I give the sounds (and myself) a lot of freedom and room to play. Making music is always a journey where I try to discover something new, interesting, exciting. And it’s deeply satisfying when I succeed. It’s the only art form that gives me goosebumps.
In your many experiences, please tell us about a project or encounter that was a turning point for you.One turning point was the invitation to record an album for Mille Plateaux in 1999. It was an influential label for electronic music at that time, with a good reputation worldwide, being well-known for glitch and its very own Clicks&Cuts genre. Achim Szepanski, the boss, called me back then after hearing my contribution to the 20’ To 2000 CD series. I made three albums for the label and they helped me a lot to become better known, especially outside Europe.