Apparat, Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp, Sorvina, and Raffaele Costantino

Saschah Ring regards the move he made from his native Quedlinburg to the German capital of Berlin in 1997 as the most important decision of his life, not to mention his best. While he’d made some headway into the nascent techno scene of East Germany, Ring was still frustrated and wanted to seek out something far bigger and better. He found exactly that in Berlin, where he was exposed to sounds and styles that took him far out of his comfort zone. For one, Ring began composing music away from the computers that he’d cut his teeth creating his first compositions on, learning to play the keyboards, guitar and drums in short order. Within two years of moving to Berlin, Ring had made enough of a name for himself to begin running the record label Shitkatapult along with the label’s co-founder Marcus Haas, and it was on that label that he began to release his first true records, taking the stage name Apparat.

In 2001 he released his first single “Algorythm” and followed that up with his debut album “Multifunktionsebene” in the same year. Almost immediately his work was met with critical acclaim, and throughout the rest of the decade his music appeared not on the charts but everywhere else that counts. From a Peel session he performed in 2004, to support slots with Radiohead themselves he performed with the side-project that he formed with Modeselektor, Moderat, and in the final scene of Breaking Bad’s fourth season. While he made his name with dance-floor oriented techno, he’s branched out more recently to make genuinely mind-expanding ambient music, and for the mastery he has over both kinds of electronica, Apparat comes highly recommended.