‘S Olbricht was a famous German producer, songwriter. At the 70’s he led the great disco band S Tuder. In the year 1979 he moved to Los Angeles and met with a club promoter and pimp Paul Snider. Snider was helping a lot to Olbricht and his band, thanks to him S Tuder became the resident band at the Century City Club. After Snider’s wife, Dorothy Stratten began working at the club, Olbircht and the girl fell in love and a tragic romance unfolded. She and Olbricht were lovers for a year. No doubt, Olbricht wrote his best songs during this time. Shortly after the love begun, on August 14, 1980 the jealous husband killed Dorothy and Olbricht and his records has disappeared.‘
–from The Last Act of Dorothy Stratten album synopsis
I consciously made the choice to detach myself and keep my relative distance to the artist I’m about to talk about today. Don’t get me wrong, I would’ve loved to dig into things in-depth with them, but while sketching out an interview I realised that not only would that turn this article to a wall of text rivaling Homer‘s Odyssey, it wouldn’t (potentially) allow me to elaborate on my perspectives as much or as comprehensively, and truth be told, sometimes I prefer to keep my stance as an utter fan boy and not trespass over those boundaries. After all, today’s artist’s significance to me couldn’t possibly be exaggerated nor underlined enough, as not only did hearing them permanently alter what kind of music I actually enjoy and want to listen to, it changed everything in how I personally write and perform music. That’s a feat that can’t be achieved lightly, which quite frankly, would be saying it rather lightly. So yeah, let’s get into it.
S Olbricht is our newest Weekly Featured Artist, and the moniker the Hungarian Martin Mikolai operates under. He conjures up a particularly distinct flair of experimental electronic music that’s really difficult to categorize under any single genre, but let it be said that most of it constitutes of varying amounts of noisy techno, gritty house, and grainy ambiances. Each of his releases carry their own central motifs and musical themes, all of which together form the greater identity he’s been chipping away at since his debut The Last Act of Dorothy Stratten, which came out in 2012 via the label Farbwechsel he co-founded as well.
There’s a good chunk of discography to dig into by means of a few albums, collaborations, EPs, splits, whathaveyou, and while we’ll aim to cover most of those here today, I’ll start with the one that I mentioned above; the one that did me in good and revolutionised how I view electronic music altogether – Deutsch Amerikanische Tragödie.
The nine-track, 41-minute piece of uncompromising artistry came out via Opal Tapes on 2013, and for the past years, has been an unbelievably important aural cornerstone for me personally. I can vividly recall driving to work one chilly summer morning, barely seeing shit through a dirty windshield thanks to the blinding sun rising from the exact direction I was driving to, while trying to recover from a sleepless night that resulted from hearing some tragic news the previous evening. I had a Thermos of black coffee and a pack of cigarettes with me, when I had this one little thing coming up in the queue of some playlist. From the first notes on, it felt like I was separated from both myself as well as the surrounding world, and I just kept going. I just drove on for hours and hours towards the sun, listening to the album on repeat, at times hysterically wailing and laughing, and at times in complete stillness and deprived of all emotions, in random sequence. I did also miss work that day, in case you didn’t figure that out yet.
The opening track “Elaea” swells in with crackling noises and submerged tonal pings that slowly evolve into something remotely resembling a rhythm, while more disjointed elements such a percussions and other more discernible melodies begin to surface. Everything’s veiled, as if emerging from a place beyond sleep. That very particular tone encompasses the entire album, granting it its unique hue and gripping nature. “S_Tuder (Tape 6)” follows suit, slowly building above a mattress of noise, before giving way to a jarring rhythm topped with both near and distant moaning melodies that turn the listening experience into an extremely visceral one. This song in particular probably affected me more than some given years in my actual life did. Take of that what you will.
The entirety of Deutsch Amerikanische Tragödie fluctuates around those parameters, sometimes emphasizing the ambiance (“S_Tuder (Tape 1)”, “Forkarp”), sometimes the percussion-oriented drive (“Tter”, “I IV V”). Ending on a high note with “Foragafia” with its swells and oddly wavering instrumentation, the album is structured in a way where taking it for another spin immediately is more of a rule rather than an exception. It’s more than likely all of these things individually and combined that struck me to such profound and altering extents, as I never really came across anything like it prior. I should add that even later on, after having taken the plunge unfathomably deep into this musical realm, there exists very few things that come even close to what S Olbricht did here. Kindred spirits exist of course, some tread close while still going to their own direction, and there’s both a sense of beauty and insufficiency in that.
