Appreciation: Achim Szepanski’s Labels — Force Inc., Mille Plateaux, Force Tracks and Others — Helped Define German Dance Music

Last week Achim Szepanski, German techno force of nature who founded Force Inc. Music Works and cofounded early 1980s German experimental group P16.D4, passed away after a lifetime devoted to amplifying electronic dance music in Europe. Force Inc., Mille Plateaux, Ritornell, Communism, Force Tracks, Contrastate, Disco Inc., Force Lab, Intense Recordings, Molecular Funk Guerilla, Plateaux Résistance, Riot Beats — Szepanski was at the foundation of each label.

You can read more detailed overviews of the label owner’s influence and stature elsewhere, but suffice to say that starting in the early 1990s with Force Inc., Szepanski helped define and codify the post-acid-house sound in Germany, especially in hotbeds like Cologne and Berlin, where producers including Moritz von Oswald, Ian Pooley, Thomas Fehlmann, Christian Vogel, J. Burger, Reinhart Voigt and dozens more were building resonant electronic music created to go boom in old industrial spaces and catch-as-catch-can clubs and parties.

From the start, Force Inc. sought out variety, issuing both thumping, relentless bangers and more pensive, meditative electronic music. The longer you scour for tracks that Szepanski helped bring to market, the more amazed you’ll be at the sheer depth of the sounds. Take, for example, the 12-inch that the producer Thomas Heckmann released in 1992 under the moniker Skydiver. Side A, “Cloud Chase,” is a buoyant 808-powered throwdown produced for peak dance floor epiphanies. The second side, though, is the opposite. At more than 10 minutes, “The Definition Of Taking A Step Into Another Dimension” is a glorious k-hole of meditative introspection, an early ambient techno excursion that explores the gentler side of synthetic beat music.

As the 1990s wound down and house, techno, trance and drum & bass moved toward the mainstream, Szepanski devoted more time to the visionary label Mille Plateaux, which introduced to the world glitchy subgenre known as clicks & cuts through a series of compilations of the same name. Issued in 2000, Clicks_+_Cuts was the first of four comps under that title, and introduced the pop-and-crackle sound of artists including Pole, Alvo Noto, Thomas Brinkmann, Fennesz, and dozens more. Here’s Pan Sonic’s track from the first volume of the collection.

Szepanski also helped define the so-called Microhouse sound — a kind of low-impact, introspective house subgenre whose progenitors included brilliant European and American producers including Luomo, Hakan Lidbo, Safety Scissors, Kit Clayton, Metro Area and Crane A.K.

Luomo’s “Tessio,” from 2000, is a ridiculously deep house track with a drunken, off kilter rhythm that suggests a house version of a J Dilla beat.

On social media, producers from around the world lined up to honor Szepanski. Robin Rimbaud, who makes brilliant experimental electronic music as Scanner, wrote: “Farewell to Achim Szepanski (1957-2024), a member of the influential German experimental P16.D4 in 1982, but perhaps best known for founding the legendary German techno label Force Inc. Music Works, with the sub labels Mille Plateaux and Ritornell.”

“Very sad to hear about the passing of Achim Szepanski, a true musical visionary and founder of Force Inc, Mille Plateaux etc.,” wrote Swedish electronic producer Andreas Tilliander. “I got signed by him in 2000 and would say that’s where my ‘journey’ started for real. Thank you for believing in 22-year-old me.”

Added the influential duo Hardfloor, “🖤R.I.P. Achim Szepanski💔 Born in 1957, he carved his name into the history of sound with his visionary labels Force Inc. and Mille Plateaux, pushing the boundaries of techno and experimental music.”

Unsurprisingly, the writer Philip Sherburne, on Futurism Restated, his Substack, best captured the sheer breadth of Szepanski’s work.

Over the … years, Mille Plateaux and Force Inc. (which veered toward minimal techno around the turn of the millennium) racked up classic after classic, in virtually every style imaginable: dark ambient from Thomas Köner; dub techno from Porter Ricks; post-rock from Dean Roberts; ambient techno from GAS; conceptual electronica from Terre Thaemlitz. They made a short-lived detour into drum & bass with the Position Chrome sublabel and Panacea’s Low-Profile Darkness. With Experimental Audio Research’s The Köner Experiment, they brought together Porter Ricks, Kevin Martin (the Bug, Techno Animal), Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom, Thomas Köner, AMM’s Eddie Prévost—and My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Martin Shields. (I mean seriously, what the fuck.) They explored some of their most experimental music with the Ritornell sublabel, home to extreme minimalism and digital abstraction from Kim Cascone, Taylor Deupree, Stephan Mathieu, and the all-star quintet of Ambarchi/Fennesz/Pimmon/Rehberg/Rowe.

Want to get lost in sound and vision? This exquisite experimental video, Ethereal Ephemera, by Szenapski’s early group P16.D4, is incredible.