Dettinger - Biography
Olaf Dettinger is one of the Kompakt label’s central figures. Since the late 1990s Kompakt has essentially defined the state of progressive yet club friendly techno. The label’s aesthetic has influenced a generation of dance music fans and producers, making it one of the true tastemakers in modern electronic music from minimal techno to abstract ambient. Dettinger has a hand in the label’s operations, but perhaps more importantly he has been one of its most intriguing, if less active, producers. Pursuing a unique, understated style that blends the best elements of downtempo beats, minimalism and classic ambient music, Dettinger’s music stands out in the Kompakt roster, perhaps inspiring the development of the label’s Pop Ambient series, a much loved outlet for quiet atmospheres, muted beats and drifting melodies.
Based in Cologne, Germany, Dettinger has produced mysterious and unassuming music from the beginning. His first record, the Blond EP from 1998, was also one of Kompakt’s earliest releases. Comprised of four tracks of pulsing, minimal rhythms that hover around slow house and hip-hop tempos drenched in washes of lush, swirling ambience and ghostly fragments of melody, Blond immediately stated Dettinger’s overall aesthetic.
The following year brought two more EPs and Dettinger’s first full-length. The Puma single was released in April of ’99 along with Intershop. The three tracks on Puma set out hypnotic, circular grooves and wash them in blissed out textures that float and churn endlessly. The ten-minute A-side track is certainly one of Dettinger’s finest moments, effortlessly exploring a single mesmerizing pattern for its entire duration. Intershop holds the honor of being the first single artist full-length that was released on Kompakt. It also ranks as one of the most subtly beautiful and well-crafted electronic albums of its time. With a perfectly brief duration of just over forty minutes spread across seven tracks, the record is concise and leaves the listener wanting more. This is post-party music at its best. Tracks shift from downtempo groove hypnosis to whorls of layered, beatless ambience. Attention to detail and the psychedelic power of minimalism are the order of the day as manipulated hip-hop patterns, dubwise echo, smudged drones and chugging basslines meld. Dettinger’s placement of sound is a marvel of audio economy, as his sparse layers seem to carve out a unique sonic space while fusing with each other to create a shimmering, throbbing whole. His minimalism never outlasts its welcome with most songs well under eight minutes, marking Intershop a skillful album of understated restraint.
In November of ’99 Dettinger released the Totentanz EP. The title is German for “death dance” and the disorienting nature of these three tracks makes this release the producer’s most abstract to date. Comprised of three untitled tracks, the release sees Dettinger get a little more layered and chaotic. The A-side features a clipped, off-kilter rhythm, backwards swirls of synthesizer and erratic metallic chimes. The two tracks on the flip side drop muted beats into an impossibly deep cave of black echo. Totentanz is abstract rhythmic ambience of the highest order.
2000 brought the second, and unfortunately last (so far anyway…) Dettinger full-length. Oasis, like Intershop, features seven tracks and lasts around forty minutes. The sound however is fuller, rounder and denser. The beats are mixed to the fore and feature pronounced elements of processing and glitchy manipulation. The album also varies more in mood, alternating between passages of bliss-inducing warmth and atonal claustrophobia, often within the same track. Dettinger also explores more textural depth, adding sizzling crackle and grit to his sounds. If Intershop veered toward the cleanly minimal, Oasis dazzles with its sonic daring, allowing for more dirt in the system and sounding all the better for it. The closing track ranks as one of this producer’s best moments. The track swells and ebbs, forming an ever-shifting flow and boasting a seasick melody that is utterly mesmerizing. Oasis alone marks Dettinger as one of the most innovative ambient producers of the turn of the century.
Aside from some remixes, most notably for the Pet Shop Boys, and compilation appearances on Kompakt’s Pop Ambient and Total series and Mille Plateaux’s Clicks + Cuts collection, Dettinger has remained strangely quiet since the beginning of the ‘00s. In 2010 a new track surfaced on Pop Ambient 2010. We can only hope this might signal the return of one of ambient music’s truly exceptional producers.
