German Pop - Apparat

Berlin producer Sascha Ring, known on stage as Apparat, got his start at the end of the 90s making club-oriented techno. The 36-year-old has since begun crafting more ambient and experimental sounds, and his most recent solo album, 2013's "Krieg und Frieden" (War and Peace), continues that shift by including vocals and strings. The electro producer, long associated with Berlin's big-name clubs like Berghain or Ritter Butzke, says he is now more interested in "designing sounds" than conjuring up danceable beats.

Tolstoy's epic novel is the inspiration for Apparat's "Krieg und Frieden," but there's more to the story than that. German theater director Sebastian Hartmann approached the Berlin musician to provide a live soundtrack for a nearly five-hour production of the Tolstoy classic that Hartmann staged. Neither the play nor Apparat's music trace the plot of the work. Instead, individual scenes, moods and ideas from "War and Peace" are elaborated. On "Krieg und Frieden," Apparat distills his collaboration with Hartmann into a meditative and melancholy album.

At last year's c/o pop festival in Cologne, Germany, Apparat played the album in its entirety. DW presents selections and highlights from that performance in this edition of German Pop.