Anthony Rother

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8 votes, 9.12 avg. rating (91% score)

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The 30-year old producer and label owner from Offenbach (Frankfurt) obviously knows what he’s talking about when calling a compilation “In Electro We Trust” as he did not so long ago. For over 17 years, he has been working, playing, living and representing electro. Always believing in this kind of music, Rother went through all its ups and downs. With his club label Datapunk he has been transforming the aesthetics of electro into today’s music for over a couple of years now. Some extraordinary successful maxis, like productions for Sven Väth’s Cocoon label, and Rother’s fifth studio album “Popkiller” prove the timelessness of his sound. Not only was “Popkiller” on top of all the 2004 charts but also it was crowned album of the year by the Raveline Magazine readers. All in all, enough proof of how up-todate electro still is today.

Anthony Rother’s career started in the late eighties. His first record releases were strongly inspired by the spherical sound collage of director and composer John Carpenter (”Die Klapperschlange”, “The End”). From 1994 on, Rother was one of the most important producers of Heiko Laux’s Kanzleramt label, which, at that time, was located in rural Hessen and has remained one of the few German labels releasing techno on a qualitatively high level.

Three years later, a sub label of Kanzleramt was founded especially for Rother’s long player “Sex with the machines”, Kanzeleramt’s first artist album to be released. It added a long lasting dynamic to Rother’s career. With “Sex with the machines” Rother realised for the first time the synergy of clubbing expectation and the intensity of electro beats typical for his sound. “The unbelievable feedback from different people was the first proof for me of how much energy I can get out of my music and all of a sudden, everything was clear to me! The success I had later on has confirmed me on what I am doing and has shown me my way to better understand myself as an artist.”

As a consequence, Rother started to go his own way in 1998 and founded his own label PSI49NET, an artistic platform to release his own productions as well as a variety of collaborations with fellow producers and innovative musicians for whom PSI49NET represented the right medium. It was this label on which celebrated albums like “Simulationszeitalter” (2000), “Little Computer People” (2001) and “Hacker” (2002) were released. Not only were these records musical statements, but they also convinced with their critical vocals which are rather unusual in electronic music. Over the years, a musical friendship with Frankfurt’s legendary DJ Sven Väth resulting in several common productions has developed. Rother produced the two Sven Väth albums “Contact” und “Fire” as well as several other collaborations, like “Komm” and “Magie”, for Väth’s Cocoon label under the name of Väth & Rother.

Recently, he produced their remix of Nena’s chart hit “Willst Du mit mir gehen?”. Other artists he worked with are Thomas Schumacher and Karl Bartos from Kraftwerk as well as this year’s collaborations/remixes with Miss Kittin, Erick Morillo and DJ Hell.

An important aspect for Rother’s musical career are his celebrated live acts which have made him and his vast equipment a popular guest in clubs and on festivals around the world. “Going live is just an unbelievable physical experience for me. When I’m on stage I have to be in constant move, play all the keyboards and synthesizers, sing live and arrange everything in real time. For this, I’m willing to accept the logistic challenges.”

The last artistic link in the chain is his newly founded label Stahl on which Rother’s album “Art Is A Technology” was the first record to be released. With this record, Rother freed himself from the stylistic expectations of the club format in order to cultivate sound experiments in the style of earlier releases for the ambient label Fax +49-69/450464. Here, Rother’s last piece has fallen into place: he has arrived where he started about twenty years ago.