Thomas Fehlmann

Thomas Fehlmann has played many styles over the years, among them post-punk and hardcore techno, but he’s best known as a titan of ambient dub. Born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1957, he co-founded the influential German New Wave group Palais Schaumburg with Holger Hiller in Hamburg in 1980; then, in the early ’90s, he began making speedy, stripped-down rave alongside Moritz von Oswald, Juan Atkins and Eddie Fowlkes in groups 2MB and 3MB, helping formalise the links between Detroit and Berlin’s respective techno scenes. With releases like his 1994 Flow EP, Fehlmann began exploring more ambient textures, establishing the lush palette that would define his many albums for Cologne’s Kompakt label. Among his side projects—like Ocean Club, his multi-media platform with his partner Gudrun Gut—Fehlmann is a longtime collaborator of Alex Paterson’s ambient project The Orb, sometimes as a guest musician and sometimes (as on 2005’s Okie Dokie It’s The Orb On Kompakt) as a full member of the group.