Schneider TM is a multidimensional music project of Dirk Dresselhaus, named after his nickname Schneider. Since the late 80’s, Dirk has been active in different musical fields. From 1989 until 1997 he played and sang in adventurous rock and pop bands like Hip Young Things and Locust Fudge (both on Glitterhouse Records) before he became more active in electronic music around 1996. Schneider TM is responsible for a couple of experimental electro-freak-pop albums (on City Slang / Mute) including underground-hits like ‘Reality Check’, ‘Frogtoise’ and a cover version of a song by The Smiths called ‘The Light 3000’, a collaboration with Kptmichigan that was hugely acclaimed by the alternative media like John Peel, The Wire etc..
Schneider TM has been credited as one of the main inventors of a music genre called Indietronic or Indietronica.
Since 1997 Schneider TM performed a couple of hundreds live concerts around the globe including renowned international festivals like CTM (Berlin), Sonar Festival / Sonar Sound (Barcelona, Rome, Tokyo), Mutek (Montreal, Mexico City), Arty Farty (Lyon), Pukkelpop (Hasselt), Hultsfred Festival (Hultsfred), Kilbi Festival (Bad Bonn), Frieze Art Fair / Frieze Music (London), Phonem Festival (Istanbul), Numero Festival (Lisboa), Les Siestes électroniques festival (Toulouse), Melt Festival (Gräfenhainichen), Midi Festival (Hyéres), Motomix Festival (Sao Paolo), Todaysart Festival (Den Haag), Dark Mofo (Hobart) and others.
As well as work on a variety of one-off projects – including the production of film music for movies (66/67, In Der Überzahl, Teilhard, Remainder, Continuity etc. with directors like Omer Fast, Ludwig & Glaser etc.), performance theater (The Scorpionfish, Louis & Bebe w/ Joanna Dudley & Rufus Didwiszus) or radio plays (Release, Hochhaus w/ Paul Plamper) – Dirk has been performing & recording with noise & drone outfits like Angel (w/ Ilpo Väisänen of Pan sonic & guests like Hildur Gudnadottir, Oren Ambarchi, BJ Nilsen or Lucio Capece), released by Editions Mego and Real Time (w/ Reinhold Friedl of zeitkratzer, 3 CD box on Blume) on a regular basis since 1999.
For a while now, Dirk has also been moving Schneider TM in the direction of instantly composed freeform music, employing varying instruments including guitar, electronics, balafon, effect loops as well as field recordings. Sometimes he works solo and at other times together with artists like Jochen Arbeit (of Einstürzende Neubauten, Automat), Damo Suzuki (ex-Can), video artists like Lillevan, pani K and Takehito Koganezawa or Japanese dancer Tomoko Nakasato. The first results of this open & soundscape-y direction was the Schneider TM albums ‘Construction Sounds’. Based on field recordings of Berlin construction sites combined with electronics, it was released in September 2012 on Bureau B & MirrorWorldMusic, an online-platform / label started in 2007 by Dirk Dresselhaus and Michael Beckett (aka Kptmichigan) to present past, present & future of their works.
Photo: Nozomi Matsumoto
