HISTORY

HISTORY

The name Endo Monk has its origins in a rather unexpected area outside the music. At the beginning of the 80s, when BMX came up in Germany, there was a group in the US called Curb Dogs. In Porz / Cologne there was a similar BMX Crew which called themself  Endo Monks in an ironic way. Based on an oldschool trick called Curb Endo. Curb Dogs - Curb Endo - Endo Monks.
Frank Schnütgen (the realname of Endo Monk) has been riding BMX since 1979 and became very successful in this sport.
His greatest success was the title of world champion in 1987.
Depending on this way of lifestyle he traveled around the world and gets influenced by all this different views on life and music according to all the different people he met there. That's one reason for all the international music projects in the following years.

At this time, Endo Monk had some years of experience (since the mid-1970s) in handling modular synthesizers.

The reason was a teacher at his school, who built an Elektor Formant Synthesizer as a school project to show the similarities of music, physics and mathematics. In this school (IGS) there were rooms in the basement that the students could use to make music.

There, too, Endo Monk had a room where this formant synthesizer stood all this years, because nobody else at this school was interested in that kind of music. This remained so until his graduation and progress from this school.


After school (1986) followed a step education to the energy system electronics engineer and information electronics engineer.
There he met Stefano Giachetta (Jeyenne, XPQ-21, e.m.s.) and they started making music in the basement with some friends.
But their artistic paths were once again divided, as Stefano became more interested in Techno and Frank more in Rap / Hip-Hop.
At this time Lord Fader (DJ & Producer), a friend of his youth, was already there and they appeared as a rapper and DJ at parties.
The birth of the Äi-Tiem, which is still active in this constellation.

During this time Frank also built his own recording and producing equipment.
Because he couldn't afford no sampler, he built tapedecks with endless loops so that they could be pitched and operate in reverse mode. A kind of hardware sampler. Turntables were also equipped with superpitch and reverse mode.
When the so-called transformerscratching came up he developed the so-called Transformerscratchbutton.
Gemini picked up this idea later in his Transformer Scratch Device called Flashformer.

In 1992, his friend Fakir Alyn discovered the old and rotten Watercastle Geretzhoven from the 13th century and they began to rebuild it step by step. There he lives and works until today. The legendary S.O.M.A. Festival (Summer Of Music & Art) was born here too.

Over the years many techno and goa festivals took place there and he took care of the technical parts on site and met many artists from these genres and got influenced by the way. At the same time, he also founded his label Holy Chaos Recordings, because no one would like to release his extremely provocative Äi-Tiem tracks and lyrics. After the first two releases in own sales, Intercord took care of the distribution.



Also at this time he and some friends started to build a Skate and BMX hall. The legendary Domsports skate hall.

Legendary because he combined all artforms under one roof. Extreme sports, music, graffiti, dance and art.




With the Alpha Club and Electric Circus at the Domsports also electronic music found a new home there.
With Olek Gelba (Unknown Cases, Dunkelziffer) he started with the Raum 3 Projekt.
They organized a kind of open stage in various lokations, socalled public jam sessions, which were recorded live for later release.

After the divorce of his parents, he moved to his mother, but because less money, he started very early to paint his own T-shirts and jackets and designed his own clothes. Over the Years he created hundrets of Artworks. Some were used commercially as clothing,
but many of his real individual works found their way into exhibitions or were sold.

In 2013, after many music projects under a different names (3PM Posse, Ai-Tiem, Raum 3, Phobos, Blitz Mob, Hans Solo, Cosmicologne, Ectro, Omnivor) it was time for a new experience and a first try on youtube to create something new and unique.
In search of a suitable name for this project, he reminded the name Endo Monk, which fits well to this type of music.

In 2016/17 he painted the Cover for the formation Andhim and their Donner EP as a big screen.

Andhim are an electronic DJ, Producer and Remixerduo.


Parallel to all this he and dingStar from Hamburg startet a sideprojekt called Musikalischer AbschirmDienst. A live and crossover  project, based on fingerdrumming, analog synthesizers and spoken word. Frank and Malte Bender (dingStar, THC) know each other from the 90th, when they are on tour together with their bands Äi-Tiem & THC.

In June 2018, he filmed his wakewave at a wakeboard session to get inspired by the pictures for a track.

Based an this track and video Chris Maico Schmidt aka Mike S. became aware of it and asked for a remix.

It may seem odd, but in the beginning of Endo Monk all these influences play a certain role.

Finally, because these themes also appear in Endo Monk's videos.



All this positive feedback brought Endo Monk to a decision.

The decision to release a first album named Kontinuum on which one of these remixes is represent.

The other remixes will be released as an independent EP on BluFin.

You will find this under: Discography.




And here it is...

The beginning of something that will end somewhere..




Below you find some examples from the last decades.

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