Datacide

Datacide is a side project involving ambient/experimental producers Uwe Schmidt (aka Atom Heart) and Tetsu Inoue. Although their first release on the Frankfurt-based Fax label fit squarely into the analog-heavy ambient and trance styles closely associated with that label, subsequent releases on Schmidt's Rather Interesting label have moved increasingly toward a breezy lounge/electronica fusion, combining elements of kitsch, psychedelia, jazz, and exotica with the pair's quirky rhythms and lush digital ambience. Their third full-length CD under the name, Flowerhead, is also the only Rather Interesting title to be licensed for release in the U.S. (it was reissued by Asphodel in 1996).

Schmidt and Inoue began recording together in 1993, after Inoue met Schmidt while vacationing near Frankfurt (where Schmidt lived at the time). They recorded a pair of dance tracks for 12-inch release on Fax, followed by a full-length which mixed more uptempo trance-oriented techno with beatless ambient and experimental soundscapes. A second Datacide release in a similar, though more ambient vein (and titled, of course, Datacide II) appeared the following year before Inoue and Schmidt switched gears for their first Rather Interesting release, Flowerhead, an album of laidback ambient-jazz. Ondas, released in 1996, upped Flowerhead's weirdness factor significantly, dwelling for most of the album in channel separation experiments which fused the rhythmic abstraction of Atom Heart's recent solo work with the fizzier, more left-field of Inoue's electronic treatments (Inoue's girlfriend, Ingrid, even makes an extended cameo on "mouth trumpet").