Achim Szepanski founded the labels Force Inc. and Millie Plateaux, but his influence on German nightlife extends much further back.
Shockwaves of grief rock the German techno milieu as writer, label owner, and influential thinker Achim Szepanski passed away yesterday, September 25 at the age of 67.
Szepanski’s publisher, Gallery of Offbeat Arts, announced his passing in a statement. “Our author, comrade and friend Achim Szepanski was found dead in his apartment yesterday,” reads an English translation. “Achim Szepanski was singular within our world, almost something rare.”
The statement continues: “Highly intelligent, sensitive, merciless in his criticism, also in his polemic against a left-wing radical attitude that has long since become an empty attitude. In friendship and personal conversation, however, Achim was of an unsuspected and unusual delicacy and mindfulness. His voice still sounds in our ears and we know what we have lost: even if it sounded increasingly desperate in being surrounded by the global capitalist power and the recent escalations of its terror.”
As can be gleaned from any of the conversation around Szepanski in the wake of his passing, his role overseeing record labels like Force Inc. and Millie Plateaux only scratches the surface of what he contributed to art and culture. Having frequented seminal Frankfurt clubs like Dorian Gray and Omen since the ’80s, he also published books rife with social commentary like Capitalism in the Age of Catastrophe and In the Delirium of the Simulation.
Szepanski also evidently gave a great deal of thought to techno itself. In a 1994 interview with German academic Katja Diefenbach, he explained how he perceived the genre’s emphasis on artful noise as a necessary shift away from strict music aesthetics imposed by Western institutions.
We here at EDM Identity express our sincere condolences to the family and loved ones of Achim Szepanski during what can only be a difficult time.