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Bjoern Hartmann




A northern hemisphere nomad, Bjoern Hartmann has been involved in the international electronic music community for nearly a decade. After stints as a drummer in a punk band and a jazz combo, Bjoern first became active in the PC-demo scene in Munich, Germany, during the mid-90s, both as a composer and as a sysop of a song-swapping BBS.

A move to Philadelphia, USA, brought Bjoern into contact with the 611 Records collective and launched his DJ career, which would take him to small lounges as well as big raves on the East Coast on a regular basis. Around the turn of the millenium, Bjoern started Tech Support - one of Philly's first techno crews which still thrives today. By 2000, he had teamed up with Jay Haze and Sean O'Neal and launched the minimal tech-house record label Tuning Spork.

In 2002, Bjoern graduated from U Penn with degrees in Communication, Digital Media Design and Computer Science. Together with Jay Haze, he relocated to Amsterdam, NL, to work on Contexterrior Media, an umbrella organiziation controlling the labels Tuning Spork, Contexterrior, and Future Dub. Dissatisfied with the rigid and stifling distribution methods for physical sound carriers, Bjoern conceived of and designed the netlabel textone.org, which releases free minimal music by established artists and new faces under a CC license. Presently in Paris, FR, Bjoern is now concentrating on working together with Creative Commons to promote the creation of a publicly accessible pool of music for current and future generations of listeners and artists.

Musically, Bjoern's early releases reflect a fascination with the rhythmic and melodic structures of Cologne innovators Joerg Burger (the Modernist) and Mike Ink. Newer material plays with quirkier, more idiosyncratic rhythmic complexity while maintaining accessible elements to entertain the dancefloor. As a counterpoint to challenging assemblages of sound snippets, his compositions often provide a continuous harmonic sublayer of more traditional synthesizer lines.

As a DJ, he has appeared alongside Richie Hawtin, Daniel Bell, Jeff Milligan, Dinky, Kero, Adam Marshall, Tomas Jirku, Falko Brocksieper, Mia, Brett Johnson, Shawn Rudiman and others. Countries visited on tours include the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Poland, the USA and Japan.

Recent discography:

2000 tuningspork 01: b. - "french vanilla" track
2001 tuningspork 02: b. - "interstate" track
2001 tuningspork 03: b. - "discrete" track
2002 tuningspork 03.5: loops
2003 tuningspork 08: loops
2003 background 35: b. - "booby trap" on futuristic exp. v6
2003 textone 08: starch boy - "pesto pasta" ep [mp3]
2004 textone 09: b. - "minikool" track [mp3]
2004 camomille 60: map king - "state of affairs" ep [mp3]
2004 regular : b. - "weltenstapfen" track on cd 'regular, my friends and i'

Links:
textone.org/
bjoern.org/music/
tuningspork.com/
contexterrior.com/
futuredub.com/



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