Parallax Point — BANKERT's Constructed Cosmos

There was a rich German minimal techno and microhouse movement in the '90s and early aughts, especially in Berlin and Frankfurt. Prolific labels like Perlon, Kompakt, and Tresor stacked release after release in high-quality thick 180-gram vinyl by Dimbiman, Pantytec, Ricardo Villalobos, Luciano, Jeff Mills, and Kalabrese in bright graphic collectible gatefolds. I lovingly collected these albums, stashing each in its own protective plastic for dust-free posterity. My deep reverence for the album was tactile: the visceral smell of the packaging, the palpable way the tracks hung together from A to B side and into a cohesive whole.

These staunch collector habits may feel antiquated in 2025, at a time when music distribution and formats are fractured. And today, much in the ethos of those collectible albums and minimal movement is present—perhaps reimagined—in Berlin's Moniker Eggplant imprint. While the label features collectible, limited releases of lathe-cut vinyl housed in screen-printed covers, its artist BANKERT eschews the concept of an album, instead envisioning releases as ephemeral "containers," not "limited by physical constraints and shaped by the conventions of the music industry."

MEno.001, the BANKERT release on the Moniker Eggplant sublabel MEno, flirts with the interplay of both discordant and melodic sounds. The collection traverses arpeggiated space with minimal ambient soundscapes and layered melodies. While the release is experimental and at times cinematic, it is ultimately quirky, listenable, and might just be the perfect soundtrack for untethered space travel, with nary a blue-suited Katy Perry in sight.

I discussed MEno.001 with BANKERT, along with galaxy travel, axolotls, chaos, and open space.

Sara Jayne Crow: You are being tele-transported to Mars, and you have only one synthesizer, one animal, one turntable, and one vinyl album to bring along with you. What are your choices for each of these four options?

BANKERT: Mars feels like a metaphor for distance, isolation, unfamiliar systems. In that sense, bringing a computer running Ableton Live makes the most sense: not just one synthesizer, but a whole ecosystem of sound possibilities, both generative and reactive.

An axolotl might seem like an odd companion, but there's something about their suspended state of transformation—forever larval—that resonates with the idea of becoming rather than being.

For the vinyl: Sun Ra's Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy. There's no more fitting soundtrack for alien landscapes and psychic recalibrations. His whole philosophy was about using music to transcend time, space, and identity—perfect for a Martian exile.

As for the turntable: does it even matter? Is there sound on Mars? Would vibration propagate in thin air? Maybe the real question is what silence sounds like when there's no one left to interpret it.

Sara: Your productions occupy a sort of parallax point between what is earthly and known and something more of the ether. Was this intentional?

BANKERT: Was it intentional? Yes—but not in the sense of following a plan. The process is improvised, but within a carefully prepared setting. It's like building a spacecraft just to drift in it without a destination. The recordings happen live, with minimal interference at first. We get lost in sound, in our own constructed cosmos, and that's kind of the point: to carve out a space where we can let go of control, while simultaneously relying on systems we've built with precision.

Later, in post-production, there is a phase of surgical intervention—dissecting layers, isolating elements, discarding clutter. This back-and-forth between intuition and engineering is essential. At times, it feels like shifting from a free-form jazz ensemble into a project management meeting with oneself. The chaos has to be archived, labeled, and version-controlled.

In a way, it's probably what Ralf Hütter meant when he referred to himself as a Musikarbeiter. There's poetry in that word: not just a composer or performer, but someone who works within music, like a material. A worker of sound, shaping it as one might shape metal or code.

So yes, that "parallax point" you mention—between the earthly and the ether—it's real, and it's where the work happens. The studio becomes a kind of observatory. A place for drift and discipline at once.

Sara: Can you envision a soundtrack setting for the track "arb?"

BANKERT: "arb" is less about illustrating a scene and more about suggesting a state. If there's a setting, it's one that emerges individually—with each listener, in each listening moment.

