Lassigue Bendthaus and Uwe Schmidt

Uwe Schmidt is a German musician with many personas, and the composer of a monumental body of music.

The Lassigue Bendthaus project, launched in 1988 with the cassette Engineers Love but revealed by the album Matter (Parade Amoureuse, 1991), featuring the hits Automotif (Parade Amoureuse, 1991), Hertz, and Velocity Life (reminiscent of Kraftwerk), confessed the influence of Kraftwerk’s rhythmic cycles with the EP Biohazard (Contempo, 1992) (Information and the title track) and demonstrated in the mixes of Biofeedback (Contempo, 1992) the ability to create highly dramatic soundscapes.

Subsequent works accentuated a tendency for intellectual meditations. Cloned (Contempo, 1992) (Kk, 1994) contains only ten recombinations of two hundred samples, but Render (Kk, 1994) (Restless) sets up a cyberpunk concept dedicated to the relationship between man and machine. The electronic landscapes of Fiber are perhaps too refined, the rhythms muted, the electronics ethereal. Often the tracks settle into cadences more typical of cocktail lounge music than industrial music. Above all, good melodies are missing to redeem the icy harmonies and grandiose lyrics of Blur and Polaire. One must wait for Render to hear a finally menacing rhythm, almost a Native American war dance, and for Soul Access to hear a techno ballet. What remains to appreciate are the carefully sculpted and set timbres, precisely the art explored on the previous album. The single Overflow (Kk, 1995) seems to mark the end of the project.

Meanwhile, Schmidt had nevertheless flooded the techno market with an endless series of 12" singles released under various pseudonyms: Whitehouse (Cyclotron, 1991) by Atom Heart; Dance (Cyclotron, 1991) by Slot; Goddamn Drummachine (Cyclotron, 1991) by Weird Shit; Percussion Overdose (Pod, 1992), Warm Sunday (Pod, 1992), and Repetitive Digital Noise (Pod, 1992) by "i"; Track 23 (Antigroove, 1992) and Por Que? (Antigroove, 1992) by Atomu Shinzu; 137 (Pod, 1992) and Free (Injection, 1992) by Bi-Face; Mihon (Pod, 1992) by Ongaku; Opto Freestyle Swing by Lisa Carbon Trio (Pod, 1992); I Want You (Pod, 1992) by D'Ammond; Mother (Solid Pleasure, 1993) by Atom Heart; Atomu Got It (Disturbance, 1993), Check Out Da Bass (Pod, 1993), Cool Memories (Black Label, 1993), and Act (Pod, 1993) by Atomu Shinzo; 684 (Pod, 1993), Fraud (Black Label, 1993), and F***! (Pod, 1993) by Urban Primitivism; Baud (Delirium, 1993), Pure Function (After 6 A.M., 1993), and Larger Than Life by Atom Heart; Nipples & Bass (SS Records, 1993) by Dr. Mueller; Globescanner (Delirium, 1993).

Schmidt also participates in Stereococktail (Instinct, 1993), Experimental Post Techno Swing (Pod, 1993) (Instinct, 1993), Polyester (Rephlex, 1995), and Trio de Janeiro (Rather Interesting, 1997) by the Lisa Carbon Trio.

Some of these singles were later collected on Compilation V1 (Pod, 1993) (Instinct), credited solely to Atom Heart. From 684 came Urban Primitivism (Pod Communications, 1993). Others followed: Soundfields (Klang, 1994) by Soundfields; Orange (Fax, 1994), featuring the long Cobal, and Milagro (Rough Trade, 1994) by Atom Heart; Ee Surreal (Pod, 1995) by Ee Surreal; Retrograde (Pod, 1995) by Gon.

The Atom Heart moniker became Schmidt’s favorite, especially after he founded his own label, Rather Interesting (established in September 1994). Under Atom Heart, he released, following Live At Sel i/s/c (Fax, 1994), long suites of ambient techno such as Semiacoustic Nature (Rather Interesting, 1995), Interactive Music (Rather Interesting, 1995), and especially Morphogenetics Fields (Rough Trade, 1994). The live album Live In Berlin And Barcelona (Rather Interesting, 1995) was followed by Silver Sound (Rather Interesting, 1996), BASS (Rather Interesting, 1996), Shellglove (Recent Programming, 1996), Micropossessed (Container, 1997)—four suites on the border between cosmic music and industrial music—followed by Schnittstelle (Rather Interesting, 1997) and Dropshadow Disease (Rather Interesting, 1998). Only one copy was produced of the album Music Without Purpose (Del Haze, 1996). The project is even more prolific than the previous ones.

Perhaps more important is Uwe Schmidt’s work in collaboration with the avant-garde Japanese musician Tetsu Inoue, particularly the works credited to Datacide. The album Datacide (Pod, 1993), followed by the singles Ecstasy Of Communication (Pod, 1993) and Head Dance (Fax, 1993), and then 2 (Fax, 1993), established a new approach to ambient music. Even more impressive is Flowerhead (Rather Interesting, 1995), one of Inoue’s masterpieces, followed by Ondas (Rather Interesting, 1996).

