On the first day of the new year, we kick off 2026 with absolute sonic precision. Our 100th mix captures a live recording of Objekt (@keinobjekt) at the PURE G event in FINAL Taipei, a fitting document of an artist widely regarded as one of the most formidable of our generation. Objekt is TJ Hertz, a Berlin-based producer and DJ whose background is as multifaceted as his sound: born in Tokyo to British-American and Filipino parents, raised between Belgium and the UK, and settled in Berlin in 2009. He first turned heads with the self-released white-label 12"s Objekt #1 and #2 in 2011, before a string of defining releases on labels such as Hessle Audio and a remix for Radiohead. Tracks like “Cactus,” “Unglued,” “Agnes Demise,” and “Ganzfeld” didn’t merely shake dancefloors—they rewired them, introducing a generation of clubgoers to a sound that felt both violently disassembled and eerily controlled.

Listening to Objekt is like watching a vast structure built from nanomachines collapse and reassemble in real time. His music reveals an almost pathological obsession with spatial depth and sonic texture—precision so severe it borders on the cruel—yet within the fractured grids and skewed rhythms pulses a startling vitality. Cold digital signals are transmuted into something fiercely alive, futuristic without losing its physical impact. This approach earned early admiration from figures such as Aphex Twin and Autechre, led to a split EP with Drexciyan pioneers Dopplereffekt (with “Ganzfeld” crowned Resident Advisor’s #1 track of 2014), and produced crossover moments like the breakbeat house anthem “Theme From Q” on Objekt #4. Even his slowest record to date, Objekt #5 (2022), twists dancehall rhythms into something unmistakably his own—measured, menacing, and exacting.

That same hyper-detailed vision extends to his album work on Berlin’s PAN label. Flatland (2014) and the landmark Cocoon Crush (2018) treat the LP as a canvas for immersive, hyperreal sound worlds—synthetic simulations of splintering wood, dripping caverns, and insect wings that trigger an acoustic uncanny valley, at once familiar and alien. Pitchfork awarded Cocoon Crush an 8.0, praising it as containing “some of the most meticulously arranged compositions that dance music has ever produced,” and the project later evolved into a full-spectrum live A/V show with visual artist Ezra Miller, touring festivals such as Unsound, Atonal, and Primavera. Parallel to this, Objekt has built a fearsome reputation as a DJ: crowned Mixmag’s DJ of the Year in 2018, capable of guiding a room through half a dozen genres or plunging it into a psychedelic wormhole of self-discovery with surgical precision. His 2016 mix CD for Tresor, Kern, Vol. 3, was described by Resident Advisor as “a window into the very essence of DJing.” 

Underpinning it all is relentless quality control, a genre-agnostic ethos, and a deeply technical mind—honed not only in clubs and studios, but also through his ongoing work as an engineer at Native Instruments, developing audio and machine-learning algorithms. In Objekt’s world, rational calculation and visceral intensity are not opposites, but twin forces locked into a singular, unmistakable circuit. With the launch of his own label Kapsela, he continues to conjure dancefloor weapons that are both fiercely experimental and immaculately detailed, carving out a singular sonic circuitry where rational calculation and visceral intensity collide.

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