Thomas P Heckmann, the techno veteran, has released BODY MUSIC on Monnom Black. He’s told MONUMENT where he stands on techno culture, the press, and his favourite hardware.
What do you think will be the next big thing for electronic music?
I don’t think there will be a next big thing. Somehow, everything has already come about in some form or another.
There’s all imaginable genres out there, it just depends on the press who creates the next new hype. At the moment it’s obviously EBM and industrial techno. This explains the current demand for my kind of EBM-techno that I’ve been doing since the early 90s.
Part of the situation is that it’s not easy to make a living from music alone, and this will not get better in the near future. Hopefully vinyl will give music a better value over streaming and downloads.
What’s your most memorable gig of all time?
I remember one of my first ever gigs, was a German band called Spliff in 1982. On stage, they had all the dream machines I wanted – like Simmons Drums, Jupiter 8, Roland SH-101… That’s the stuff I always wanted and never thought I would ever lay my hands on.
What’s your favourite artform outside of techno?
I like all kinds of weird, spacey stuff. I’m also collecting toys from the 70s & 80s like Star Wars, Chogokin, Battlestar Galactica, Robots. I’m into 60s Pop Art a lot, but also more modern artists like Banksy, Hirst and the like.
Where’s your favourite place to buy records? What’s the last record you bought?
 I must say that I don’t go to record shops so much anymore. I love flea markets and 2nd hand stores a lot. The last record I bought was A.R. & Machines – The Art Of German Psychedelic.
What’s your favourite record of your own, spanning across all the releases on different labels and different aliases?
That’s hard to say. I stand behind everything I’ve ever made. I do music for myself at first and don’t really “construct” music. With a few hundred tracks behind me, I’m proud of all of them.