Catching Up with Michael Schacht

Derek: Tell us more about yourself. Your background, occupation? Pets? Hobbies besides music? Life in general…?

Thank you for having me, Derek — I appreciate the opportunity to speak about the person behind the music.

I’ve always balanced creativity with a structured professional life. I began my career in advertising and later became a full-time designer for board and card games, which remains my main occupation today. Designing games requires strategic thinking, patience, and a strong sense of atmosphere — qualities that, interestingly, also shape how I compose ambient music. Both disciplines involve building worlds, just through different mediums.

Life with my wife is fairly quiet these days, and I value that calmness deeply. I enjoy long walks, listening to music, and allowing my thoughts to drift freely. I’m fascinated by art in nearly all its forms, especially photography — the way light, shadow, and framing can evoke emotion has influenced my musical sense of space and texture in subtle but lasting ways.

Looking over your bio, it mentions coming back to the ambient scene after a “long hiatus.” Tell us more about your return after such a long time.

The hiatus wasn’t a dramatic decision to quit music — it was simply life unfolding. Work and responsibilities naturally took priority for a time. But music never truly disappeared from my life. I continued listening intensely, experimenting privately, and thinking about sound as an emotional language.

When I returned, it felt completely organic. At some point, I realized how much I missed the act of creating — not releasing, not promoting, but simply creating. Ambient music, in particular, felt like something unfinished in my life. I came back with more clarity and without the pressure to follow trends or expectations. The long break actually helped me rediscover the essence of why I started making music in the first place.

Projects like Metric System 1981 and Fumana emerged naturally as different emotional outlets rather than calculated artistic strategies.

What was your first instrument? Studio gear?

My first instrument was a home organ, followed later by a piano that unfortunately went out of tune very quickly — though that instability had its own peculiar charm and personality.

My father owned some fascinating equipment that I was allowed to explore, including a Korg MS-20, Korg MS-50, the Korg SQ-10, and even the vocoder. Being exposed to that kind of analog gear at a young age left a deep and lasting impression on my sonic imagination.

Tell me about your beginnings. What did you start out with? What was the goal? Ambient? Live performances?

In the 1980s, I released mostly Berlin School–influenced electronic music during the height of the cassette underground movement. Everything was recorded analog, of course, using my cozy little Fostex X-15 tape deck. Limitations were part of the process, and they shaped the aesthetic.

Live performance was never really my focus. I did perform once with a symphonic rock band — and had to sing because no one else wanted to. Let’s just say I discovered that my strengths lie elsewhere.

How did Ambient Music come into the picture for you?

My enduring love for the work of Harold Budd and Brian Eno played a major role. Ambient music entered my life early and has remained a constant presence ever since.

I realized that I was far more interested in what happens between the notes than in the notes themselves. Ambient music gave me permission to slow down, to allow silence and space to speak, and to focus on atmosphere rather than structure. It never left me — it simply waited until I was ready to fully return to it.

Where do you find inspiration for your music?

It varies. Sometimes a piece begins while experimenting with my modular system — I love jamming, drifting, and allowing unexpected textures to guide me.

Inspiration often comes from atmosphere: weather conditions, urban environments at night, memory, nostalgia, technology, or even pure silence. Much of my music is emotional processing. It’s not always about telling a concrete story; often it’s about preserving a fragile feeling before it fades.

What is your “go-to” studio gear?

I work in a hybrid setup, combining hardware and software.

My modular system — built from components by various developers — is central to my sound. It encourages experimentation and happy accidents. On the software side, modern VST instruments and effects have become incredibly powerful tools.

Reverb plays a particularly important role for me; it creates depth, distance, and emotional resonance.

But the most important “gear” is restraint — knowing when not to add another layer. That’s not always easy, but it’s something I consciously work on.

  How has the music scene changed for you as an artist?

Accessibility has grown enormously. When I started, releasing music required physical production and distribution. Today, music can reach a global audience instantly.

However, the saturation is intense. There is more music than ever before, which makes it both easier and harder to connect. The ambient community, though, remains thoughtful and supportive — it’s a genre where people truly listen.

Your views on the state of the music industry? Streaming? AI music creation?

Streaming democratizes access but makes financial sustainability difficult for many artists. Quantity often outweighs depth.

AI poses serious challenges to musicians by undermining authorship and originality, straining already fragile incomes, drawing on human-created work without clear consent or fair compensation, and reducing deeply human expression to reproducible patterns that risk diminishing the value of individual artistic voices.

At the same time, I find generative systems fascinating. In ambient music, particularly, algorithmic and generative processes can serve as inspiring tools — not as replacements for artistic intention, but as instruments that expand the creative palette. The key is conscious, ethical use.

Future plans or upcoming projects?

I plan to continue exploring soundscapes as well as cinematic ambient, depending on the project.

I would also like to focus more on piano-based compositions and improve my playing — it’s challenging for me, but deeply rewarding.

Additionally, I want to reduce certain aspects in order to leave more space for experimentation — something I occasionally miss.

When you aren’t composing ambient music, what do you listen to?

I feel at home in almost every genre, though my listening habits have become increasingly quieter and more minimal over time.

Silence itself is also important — it recalibrates perception.

What are your five “desert island albums”?

For Ambient, I would choose:

• Brian Eno – On Land. This album feels like a living ecosystem of sound rather than a mere collection of tracks, filling the room from the very first second with dense, dark, organic textures that seem to breathe and expand.

• Harold Budd & Brian Eno – The Pearl. The emotional fragility and spacious piano work on this record embody a rare intimacy, and its delicate balance between melancholy and warmth has profoundly influenced my understanding of restraint and vulnerability in music.

• Edgar Froese – Epsilon in Malaysian Pale. This album’s expansive synth landscapes create a meditative flow that feels both cosmic and deeply personal, where repetition and subtle harmonic shifts seem to make time stand still, inducing a timeless, almost trance-like state that gently suspends the listener between motion and stillness.

• Ryuichi Sakamoto – Opus. Its stark, intimate piano performances reveal the power of simplicity, reminding me that sometimes the quietest gestures carry the greatest emotional weight. The late impressive essence of his work.

• Robin Guthrie & Harold Budd – Bordeaux. Particularly the piece “Southern Shore,” which unfolds like a slow horizon at dusk, shows how texture and tonal color alone can evoke vast landscapes and lingering nostalgia without ever becoming overly dramatic.

Thanks again, Derek. I appreciate conversations that go deeper than release dates or equipment lists. Ambient music may be subtle, but the intentions behind it are anything but.

Interviewer – Derek Carter (KapTep)

Photos from Michael Schacht's archive

Edited by Dionis Afonichev (Dionisaf)

Explore our Contemporary German Ambient Apple Music playlist 

(You can also find it on Deezer and Spotify)