Day One of the Signalform Blog: Signalform Biography!

We will start this with biography, so all of you out there now what this is all about.

signalform are: ingo zobel, christoph abert and frederik dahlke. christoph abert and ingo zobel were both born near frankfurt (1973 / 1969), frederik dahlke in munich (1973).

all three discovered their passion for electronic music in the late eighties and early nineties. they frequently went to the legendary dorian gray, a techno club located in the catacombs of the frankfurt international airport. ingo also filtered into the underground electronic music scene with it's hidden party locations.

frederik and christoph met ingo 1995 in a - by that time among producers well known - synthesizer store near frankfurt, where ingo worked. after a initial jam session they discovered, that despite different affections towards music, there was a common understanding, once described by the trio as "abstract floating percussive illbient". the first project was named "drøn", which initially was only a working title. but elektrolux' alex azary liked the name so much that it became the official project name. in 1999 the first track was released on a compilation, that track's name was "fortune cookie". another track from the same vintage was "rem", which finally became the opener of earth views 7, a german late night tv broadcast, playing electronic music while showing pictures and videos of the earth, taken from space. rem was also published on the spacenight no. 6 soundtrack cd and drøn's debut album "parsec". the basic synth pattern of the track is the sound of an ensoniq asr-10 sampler. the drum patterns were programmed on a roland tr 909 and manually altered during the recording of the track.

drøn's second album "xenologix" delivered an unprecedented atmosphere. the third album "homeworld" was listed no. 1 of the german chillout album charts for several weeks. drøn's 12" "eve shores" stayed at no. 1 of the german chillout charts for three months in a row.

christoph, ingo and frederik started the project "signalform" in 2004. in contrast to drøn, signalform provides a more challenging and daring listening experience, incorporating recent influences from the equipment park of the three producers. the signalform debut album "private channel" was published in 2006 on shima records.

the signalform studio is jammed with analogue synthesizers of all eras. the analogue modular system incorporates more than 200 modules of various, even exotic manufacturers.

one of most interesting signalform projects is the remix battle with tachikoma, released on the spanish label "love the chaos" under the title "signalform vs tachikoma - understanding media".