RIP, Achim Szepanski (1957-2024)

The record label Mille Plateaux meant the world to me back in the mid-1990s, and it still does. Albums from Oval, Cristian Vogel, Microstoria, Snd, Thomas Köner, and Porter Ricks, just to name a few acts, and later the essential Clicks + Cuts compilation series (the first one, which came out in 2000, had 25 tracks, from the likes of Vladislav Delay, Frank Bretschneider, Alva Noto, Pansonic, Curd Duca, Jake Mandell, Kit Clayton, and Kid 606, among others) were central and defining to my listening, especially in regard to glitch and ambient techno. The label’s founder, Achim Szepanski, died this week at age 67. I interviewed him once, in 1996, back when I was an editor at Tower Records’ Pulse! magazines, for an overview of electronic music labels, when the sheer number of them was exploding, often creating myriad sublabels in the process. “Our label gives the artists the possibility to control the production from the beginning to the end,” Szepanski told me at the time. Read the full piece here.