Ekkehard Ehlers

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Ekkehard Ehlers is an electronic music artist. In addition to his solo career, he has recorded under the name Auch, and also with the duo Autopoesies and the group März. A BBC reviewer wrote of Ehlers music: Ehlers' music toys with your perceptions a little, opening up a space to think^[1]

Ehlers became interested in aesthetic theory, particularly the work of Theodor Adorno, as a university student in Frankfurt. He began working with friend Sebastian Meissner as Autopoieses in the late 1990s. Autopoieses was in part about the recontextualization of samples, and the duo released their well-received debut record exploring these ideas in 1998 on Mille Plateaux offshoot Ritornell. Ehlers' tested the solo waters with minimal techno released as Auch in 2000. That same year Ehlers' released his first solo album under his own name, the dark and abstract Betrieb. Constructed primarily of manipulated samples of Arnold Schönberg and Charles Ives, Betrieb is steeped in theory, as evidenced by the Ehlers-penned liner notes. Ehlers has also created music for the Frankfurt Ballet, directed by William Forsyth.

In 2001, Ehlers began recording a series of singles to serve as tributes to his aesthetic heroes. These singles, which included "Ekkehard Ehlers Plays Cornelius Cardew" and "Ekkehard Ehlers Plays John Cassavetes" were ultimately gathered together on the 2002 album Plays. These release brought Ehlers notoriety outside of experimental electronic music circles. He followed it with the far more abstract Politik Braucht Keinen Feind in 2003, and then with A Life Without Fear, which incorporated blues in a typically oblique way, in 2006.

He has remixed the Red Hot Chili Peppers' single Californication and collaborated with the Red Hot Chili Peppers on a couple of their live sets. Two live recordings have been made called, Tuesday Night in Berlin and Thursday Night in Berlin. The remixed Californication and the 14 minute Tuesday Night in Berlin can be found on the second version of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Fortune Faded single.The nearly 30 minute Thursday night In Berlin has not been released officially but there are bootlegs of it floating around the internet.

[edit] Selected discography

März CD 2001 (Ehlers, Albrecht Kunze)
Ekkehard Ehlers plays CD, Staubgold, 2002
Music for William Forsythe CD, Whatness, 2003 (Ehlers, Sebastian Meissner, Thom Willems)
März II CD, 2004
A Life Without Fear CD, Staubgold, 2006