Oliver Huntemann

Myths abound in the north when it comes to techno ground zero, and they refuse to go away.

Oliver Huntemann is one of a handful of children of the north who, for what seems like an eternity, add an element of credence to the mythology. He does not, of course, live in a snowy forest or at the edge of the polar oceans. The sun does, on occasion, shine down on Hamburg. Nevertheless, there is a tendency towards hypothermic reduction in the rigorous efficiency of the Huntemann oeuvre. Images of cold storage warehouses, desolate heavy plant sites and bluish flesh are not entirely misplaced. Shards of German Engineering glimmer in his music, laced with persuasive logic, gruesome Darwinism. What remains: what works.

In “Brighter than the sun“, the English music theorist Kodwo Eshun depicts the birthplace of Kraftwerk, Dusseldorf, as the “Mississippi Delta of Techno“. Huntemann’s tracks may well have dragged themselves out of the same primeval soup, but it was the far north which fired them with the necessary steel for clubland. The resulting creations are linear, free of fancy, charmingly direct. One particular London arbiter of taste sought to label the nature of his skeletal sound as “bare and striped back to the metallic core“ – whereby Huntemann’s reduction does not end in thin minimalism, it draws attention to the core itself. Less is more to the max. The only luxury is a little dirt.