The amalgamation of noisy and gritty lo-fi ambiances paired with amazing percussions and the haunting leads is something that already existed on S Olbricht‘s debut The Last Act of Dorothy Stratten, which I then of course heard immediately afterwards. All in all the debut relies more on the techno and house aspects, but don’t think it’d be any less abrasive and abstract. Filled to the brim with dance room from hell vibes, songs like “ILVU (Trap 2)” and “LtubeDub” are great examples of how to succeed in turning diamonds back to coal but making them all the more attractive in the process. Listening to the album and particularly the song “Quinoe (Trap 3)” made me realise that a lot of the songs here and on Deutsch Amerikanische Tragödie share similar titles and the same conceptual words (tape, trap), and taking into account they came out less than a year apart, one could envision how these albums probably were created simultaneously, to some extent at least. It’s not really important per se, but it does give the two records a kind of a shared underlying thread, which in the bigger picture is quite nice.
Next up in 2014, the collaboration Untitled with Norwell, as well as the two EPs A Place Called Pallacid and Emtee (the split release with Alley Catss as well as split-collab with Alpár and Carla Under Water came out the same year as well, but I was blindsided by streaming services giving me random release dates on those. I’ll get to those after these). While the collaboration is of course a foray into different sonic sceneries due to someone else being involved, there’s plenty of things to cling on to, albeit I find myself visiting it too rarely these days. The other two EPs however visit my earholes a tad more frequently, so I guess it’s more about wanting to bathe in S Olbricht‘s singular doings more. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore collaboration efforts and wish more artists would do those as there’s always room for further discoveries of new angles and approaches, and Untitled certainly partakes in that. In context, however, it lacks the roughness I’m after, which then again is quite prevalent on A Place Called Pallacid and Emtee.
The split with Alley Catss, being a, well split, showcases a seventeen-minute untitled track from S Olbricht, which flourishes in his signature rich textures and pushed-back ambience, being perhaps the most ethereal work from the artist so far. On the split with Alpár, S Olbricht collaborated with Carla Under Water throughout his side, and that unison was already established on their collaboration tracks on Deutsch Amerikanische Tragödie. They take on some fresh angles while delving deeper into what makes the two tick together, and it’s really essential listening for everyone here.
2015 and 2016 saw the releases of the EPs Trancess and ZZM EP, both of which lean more towards the techno world while staying true to the artist’s textural tendencies. This more than likely resulted in the overall more electronics-driven album For Perfect Beings, which also came out in 2016.
For Perfect Beings revolves heavily around layers upon layers just like the rest of S Olbricht‘s oeuvre, but there is a stronger emphasis on steady percussions, steering more towards the mentioned techno and house realms. Still, the idiosyncratic nuances are present. As much is clear from the opening duo of “Asterid” and “Blambestrid” alone. Especially when taking the bigger picture into account, but also individually speaking, it was nice to get an album’s worth of this kind of material that even though bears echoes and resemblances of the past, clearly pushes into another direction.
In case it wasn’t obvious by now, S Olbricht is really, really fucking far from easy listening all things considered, with For Perfect Beings perhaps being a point of access for many thanks to its way more digestible nature. The EP Purpleblue from 2017 also continues on this trajectory, featuring acidic pulses and more simplistic structures. So if you for some ungodly reason didn’t vibe with the earlier releases, it would be a good idea to try again with these two.
The first years were clearly the busiest for S Olbricht, at least as far as release count is considered. 2019 saw the release of the subtle and silent Grey Lichen EP, but it wasn’t until 2024 and 2025 when we got some more two-track EPs. I have a very distinct feeling there was something going on during that gap, perhaps a pandemic or something, but I’m just glad that we are getting new material, and hoping for something of a full-length to follow. There is lot to listen to of course, and I didn’t mention the dozens of compilation one-offs, collabs, and remixes S Olbricht has released throughout the years, so compiling a playlist out of those for yourself will keep you busy for a while.
In rewinding all of that, it’s abundantly clear where my primary preferences lie, albeit I want to emphasize I utterly love everything that S Olbricht has done. Some things more than others, of course, but there’s really no misses or anything even remotely suggesting that when it comes to his output. As said above, I hope we hear more from him soon, and if you like what you’ve heard and read so far, do yourself a favour and follow the artist on Facebook and Instagram to stay up to speed on everything. His releases are strewn all over the place so there isn’t a single good place to direct you as far as sites are considered, so just search him up on Bandcamp and streaming services to get ahold of everything. There’s really nothing you’d want to overlook.
I’ll go back to listening Deutsch Amerikanische Tragödie for hours on end now.
