Pete Namlook | hr XXL Chillout Mix | 10th Anniversary FAX +49-69/450464 (06.10.2002)

End of 2002, Pete Namlook spent some time with testing the MP3 format for his releases and experimented (with some of his projects) on a scientific level. After recording his 3hour DJ session for the Frankfurt based HRXXL radio station, he had to realize that listening to this session from CD is being interrupted several times by changing the CDs. "The kind some of my Chill- Out/Ambient music should be listened to is not for 80 minutes only. This is a limitation the Audio-CD medium comes with. 3 hours are the minimum for the listener to dive into my sound and find his way into my world." Pete Namlook (Peter Kuhlmann) born 25. November 1960 Pete Namlook was one of the most influential figures of electronic and ambient music in the 1990s. Inspired by Oskar Sala, one of the pioneers of electronic music, Namlook focused on the untapped potential of analogue synthesizers, often developed or extended in his laboratory. Freshly educated in composition from Goethe University, Pete Namlook (Peter Kuhlmann) started his career in Frankfurt playing in the electronic ensemble Romantic Warrior that was loosely part of the new age and electronic scene. They cut Romantic Warrior (Frog, 1985), Himalaya (Frog, 1986), Planet (Blue Flame, 1988). In 1991 he began a second life as a disc jockey playing techno music under the moniker Sequential. The single True Colours changed his career and a good chunk of modern music. Kuhlmann assumed the identity of Pete Namlook, opened his own Fax label and made his first album, Silence (Fax, 1992), a collaboration with Dr Atmo (and one of the first albums released only on compact disc). Namlook understood that producing was more important than recording and he set out to discover, encourage and promote music by ambient electronic artists. During the first year alone, his label released over 100 records and CDs. The label name refers to the "fax" as a medium for fast and cheap distribution of ideas. Its humble weekly releases are equivalent to sending a fax to a group of friends. His double albums are containers of lengthy ambient suites reminiscent of Germany's kosmische school of the 1970s and of Brian Eno's late 1970s "discreet" music, but also influenced by his two true love: eastern and classical music. No musical genre was a direct influence, though: Namlook has always claimed that Nature was his main teacher Kuhlmann passed away on November 8th 2012, at the age of 51 from a heart attack.