Apparat, aka Sascha Ring, concludes his Soundtracks series with the digital release of Soundtracks: Equals Sessions. An American film starring Kristen Stewart and directed by Drake Dremus, Equals premiered at the 72nd Venice Film Festival in 2015. This release is possibly the biggest production of the series and includes an OST by Ring and Nackt (the co-producer and co-writer of the soundtrack).
The fourth and final chapter of Apparat‘s 2020 Soundtracks series, Soundtracks: Equals Sessions is based on the original recordings but was rearranged, re-recorded, mixed, and updated by Ring and collaborator Philipp Thimm in May and June 2020. The score also contains several songs by US musician, composer, and producer Dustin O’Halloran who became a good friend of Sascha’s during this time.
Refecting on his work with Ring, Dustin says:
After first moving to Berlin, I became familiar with Apparat’s music and loved his sense of space and the sounds I found in the music. There was somehow a kinship before we even met. We had some mutual friends and had both worked with my long-time sonic collaborator from Italy, Francesco Donadello, who introduced us. Serendipity happened again when director Drake Doremus, whom I had already collaborated with on a few films, asked Sascha to work on his new film Equals. We worked as independent halves on this project in a way, creating our own sound worlds, but always with the idea that it should sound cohesive and from the same world. I pulled inspiration from the sonic foundation Sascha had laid down. It was a chance for me to get away from acoustic instruments and work on a purely electronic soundscape, which was exciting for me, and I think this music was a highlight of the film. I am glad this music will finally see the light and be shared.
For nearly two decades, Sascha Ring, aka Apparat, has been one of the defining protagonists of electronic music in Germany. With tireless curiosity, he explores the possibilities of combining programmed sounds with analog instruments; he moves back and forth between avant-garde, club music, and big anthemic pop moments; he composes music for listening and dancing, but also for movies and the theatre.
Starting with his debut album, Multifunktionsebene from 2001, up to his Grammy-nominated LP5 from 2019, he has continuously expanded his musical palette and connected himself with all kinds of artists and arts, all the while creating electro pop in the trio Moderat that he founded with Berlin techno producers Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary aka Modeselektor. In contrast to the larger-than-life-aesthetics he has perfected with Moderat, under the moniker Apparat he searches for the musical sublime in tiny details and moments. He combines electronic instruments with trombone, saxophone, harp and double bass, and some- times even with furiously improvised drums.
As early as 2008, Sascha Ring has composed soundtracks for movies and television series. The Italian director Mario Martone commissioned him with the music for his film “Il giovane favoloso” about the poet Giacomo Leopardi; they collaborated again for Martone’s most recent movie Capri-Revolution, released in December 2018 (where Ring also makes an appearance as a long-haired proto-hippie in an early drop-out commune set in 1914). Apparat has been recognized in his industry with a series of nominations and awards in the last few years. Besides Ring’s Grammy nomination in 2019, he won a “David Di Donatello” (Italian Academy Award), two Soundtrack Stars Awards and a Pierro Piccioni Award at the Venice Film Festival in 2014, 2015 and 2018. He also won the Impala Award, VIA Award, Preis für Popxkultur, and Quartz Award for his work with Apparat and Moderat.