Vapor Talks #2: Kratzwerk
The veteran experimental electronic and vaporwave producer from Germany in conversation
Since I started to dive into the European vaporwave scene, one name kept popping up quite constantly: Kratzwerk, the long-running experimental electronic music project of Guido Richter, who’s based in Mönchengladbach, West Germany.
Guido has been involved in the local music scene of his hometown, a mid-sized city in the heart of the Rhineland, for more than 25 years. Under the name Kratzwerk, he’s been making vaporwave for the last decade, creating a vast discography of currently 175 (!) releases. His projects cover a wide range of styles from signalwave to slushwave. They include some of the strangest concepts I’ve seen yet, like sampling old German lotto shows, or the 1990s sit-com The Nanny.
When I reached out to Kratzwerk, his immediate friendliness, warmth and openness felt completely opposed to the usual scene clichés about artists shrouding themselves in mystery and anonymity. Opening the Zoom window a couple of weeks later, a middle-aged, long-haired dude in a black Morbid Angel hoodie appeared on my screen, greeting me jovially in a thick Rhineland accent.
You’re wearing a sweater from a legendary death metal band. What kind of music did you grow up on?
I was born in ‘83, so I started listening to Eurodance, 2 Unlimited and stuff like that. Then an older friend showed me Megadeth, which initially got me into metal. In the summer of ‘97, I stayed in a tent camp in Spain with my swimming club, and someone brought a tape of Korn’s first album. From then on, I listened to nothing but nu-metal for a few years. In the 2000s, I became a bit more open-minded, discovered Aphex Twin and started listening to IDM, drum’n’bass and electronica, so I went back and forth between metal and electronic music.
At this point you’d already played in several bands though, right?
You did your research. [laughs] Yeah, I actually joined the band of my swimming coach, X-Ray, in ‘98. That’s how I got into the metal scene, and I played in various metal bands for the next 15 years – mostly bass or guitar. I was actually the singer in one band as well, that one was called Silk. Before and after that, I played in bands like Jade, Abyss of Eden and Eleonore, and more recently in Mirror’s End and In Arcane.
Did you actually get any musical training?
I never took any lessons, I learned from tab books. I can’t read music until this day. To be honest, I kind of avoid learning music theory. Because I don’t want to be doing things the standard way, you know? I don’t want to make average stuff, I always want to do something different. I’ve been using my guitar and pedals on some Kratzwerk albums recently. I just like experimenting, trying stuff out and seeing what happens, without getting too theoretical about it.
Playing in metal bands, how did you get into making solo electronic music?
When one of my bands ended on rather bad terms, I didn’t feel like joining the next one right away. It was in 2012, and at the time, one of my musician friends showed me Ableton, so I just tried it out and played around with some plug-ins. I had another friend who was making instrumental hip-hop with samples – chillhop type stuff – so I tested that out as well. You can still find some of these early experiments on the bottom of my YouTube channel.
When and how did you discover vaporwave?
Well, I got heavily into synthwave around 2014, and then stumbled across vaporwave in 2016. I’m just an extreme music lover. I will search for certain tags on Bandcamp and basically listen to everything that looks interesting and different. Around two years ago, I got really hung up on dungeon synth for a while. All of a sudden, my wishlist was up by 600 entries. [laughs]
Who were some of the first vaporwave artists that turned you on to the sound?
Definitely Cat System Corp. His music is just amazing, and he’s really good at layering samples in a complex way. I’m much more simple in that regard. I discovered Telepath a bit later actually. Here in Germany, you had people like Sport3000 and Kanal Vier who were quite influential to me. And then Midwest Collective – I remember this compilation which features a vaporwave version of “I Love You Always Forever”. That’s still the best song to me. Such great and simple production.
Historically there’s been a lot of focus on anonymity in vaporwave, but it was quite easy to find out who you are. You’ve never bothered to conceal your identity.
No, definitely not. I’m used to being on stage from my metal band days, you know? I don’t really understand why people are trying to remain anonymous. Maybe they think they’re not beautiful enough? [laughs] I don’t know. Probably because they fear copyright issues. I once worked with this visual artist from Brazil for one of my releases, and he told me he got into legal problems with some samples he used. That might become a dangerous thing, especially when your music blows up.
Well, that danger doesn’t feel too imminent. In fact, vaporwave has been pronounced dead for a long time. Does that bother you?
I don’t care if someone says vaporwave is dead. I saw this video of Rick Rubin where he said that he doesn’t make music for the audience, but first and foremost for himself. I’m completely the same. I just love that nostalgia invoked by the sounds of old commercials for example.
By the way, it’s also not even true. People keep saying vaporwave is dead but it’s quite the opposite. Many producers are still making the music all around the world, and they’re playing shows, selling tapes and CDs. New labels keep popping up. Even Telepath came back last year. I have 175 releases in my discography, and I still enjoy making new ones.
Do you connect with many other vaporwave producers?
Well, Hotel Shampoo became a really good friend and we did some releases together, and Brickmason has become another friend that I’ve been in quite regular contact with over the last years. More recently, I connected with memorykeeper7 and uv.exe. I’ve also been a huge fan of Psicadence since last year, and we’ve been writing back and forth for some time. But I actually try to avoid social media as much as possible right now. Discord is way too heavy for me. There’s so much going on, it’s nerve-wrecking.
You played the Slushwave festival in Belgium a couple of times. Did you connect with other producers IRL there?
