RIP Pete Namlook

Well, damn.  This one snuck up on me.  I just learned today that German electronic composer and producer Pete Namlook passed away last November 8 of unspecified causes.

An incredibly prolific composer who built an entire industry around his Frankfurt-based FAX label, Namlook's name (the reverse of the phonetical spelling of his real name, Kuhlmann) was inextricably linked with the post-rave resurgence of ambient music, and many of his solo and collaborative recordings are among the most lauded and influential in new ambient music. FAX helped give shape to ambient's new school by allowing artists to freely experiment, and countless FAX releases, particularly those dating from 1993 and 1994, are considered classics of contemporary electronic ambient. 

I began collecting Namlook recordings sometime around 2006, and posted reviews of several of the albums over at the main Water Dissolves blog before we bifurcated into Water and Music.  There are so many recordings, series of recordings, and collaborations, and they're all so different from one another, that one can easily develop a mania for collecting them all, much like Deadheads and their Grateful Dead concert tapes.  Here's what I've managed to accumulate to date, and mind you, this is only a small fraction of Namlook's output:





4 Voice I
4 Voice III
Air 1
Air 2
Air 3
Air 5
Astrogator
Atom
Blow The Fuse
Gate To The Milky Way

Le Mar
Live Ft. Lauderdale Global Warming
Subharmonic Interference
The Ambient Cookbook II (4 CDs)
New Organic Life I
New Organic Life II
Syn (2 CDs)












A View to a Chill
License to Chill
Reality
Free Your Mind
Music for Urban Meditation

Pearl II
Pearl III

And then there's the numerous collaborations:

Jet Chamber I (with Atom Heart)
Jet Chamber II (with Atom Heart)
Jet Chamber III (with Atom Heart)
Jet Chamber IV (with Atom Heart)
Jet Chamber V (with Atom Heart)
Outland I (with Bill Laswell)
Outland II (with Bill Laswell)
Outland III (with Bill Laswell)
Outland IV (with Bill Laswell)
Outland V (with Bill Laswell)
Psychonavigation (with Bill Laswell)
Sultan (with Burhan Öçal)
Sultan Orhan (with Burhan Öçal)
Sultan Osman (with Burhan Öçal)
A New Consciousness (with Charles Uzzell-Edwards)
Sequential (with DJ Criss)
Adlernebel (with DJ Dao)
Limelight (with DJ Brainwave)
Silence I (with Dr. Atmo)
Silence II (with Dr. Atmo)
Silence IV (with Dr. Atmo)
Silence V (with Dr. Atmo)
S.H.A.D.O. I (with Higher Intelligence Agency)
S.H.A.D.O. II (with Higher Intelligence Agency)
The Fires of Ork 1 (with Geir Jenssen)
The Fires of Ork 2 (with Geir Jenssen)
pp nmlk (with Jochem Paap)
Alien Community I (with Jonah Sharp)
Alien Community II (with Jonah Sharp)

Wechselspannung 1 (with Jonah Sharp)

Wechselspannung 2 (with Jonah Sharp)

Polytime (with Karl Berger)

The Dark Side of the Moog 1 (with Klaus Schulze)
The Dark Side of the Moog 2 (with Klaus Schulze)
The Dark Side of the Moog 3 (with Klaus Schulze)
The Dark Side of the Moog 4 (with Klaus Schulze)
The Dark Side of the Moog 5 (with Klaus Schulze)
The Dark Side of the Moog 6 (with Klaus Schulze)
The Dark Side of the Moog 7 (with Klaus Schulze)
The Dark Side of the Moog 8 (with Klaus Schulze)
The Dark Side of the Moog 9 (with Klaus Schulze)
The Dark Side of the Moog X (with Klaus Schulze)
The Evolution of Dark Side of the Moog 1 (with Klaus Schulze)

The Putney 2 (with Ludwig Rehberg)

Gig In The Sky (with David Moufang)
Be Aware (with David Moufang)
Raumland-Sphäre (with David Moufang)
Raumland Exploration (with Move D)
Raumland Montage (with Move D)

The Art of Love (with Move D)
Dreamfish I (with Mixmaster Morris)
Dreamfish II (with Move D)
Imagining the Psychedelic Landscape (with Move D)
Exploring the Psychedelic Landscape (with David Moufang)
Home Shopping (with Move D)
The Retro Rocket (with Move D)
Sons of Kraut (with Move D)
Wired (with Move D)
Russian Spring (with The New Composers)
Planetarium (with The New Composers)
Hearts of Space (with Pascall F.E.O.S.)
Miles Apart (with Peter Prochir)
From Within 1 (with Richie Hawtin)
From Within 2 (with Richie Hawtin)
From Within 3 (with Richie Hawtin)



Elektro II (with Robert Gorl)
Shades of Orion 1 (with Tetsu Inoue)
Shades of Orion 2 (with Tetsu Inoue)
Shades of Orion 3 (with Tetsu Inoue)
2350 Broadway I (with Tetsu Inoue) (2 CDs)
2350 Broadway II (with Tetsu Inoue) (2 CDs)
2350 Broadway III (with Tetsu Inoue)
Time Square (with Tetsu Inoue)
Virtual Vices I (with Wolfram Spyra)
Virtual Vices II (with Wolfram Spyra)
Virtual Vices III (with Wolfram Spyra)
Virtual Vices V (with Wolfram Spyra)
Virtual Vices VI (with Wolfram Spyra)





There's nothing quite like collecting Virtual Vices 1 through III and V and VI to make you long for Virtual Vices IV, a secret that Namlook knew well and was a key component of his marketing strategy.

In the age of the downloadable MP3, when musicians and producers alike are often at a loss on how to make money from their music, Namlook and FAX devised a strategy that allowed the artists to make a living. Not only did FAX's financial structure confer the majority of its profits to the artists, but Namlook succeeded in attracting a devoted, ravenous following that allowed him and his label to continue releasing new music.

FAX would initially print only a limited number of albums of any one series, perhaps only 500 or 1,000 or 1,500 copies, and when that initial run sold out, instead of printing more, he'd go back to the studio and produce a new album of music in a similar vein, although by no means identical to its predecessor.  Hence, Air 1 would morph into Air 2, and would then evolve into Air 3, and so on, and the earlier versions of the album would wind up accruing in value as completists scrambled to fill the gaps in their collections.  If a particular album never sold out, it simply wouldn't become a series, and Namlook let market demand decide what would or wouldn't be recorded in the studio. It was not for nothing that he used to have a link on his web site to a tutorial on supply-and-demand economics.

In the composition In Heaven, from his collaboration with Geir Jenssen, The Fires of Ork II, Rutger Hauer's voice states, "In heaven, that's all they talk about: the ocean and the sunset - how fucking wonderful it is to watch that big ball of fire melt into the ocean."  Here's to Namlook appreciating the transcendental sunset on the ocean of eternity.

Meanwhile, does anyone know where I can get my hands on a copy of Silence III?  Seriously.