Efdemin (Phillip Sollmann) is part of Hamburg’s Dial Records; with an aesthetic that closely matches their lush, melancholic, Detroit inflected deep house. But while label-mates Lawrence and Pantha Du Prince are defined by chord-pads, romance and melody, the Efdemin sound is more groove oriented. The Berlin based producer and DJ had a busy year in 2007 with excellent singles Acid Bells, Just a Track, Lohn & Brot(Liebe Detail special) as well as a debut artist album on Dial.
 
After leaning the cello as a child, Sollmann began his music career by playing guitar in an indie-rock band called Concord back in 1996. The band released one self-titled EP in on L'Age D'Or, parent-label of the German Lado Musik. His first electronic record, Tobin 01, made with Alexander Polzin, appeared a few years later and made it onto the first Kompakt sampler Total 1 in 1999.
 
Sollmann had already hooked up with Dial cohorts back in 1998 in Hamburg playing in the Pudel Club, but didn’t release his first record on the label until 2004 after he’d adopted the Efdemin moniker, taking the name of a character, Mikhail Efdemin, from a radio play heard as a child. Efdemin’s Dial music dropped into a niche between techno, minimal and house; fresh, familiar and with meticulous attention to detail. Sollmann cites his main influences as Robert Owens, Arthur Russell, Theo Parrish, Moodyman and Carl Craig among others.
 
Sollmann is a graduate of the Institute for Computer Music in Vienna, where he worked with MAX/MSP and became interested in more static music. During his studies, he re-acquainted himself with the work of artists like La Monte Young, Charlemagne Palestine, and Phil Niblock, which reset his musical compass and led to room-based sound installation experiments, two of which were later included on the beautiful, beatless album, Something Is Missing (Dial, 2006).
 
Sollmann has also teamed up with Nick Hoeppner from My My for a new live-house project using only hardware; drum machines and samplers and effects. Sollmann is one half of the duo Pigon with Oliver Kargl (aka Rndm), who also studied in Vienna.
 
> EFDEMIN on Myspace
> EFDEMIN on Statische Musik
 
Appearances:
> CTM.08 > GOLDEN GROOVE