Andrew Pekler

Andrew Pekler is a Berlin-based musician and sound artist whose approach to composition heavily involves recontextualized source material, combining samples with live instrumentation and electronic processing. First receiving international notice during the late 1990s for his abstract downtempo instrumentals as <a href="spotify:artist:2Y8GKF3J9HWtBdCzLrq5GE">Sad Rockets</a>, he also blended techno and indie pop as part of the group <a href="spotify:artist:4HF599EkpH1SSwchK49fyt">Bergheim 34</a>. Pekler's first releases under his own name, starting with 2002's Station to Station, were curious blends of dub, post-rock, minimal techno, and jazz. On later releases like 2011's Sentimental Favourites and 2019's Sounds from Phantom Islands, he constructed dreamy collages drawing from easy listening, exotica, and library music. He also performed free-form collective improvisations with <a href="spotify:artist:6Bpr6Jvb2Ic7WlzPD9EPJT">Jan Jelinek</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:2cqhNitHQVOasStjBSfTZ7">Hanno Leichtmann</a>, as <a href="spotify:artist:0obbyy1lB5W4NsBdXg9AsV">Groupshow</a>.

Pekler was born in Samarkand, Uzbekistan (then part of the Soviet Union), but grew up in Monterey, California, where he listened to thrash, college rock, punk, and hip-hop, and learned to play guitar. He moved to Heidelberg, Germany, in 1995 in order to begin his university studies, and he got a part-time job at a record store called Vinyl Only. Here, he was introduced to trip-hop, ambient, jungle, acid house, and other forms of electronic music that he wasn't exposed to in America.

While playing raucous garage rock as the singer and guitarist of the band Mucus 2, Pekler also started recording moonlit downtempo pieces in his one-bedroom flat. Going by the name <a href="spotify:artist:2Y8GKF3J9HWtBdCzLrq5GE">Sad Rockets</a>, he released two 7" EPs and a 1997 full-length (Plays) through David Moufang and Jonas Grossmann's Source Records. A second <a href="spotify:artist:2Y8GKF3J9HWtBdCzLrq5GE">Sad Rockets</a> album, Once Upon a Time Called Now, appeared on <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Morbid+Records%22">Morbid Records</a> in 1999, and American indie powerhouse <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Matador+Records%22">Matador Records</a> released 2000's Transition full-length and Recreation EP. During this time, Pekler also played in an experimental electro-pop group called <a href="spotify:artist:4HF599EkpH1SSwchK49fyt">Bergheim 34</a>. Debuting with a self-titled 1998 EP, the band signed to <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Klang+Elektronik%22">Klang Elektronik</a>, releasing a handful of EPs as well as the 2003 full-length It's Not for You, As It Is for Us.

Pekler signed to Stefan Betke's <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22%7Escape%22">~scape</a> label in 2002, after relocating to Berlin. The jazzy techno-dub full-length Station to Station appeared in 2002, followed by 2004's Nocturnes, False Dawns & Breakdowns. Strings + Feedback, an album of electro-acoustic pieces for sampler and mixer feedback, was released by <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Staubgold%22">Staubgold</a> in 2005. <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Kranky%22">Kranky</a> issued the library music-inspired Cue in 2007, and Entanglements in the Orthopedic Sensorium, a limited LP of unreleased sketches and fragmentary pieces, was released through <a href="spotify:artist:7JqFxlbv8o0djCv6o1LWLL">Giuseppe Ielasi</a>'s <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Schoolmap+Records%22">Schoolmap Records</a> in 2009. Also that year, <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22%7Escape%22">~scape</a> released The Martyrdom of Groupshow, the first full-length from Pekler's improvisational collaboration with <a href="spotify:artist:6Bpr6Jvb2Ic7WlzPD9EPJT">Jan Jelinek</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:2cqhNitHQVOasStjBSfTZ7">Hanno Leichtmann</a>.

Sentimental Favourites, a hallucinatory deconstruction of easy listening and exotica samples, was issued by <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Dekorder%22">Dekorder</a> in 2011. A similarly styled album called Cover Versions was released through <a href="spotify:artist:7JqFxlbv8o0djCv6o1LWLL">Ielasi</a>'s Senufo Editions in late 2012, limited to 300 copies, each with a unique handmade cover assembled from a different easy listening record. <a href="spotify:artist:0obbyy1lB5W4NsBdXg9AsV">Groupshow</a>'s Live at Skymall was issued by <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Staubgold%22">Staubgold</a> in 2013, and Holiday for Sampler (with <a href="spotify:artist:7JqFxlbv8o0djCv6o1LWLL">Ielasi</a>) came out on <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Planam%22">Planam</a> the same year. Another limited LP, The Prepaid Piano & Replayed, was released by Senufo and <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Entr%27acte%22">Entr'acte</a> in 2014. Tristes Tropiques, sourced from manipulated field recordings, appeared on <a href="spotify:artist:6Bpr6Jvb2Ic7WlzPD9EPJT">Jelinek</a>'s <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Faitiche%22">Faitiche</a> imprint in 2016. Three years later, the same label released Sounds from Phantom Islands, compiling tracks composed by Pekler for an interactive online map of islands once found on nautical maps that have never been confirmed to actually exist. ~ Paul Simpson, Rovi