Marcus Schmickler

A member from the thriving Cologne experimental music picture connected with Mouse on Mars, Nonplace Urban Field, Air Liquide, Mike Ink, as well as the A-Music, Electro Bunker, and Karaoke Kalk brands, Markus Schmickler is among the more “composerly” contributors compared to that conglomerate’s developing renown. A formal college student of electronic structure, Schmickler — alongside schoolmates Carsten Shulz (aka C-Shulz), Frank Dommert, and Georg Odijk — was an associate of past due-’80s efficiency ensembles Pol and Kontakta, two freewheeling experimental/improv organizations pursuing in the footsteps of Cologne’s most notorious musical laboratory specialists, Can. Schmickler offers since released an increasing number of critically acclaimed electroacoustic recordings of varied degrees of abstractness through Mille Plateaux (as Pluramon) and previous bandmate Odijk’s A-Musik label (as Wabi Sabi). Schmickler’s Kaspar-Hauser studios (called in mention of the first 19th hundred years tabula rasa kid, memorialized by Werner Herzog in his 1974 film, The Secret of Kaspar Hauser), can be found inside a disused warehouse space in the outskirts of the town, and offer something of the screen on Schmickler’s musical conception: hazy constructions of arbitrary and evidently inert sonic matter re-formed into amazing conditions of ambient and electroacoustic, sometimes beat-oriented electronica. [Find Also: Pluramon]