Anthony Rother is an electro-techno producer from Germany who rose to prominence in the mid-'90s on the label Kanzleramt before founding numerous labels of his own, most notably Psi49net and Datapunk. Influenced primarily by Kraftwerk and Detroit techno, Rother was born on April 29, 1972, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He began his recording career in the late '80s with T.F.D. Crew, a couple also comprised of Bernd Cyba and Jörg Mrowietz. Stylistically similar to late-'80s British house groups such as M/A/R/R/S, S-Express, and Bomb the Bass, T.F.D. Crew made its recording debut in 1988 with the 12" single Broken Hearts/I Want You on Cold Effect Records. The song "I Want You" was subsequently compiled on the Rough Trade Germany compilation Body Rhythm Dance (1989).
Five years later, Rother made his techno debut as Notsignal, a collaboration with Matthias Geist, with a couple 12" releases in 1994 on Kanzleramt, an influential electro-techno label co-founded by producer Heiko Laux. Following a 1996 collaboration with Laux as Sodiac for a one-off 12" release, Rother made his solo debut with the full-length album Sex with the Machines (1997) on Kanzleramt. He subsequently founded an electro-techno label of his own, Psi49net, and inaugurated the label with a couple 12" releases of cover recordings: Trans Europa Express (1998), a cover of Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express," and Little Computer People (1998), a cover of the soundtrack music from the 1985 video game of the same name produced by Activision for Commodore 64 and other computer platforms of the time.
From 1998-2003, Rother released a bounty of electro-techno on Psi49net; in addition to numerous 12" releases, full-length releases include the solo album Simulationszeitalter (2000), the Little Computer People-billed album Electro Pop (2001), the compilation Anthony Rother Presents Electro Commando, Vol. 1: Welcome to Psicity (2002), the solo album Hacker (2002), and the live album Live Is Life Is Love (2003). A transitional year, 2003 also included Elixir of Life and Magic Diner -- a pair of ambient albums on Fax +49-69/450464, a label founded by Peter Kuhlmann (aka Pete Namlook) -- as well as Back Home, the inaugural release on Rother's new electro-techno label, Datapunk.
From 2003 onward, Rother released the bulk of his output on Datapunk; in addition to numerous 12" releases, full-length releases include the compilation In Electro We Trust (2004), the solo album Popkiller (2004), the retrospective box set This Is Electro (Works 1997-2005) (2005), the solo album Super Space Model (2006), and the two-volume compilation series We Are Punks (2007). Besides his output on Datapunk, Rother founded the labels Stahl Industries and Telekraft Recordings, on which he released the respective albums Art Is a Technology (2005) and My Name Is Beuys Von Telekraft (2008). ~ Jason Birchmeier, Rovi