Yeah, definitely. It’s almost become this little family over time. All the labels are there, and even some American artists came over last year, like 818181 for example. It was really nice, I enjoyed seeing everyone in person.
You organized your own little vaporwave festival in Cologne last year. Will you repeat that in 2026?
I don’t think so. It was cool, I had Cat System Corp., Desert Sand Feels Warm At Night, Puderpolli and Room208 over playing sets. The response was alright, about 130 people came out that night. Which I guess is fine, but with all those travel and hotel costs, I did lose a bunch of money on the event. It’s just hard to motivate people to go out these days. It feels like everyone’s just been staying home since the pandemic.
Do you plan on playing more IRL shows though?
Not really, I don’t have so much ambition to play live. I guess I’m just not the type of person that’s like, “Hey people, here I am, please listen to my music.” I like to do vinyl sets though. I’m not a real DJ, I can’t even beatmatch, but I love music and I have a lot of records, so I just enjoy throwing together a bunch of records in the studio and uploading a two hour drum’n’bass mix to my YouTube channel. I might play a vinyl set at Slushwave this year as well.
Do you still listen to music for fun or just to find samples for your projects?
I can definitely still enjoy just listening. But I’ll be honest – sometimes I’ll get into trouble. We just started re-watching 21 Jump Street, the original [series from the late 1980s and early 1990s], and I keep pausing the stream, like “What’s that song?”, “That one’s really good too”, and so on. [laughs]
But I also have so much music on my shelves that I’d never sample for a release, all those electronic classics here… [points to a couple of shelves full of vinyl records behind him]
I really enjoyed two of your releases last year: One was a tribute to 90s Eurodance, and the other one was this videogame soundtrack drum’n’bass thing. How do you actually come up with your album concepts?
It’s fairly straight-forward: It all starts with an idea, and then I look for the right samples. I’ve done a whole release around Barbie. Last year I was on vacation in Finland and brought some records home. Another time I went through all Nokia commercials I could find. Finding the right samples is hard work. I might work through YouTube playlists with thousands of songs, or I might go digging in the boxes of my local record store. When I did the Call Center album with Florida Rains, I sampled directly off actual waiting lines from my phone. Right now I am collecting samples related to the game Mahjong.
Do you actually use any hardware or just the computer?
In terms of hardware, just my guitar with pedals. I also have a bunch of drum computers, an old 808 clone and a 909 clone, but I mostly use the internal Ableton plug-ins these days. I do have some other ideas around external instruments I want to explore though – I own this weird kind of jew’s harp, which can sound really meditative, and I want to put it through some pedals and see what comes out.
What’s your stance towards using generative AI in productions?
I will say that I did experiment with AI tools for some projects, some jazzy late night lo-fi stuff. You can actually produce some solid stuff with it. It really depends how you use it, and if it fits the concept. But if I use AI, I will always clearly mention it in the liner notes. I don’t use it much anymore though. It was more of an experiment to me. I know it’s a huge topic of discussion right now. I find it a bit ridiculous to hear people whining about AI, when all the barber beats stuff they listen to is basically just 90s trip-hop off old compilations. Now that has nothing to do with art.
I actually think of barber beats releases more as creative DJ mixtapes or radio shows.
Yeah, sure. I don’t even have anything against it. I made some barber beats too, but mostly from old drum’n’bass records, not the usual trip-hop stuff. I like some of the old Macroblank releases. Most of the newer ones don’t really speak to me though. I feel I’ve heard the same stuff a milllion times by now.
“I don’t care if someone says vaporwave is dead or whatever. It’s also not even true. Many are still doing it, and they’re playing shows, selling tapes and CDs. New labels keep popping up and putting out tapes from artists you’ve never heard of. Even Telepath came back last year. People keep saying vaporwave is dead but it’s quite the opposite.” (Kratzwerk)
Do you have any other immediate musical plans for the future?
Like I said, I have a few ideas, but I did so many projects last year that I feel slightly burned out right now. Last year’s release with Tagmata on Underwater Computing was quite energy-sapping. We spent a lot of time and effort on making it. It was really detailed work.
In general, I just like to experiment and not even limit myself to vaporwave. My ears are wide open all the time. That being said, I really like the scene, because you’ll find many nerds with a similar music taste. I don’t have many people in my day-to-day environment that enjoy this type of music, so that’s quite valuable to me.
If someone wanted to jump into your massive discography right now, is there a good place to start?
Well, it’s extremely diverse so there’s probably not an album that will work for everyone. I’d say just look at the covers and pick one that you really like. And if that release isn’t for you, just try a couple of others. They’re all very different.
Listen to Kratzwerk’s music on Bandcamp
Kratzwerk’s Top 10 Vaporwave Albums
(unranked)
猫 シ Corp. – News At 11 (self-released, 2016)
2814 – Rain Temple (Dream Catalogue, 2016)
t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 – 星間性交 (Dream Catalogue, 2015)
Daniel Lopatin – Chuck Person’s Eccojams Vol. 1 (The Curatorial Club, 2010)
Ｋａｎａｌ Ｖｉｅｒ – Eins zu einer Million (Sunset Grid, 2018)
放射性Hi5 – 9.0水面下Megathrust (self-released, 2015)
V.A. – ❥ ☯ ღ [LOVE 2] (Midwest Collective, 2014)
猫 シ Corp. – SANDRAWAVE (self-released, 2016)
Vantage – Metro City (TheNightClubCollection, 2015)
懐くooll – フロリダのVacation (self-released, 2021)