For fifteen years,Objekt has fronted one of the most technically demanding projects in electronic music. Over this time, he's created a critically and industry-respected body of work that finds new rhythmic ground where most simply settled into a signature convenience once the checks start rolling in. A child of third culture, Objekt (born TJ Hertz) draws a direct inspiration from the four-headed nightlife hydra of UK bass culture, Berlin engineering, Detroit electro velocity, and post-dubstep rhythm. OnThursday, May 21, Objekt lands at Control, courtesy of aim+wall.
Alongside releasing music as Objekt, Hertz has worked sporadically for Native Instruments, building instruments, effects, and audio algorithms. He has also worked as a mixdown engineer. You hear the physical detail of his productions immediately. The first records came in 2011 as stamped, nameless white-labels.Objekt #1 paired "The Goose That Got Away" with "Tinderbox."Objekt #2 followed with "CLK Recovery" and "Unglued." Both records were released at a moment when dubstep was splitting open, combining rhythmic DNA with grime, garage, and harder UK club forms. That same year, he remixed Radiohead's"Bloom," SBTRKT's "Wildfire," and Call Super's "Timora," placing himself within a wider conversation about bass-weighted futurism.
The 2012 Hessle Audio single"Cactus/Porcupine" sharpened everything. "Cactus" remains one of his great early shocks; a track that felt like a machine learning to walk on an uneven surface.Objekt #3 followed in 2013 with "Agnes Demise" and "Fishbone." Then came "Ganzfeld," released in 2014 on Hypnagogia, a split EP with Drexciyan electro pioneers Dopplereffekt for Leisure System. It's a 147 BPM cavernous drum construct, gleaming surfaces, and a bassline that seemed to accelerate even at a fixed tempo, which led Resident Advisor to name it the track of the year.Objekt #4 (2017) included "Theme From Q," which became one of his most widely loved tracks.Objekt #5, released in 2022, moved into slower, fiercer ground with "Bad Apples" and "Ballast," exploring dancehall-inflected rhythms, negative space, and brutal swing.
Flatland, his debut album for PAN, dropped in 2014, and nodded to Edwin A. Abbott's 19th-century satire of dimensional perception. The album shifted Objekt's profile from respected singles artist to a long-form, world-building producer. In 2018,Cocoon Crush (PAN) was more intimate. Where Flatland felt engineered, Cocoon Crush felt mature. The album's title captures a process of compression and emergence, sound pressed until new shapes push through.
Between those two albums, Hertz produced one of the defining documents of his DJ practice.Kern Vol. 3 (Tresor, 2016) was a 36-track sequence spanning electro, techno, footwork, ambient, and broken abstraction. The mix includes tracks by Beatrice Dillon, Skarn, Shanti Celeste and Clatterbox.
Resident Advisor Podcast 650, from 2018, may be one of the clearest online documents of this approach. Hertz built the mix around what he described as "no-kick rollers," tracks carrying a danceable pulse alongside unstable downbeats. Broken, floaty and polyrhythmic, it capture how Objekt uses rhythm as an engine of disorientation.
At the end of the day, Objekt makes music that hits nervous systems socially trained to be familiar, twisting them into something at once surreal and geared toward psychic tension. The dancefloor must recalibrate its expectations. This ain't business techno, and that's the work those like Objekt excel at.
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