We try not to impose narratives on the tracks. As musicians, we're focused on the sound itself: texture, rhythm, dynamics, space. Once it's out there, it doesn't really belong to us anymore.

So if "arb" becomes the soundtrack to a long walk, a dream, a piece of experimental cinema, or a spreadsheet session at 3 a.m.—that's entirely valid. We'd rather leave that space open than fill it with our own projections.

Sound invites meaning, but it doesn't need to prescribe it.

Sara: Do you have a production partner or partners?

BANKERT: BANKERT is not a solo identity—it's more of an open system. There's a driving force, yes, but also collaborators who shift in and out of focus depending on the phase of the project. It's a concept as much as it is a name. One can join. In fact, several already have.

Musicians, producers, web developers, graphic designers, instrument builders; studio rats, all together. Each one brings something to the process, not just in terms of skills, but in terms of perspective.

It's not about hierarchy, more like orbits—people moving through the gravitational field of BANKERT. If we had to put it in words, maybe it's closest to the Rastafarian "I and I." No separation between the self and the collective. The individual becomes part of the field.

So, when we say "us," it's not a fixed group. It's a shifting topology of practice, tied together by curiosity and sound.

Sara: You mention that you blend digital and analog approaches to production. Can you be a bit more specific about how you do this?

BANKERT: We treat digital and analog not as opposites, but as complementary states—like two dialects of the same language. Our setup is a hybrid ecosystem: electronic musical instruments of all kinds, woven together through experimentation and constant reconfiguration.

We use various software instruments—some commercial, some custom, some unstable in beautiful ways. Alongside that are analog drum machines (custom too), modular systems (both analog and digital), and a wide range of effects chains that evolve with each session.

Field recordings are another essential layer—captured fragments from the outside world, often lo-fi and imperfect. They're treated not just as atmospheres, but as raw material, cut and recontextualized like samples from old records or television broadcasts.

It's less about fidelity and more about friction: the way these elements rub against each other. Sometimes it's clean and precise, sometimes degraded and noisy. The blending happens not just in gear choices, but in how we listen to what happens between them.

Everything is connected—machines, people, rooms, electricity, and intention. In that sense, the production process reflects the collective nature of BANKERT itself: a dynamic system, constantly shifting in form but anchored by a shared curiosity for sound.

Sara: Do you tend to produce music in fits and bursts, or over long time periods? Do you create tracks in one sitting, or shelve productions and return to them several times?

BANKERT: The process is key. We work in iterations, always. There's a rhythm to it—not in the musical sense, but in how we approach making. Plan, do, evaluate, and then start again. Step by step. Each phase has its own mental mode, its own headspace.

We don't really chase inspiration in bursts or try to finish things in one sitting. It's more about creating the conditions for consistent work over time. That might mean breaking the process down into very small segments: one sound design session, one mix adjustment, and one arrangement pass, each with a clear boundary.

Short, focused time slots help. And so does the idea of "terminate to get things done." Otherwise, the loop never ends. At some point, we decide, "this is good enough for now." Perfection is rarely the goal. Clarity and forward motion are.

That doesn't mean we don't return to pieces. We do. But only with a specific intention. As we did with MEno.001. The archive is always alive, but so is the discipline of closing a chapter.

In that sense, our production method mirrors the collective nature of BANKERT: iterative, modular, and process-based. Less about flashes of genius, more about keeping the loop running with care.

Sara: How do you use samples throughout MEno.001?

BANKERT: Sampling on MEno.001 is less about referencing and more about evoking. We work mainly with short phrases, isolated words, and fragments of speech. Some are lifted from found sources—TV, records, field recordings—others are our own voices, re-sampled and re-contextualized.

These samples often act as subtle signposts. Sometimes they offer statements that reflect on the process of making music itself—meta gestures within the work. Sometimes they function as directional cues to trigger associations or memories, even if the exact meaning stays blurred.