Schmidt and Inoue are also Masters Of Psychedelic Ambience, who released MU (Rather Interesting, 1995). Schmidt, Inoue, and Laswell are finally the Second Nature (Fax, 1995), whose four “watercolors” are orchestrated for electronics and natural sounds, each dedicated to a different natural environment: Synthetic Forest, Artificial Seaside, and Green Paste are three impressionistic tour de forces that fade into the “adagio” of Landing Circle. The music of Second Nature is not so far removed from much of new age music.

Schmidt was also active under the monikers Seti and +N (with Victor Sol). Under +N, ex.s (Rotor, 1993) (Geometrik, 1994) was released, containing twenty tracks, many of them very short, and Plane (Fax, 1994), featuring three remixes of Sky. Sol (German but based in Spain) also has an extensive discography under his own name.

Schmidt and Sol are also the founders of Paranoid (Rather Interesting, 1995).

The +N project culminates with Built (Rather Interesting, 1996), a monumental work dedicated to cosmic music. From Bitniks came Halograms (Hypnotism, 1995) (Rough Trade, 1995). Schmidt also contributed to Flextone (Rather Interesting, 1994), Very Synthetic Virtual Noise (Rather Interesting, 1994), and many others.

Dots (Rather Interesting, 1994) was an interesting experiment in creating electronic pointillistic muzak.

Schmidt is also the author of the album Softcore (Fax, 1994); A. D. (Hypnotism, 1995) by Almost Digital; and Tinned Music (Pod, 1995) by "*i".

Numerous collaborations with Pete Namlook also appeared under various names: Vektor (Pod, 1992) by Millenium; Invocation (Fax, 1992) by Subsequence; Walking In My Dreams (Fax, 1993), Ms Recombination, and Healthy by Subsequence; Secretary (Fax, 1993) by Synthadelic; Atom Age and Sundance (Fax, 1993) by Coeur Atomique. The album Coeur Atomique (Fax, 1993) was also released. Jet Chamber (Fax, 1995) is another collaboration between the two, followed by Jet Chamber II (Fax, 1996), Jet Chamber III (Fax, 1997), and Jet Chamber IV (Fax, 1998).

Almost all of his albums were limited editions.

Flanger was a collaboration between Uwe Schmidt and percussionist Bernd Friedman. Their albums Templates (Ninjatune, 1999), recorded in Santiago de Chile in 1997 and originally released as two EPs, and the inferior Midnight Sound (Ntone, 2000), released as one CD or two vinyl records. The former presented highly original jams like Music To Begin With, Endless Summer, Quicksilver Loom. The latter refines their digital ambient/industrial jazz-rock (Angel Of Love and a cover of Miles Davis' So What) and inaugurates a sort of Kraftwerk-ian jazz (Midnight Sound, Human Race Machine). Flanger's third album, Inner Space Outer Space (Ninja Tune, 2001) continues the progression towards a classy, laid-back living-room sound. It was built remotely, by assembling tracks recorded by a dozen musicians in different locations. Only Squarepusher has attempted a similar kind of fusion between jazz and modern dance music.

Geez'n'Gosh was yet another project, this time devolved to computer-created techno, also known as "clickhouse", that uses mechanical and dissonant noises of the digital world to compose techno locomotives. My Life With Jesus (Mille Plateaux, 2000) is sterile though.

Lassigue Bendthaus returned with Pop Artificielle (Kk, 1999), a collection of cyber-covers of Sixties classics.

Senor Coconut Y Su Conjunto was yet another Uwe Schmidt alter-ego. The first album, El Gran Baile (Rather Interesting, 1997 - Emperor Norton, 2001), declared Schmidt newly found love for Latin music. El Baile Aleman (Emperor Norton, 2000) is a Latin revision of a bunch of Kraftwerk's classics. 14 Footballers In Milkchocolate (Rather Interesting, 2001), credited to Midisport, performs a similar operation on Brazilian music. More silly parodies surface on Light Music (Rather Interesting, 2001), credited to Erik Satin, and on Senor Coconut's Fiesta Songs (Emperor Norton, 2003).

Disk Orchestra was yet another Schmidt project and K (Rather Interesting, 2001) is another parody of music.

The most prolific and mediocre phase of Schmidt's career continued with a jazz album, Plays Just Notes (Rather Interesting, 2002), credited to the Roger Tubesound Ensemble, and with a techno album, Nobody Knows (Mille Plateaux, 2002), credited to Geeez 'N' Gosh.

Lisa Carbon's third album, Standards (Rather Interesting, 2003), is another incursion into Brazilian pop muzak.

Senor Coconut's Yellow Fever (Essay Recordings, 2006) featured the three members of the Yellow Magic Orchestra.