Malte Pelleter: Futurhythmachines

We are very excited to share Malte Pelleter’s new release: Futurhythmachines. In it, Malte undertakes a kind of sonic fiction patchwork of technical and cultural history(s) of the drum machine, questions about technical temporalities and future designs as well as groove as micro-futurism. He attempts to narrate the old stories of e.g. Funk, House, Techno and HipHop in a different way and to hear their very own theoretical work out of ( or just: into) the machines and records.

Since the 1980s at the latest, drum machines have been ubiquitous clock generators of current musical composition. The small, inconspicuous boxes in which drum patterns can be programmed, however, have received very little scholarly attention until now. Here, for the first time, not only are the interwoven technical and cultural history(s) of these machines outlined, but the devices themselves are taken seriously as objects of knowledge. Their sound and their new techno-cultural temporalities, designed by breakbeat and pattern labs of hip-hop, house, and techno, allows the directness of historical narratives to become history itself. They are heard as agents of sonic futurity – aptly named by a term Kodwo Eshun as futurhythm machines.

The book is available for download due to Open Access’ the new series MusikmachDinge. ((audio)) Ästhetische Strategien kostenlos beim Universitätsverlag Hildesheim herunterladen.


Pelleter, Malte: Futurhythmaschinen. Drum-Machines und die Zukünfte auditiver Kulturen. Hildesheim: Universitätsverlag Hildesheim / Olms, 2020 (= MusikmachDinge. ((audio)) – Ästhetische Strategien und Sound-Kulturen 3).