ATB

Germany, 1998–now

André Tanneberger, from Freiberg in Saxony. After hard dance records with Sequential One he built '9 PM (Till I Come)' around a synthesizer patch he stumbled on while trying to imitate a guitar — a detuned, elastic hook that topped the UK chart in 1998 and became the template for melodic trance.

MusicRoots documents 2 artists who influenced ATB and 0 artists ATB influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.

Who influenced ATB?

• Michael Cretu — Tanneberger names Cretu as one of his two idols in electronic music. He was making hard dance records as Sequential One when Cretu's Enigma showed him that dance beats could carry spherical, melodic textures — the combination that became ATB's signature. The debt later ran both ways: ATB remixed Enigma's 'Push the Limits', and Cretu is credited as writer, arranger and producer of 'Enigmatic Encounter' on ATB's 2000 album Two Worlds.
• Jean-Michel Jarre — Jarre is the other idol Tanneberger names — the melodic, synthesizer-led electronic music he heard growing up in East Germany, where Western records were hard to come by. He went on to remix Jarre's 'Vintage' officially in 2007.