Schmidt started out in Frankfurt in the mid-80s as a drummer and autodidactic programmer in various projects. In 1986 he co-founded N.G. Medien, a cassette tape label for diverse electronic music projects, and began releasing on vinyl and CD with his project Lassigue Bendthaus in the years that followed. His catalogue now includes works with and for artists such as Depeche Mode, Air, Bill Laswell, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Towa Tei, and others.
During the early to mid-90s, Schmidt produced dance music — techno, acid, and trance — under a number of monikers including one of the most well known to date, Atom Heart. He started his own label, Rather Interesting, in 1994 with the aim of developing a catalogue that »didn't follow the traditional paths of electronic music.« The mid-90s further marked the beginning of Schmidt's formal association with the experimental label Fax, contributing to mature the melodic trance and techno sounds now associated with Frankfurt.
Schmidt moved to Santiago, Chile in 1996 to explore Latin American music and soon launched the satirical Señor Coconut project — a »band« consisting of Schmidt, an Akai MPC3000, and an S6000 — doing covers of 70s and 80s classics in Latin style. The most notorious Señor Coconut release, El Baile Alemán (Emperor Norton, 1999), was a Latin/cumbia reinterpretation of Kraftwerk hits.
A string of projects followed in the 2000s, beginning with the cover album, Pop Artificielle, which brought Schmidt even wider acclaim. As Flanger (an atmospheric jazz project with Burnt Friedman) he also achieved a relatively wide exposure through the album Templates on the Ninja Tune sub-label Ntone. The end of the decade saw the release of a critically acclaimed Atom™ album on Raster-Noton, Liedgut, which was nominated for Germany's highest music award, the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.
Since then, Schmidt has kept busy with numerous live concerts and collaborations with artists such as Robin Fox or Marc Behrens, entering 2020 with a new release titled <3. The self-described »hard code pop« album was written with an entity named x1n that generates »human voice and natural language content.« To the delight of fans, that same year saw the release of Live 1992–2014, a collection of inimitable live performance recordings of AtomTM and longtime improv partner Tobias.
<3, by Atom™
<3, by Atom™