We're also interested in the word as sound—the grain of the voice, the rhythm of speech, the resonance of language stripped from its origin. A single phrase can shift the tone of an entire piece, not because of what it says, but because of how it sits in the sonic field.

So while sampling is a technical tool, it's also a way to embed a kind of semiotic shimmer into the music—a hint of narrative that never fully resolves. Like much of BANKERT, it's about framing openness, not defining meaning.

Sara: Are you trained in music theory? Do you think having this sort of training ultimately expands or limits one's ability as a producer?

BANKERT: None of us would describe ourselves as classically trained in music theory in the conventional sense. We're more sound enthusiasts: curious listeners who draw from a wide repertoire and absorb knowledge through less formal, more fluid channels.

Books, interviews, documentaries, and conversations have shaped us as much as any textbook might. We're mainly self-taught, but that also means we've been trained by others—musicians, artists, friends, or strangers online. And then at some point, you let go of what you've learned, so you can improvise freely.

Being a good listener is the real core. Not just listening to music, but to your environment, your collaborators, your own instincts. Theory can be useful, of course—it's a system humans developed to communicate and structure music-making. But it's just one lens.

We find the science of sound often more interesting: acoustics, waveforms, signal paths, perception. Those things can expand your vocabulary without closing it off.

So yes, learn. Absolutely. Scrutinize what you've absorbed. And when necessary, start over. That cycle is what keeps the process alive. In that sense, we don't reject theory—we just place it among many tools, rather than at the center.

Sara: The MEno.001 album flirts with the interplay of both discordant and melodic sounds. Was building this sort of tension and release a goal?

BANKERT: The structure and flow of MEno.001 were shaped significantly by Lorenz Erdmann from Moniker Eggplant, who invited BANKERT to contribute to his digital white label series, MEno. He acted as the selector for this release, curating the tracks from our earlier digital editions and shaping them into a new form.

The tension you're hearing—the interplay between discordant textures and melodic fragments—is very much a part of his aesthetic. As far as we know him, that balance between dissonance and harmony, chaos and clarity, is exactly what he's drawn to.

We were excited to hand over that kind of curatorial agency. It allowed the material to breathe in a different context, through someone else's ears. That kind of external perspective is very valuable.

So if there's tension and release in MEno.001, it's not only a result of the sounds themselves, but of how they were arranged and framed by someone who truly understands the dynamic.

Sara: You've eschewed the use of the descriptor "album" to describe MEno.001—instead, "tracks and EPs appear as 'ordered lists' or digital containers—a deliberate decision against the classic concept of an album. In this sense, MEno.001 is not a traditional album release but a collection of tracks from the first six releases (ol01 - ol06). It's a "snapshot, a cross-section of the project's initial phase. A point on an open line that keeps evolving." Can you explain a bit more about why you've avoided the classic concept of an album?

BANKERT: We've deliberately moved away from the classic "album" format because it feels increasingly outdated, especially in a digital context where there's theoretically no limit to duration, track number, or structure. The idea of an album as a fixed, linear object is rooted in analog media—vinyl, cassette, CD—all of which are limited by physical constraints and shaped by the conventions of the music industry.

Formats like LP, EP, or Maxi are just inherited containers. Useful at times, but not essential. In digital space, those boundaries can dissolve. And we want to explore that: the possibility of music as a flow, as a system of connected elements, not a static product.

BANKERT releases appear as "ordered lists" or digital containers—terms that are deliberately neutral. They suggest openness. You can play them in sequence, sure, but also shuffle them, remix them, or reframe them. Maybe future platforms will even support formats that break with the tracklist entirely, allowing for randomized paths, new relationships between pieces, and evolving versions.

MEno.001 is a snapshot. A cross-section of a process, not a monument. It marks a point on a line that's still moving. That's important to us. We're not closing anything with it—we're opening a space for the next phase to emerge.

Visit BANKERT at bankert.world and follow BANKERT on Instagram and SoundCloud. Listen to and purchase MEno.001 via Bandcamp.