10 Records That Shaped Brian Aneurysm’s Sound

Long before Brian Aneurysm was carving out his own strain of hard-edged minimal techno, Bernhard Pucher was absorbing sounds from every corner of the musical spectrum, from industrial rock and heavy metal to early tech house, minimal and electro. Those influences never really disappeared. They were stripped down, distorted, amplified and eventually fed into his own productions.

That DNA is all over Amplified, his 2003 album for Sub Static, now returning more than two decades later in a fully remastered edition via his own Iron Box Music. Originally released across two slabs of vinyl, the album captures Pucher at a pivotal point in his development, when the precision and space of minimalism collided with the weight and aggression of his musical upbringing.

To mark the reissue, Brian Aneurysm takes us through ten records that helped shape that sound, from the record that first pulled him towards tech house to the albums that taught him about heaviness, atmosphere, rhythm, distortion and the power of leaving space.

As he puts it: “Every record on this list did the same thing to me: it took a signal that was already there and turned it up.” Together, these are ten stages in the signal chain that eventually became Amplified.

1. Maetrik – Remote

Remote was the first tech house track I ever heard, and it rewired me on the spot. I asked Eric Estornel (Maetrik, Maceo Plex) if I could remix it, and my remix ended up on the original 12" on Iron Box in 2002, right next to his version. It was the first tech house track I ever produced, and the moment the dial first moved. From there I followed Eric's journey deep into minimal, and in many ways I'm still following it.

2. Karius & Baktus – Wurzelbehandlung

This record was the production benchmark for my move into techno and minimal. Every element sits exactly where it should, with nothing wasted and nothing fighting for space. Eric Estornel and I would drool over it every time we played it out. It set the bar for what clean, controlled pressure sounds like.

3. Nine Inch Nails – The Fragile

The whole Fragile album is one of the most important records of my life, and the title track is its centre of gravity. Reznor stacks distorted guitars into a wall of sound and then lets something small and exposed break through, so the song feels huge and breakable at the same time. Before I produced minimal, I wanted to produce like Trent Reznor, and that ambition never switched off. It just got routed through a different amp and bled straight into my minimal productions. I even named one of my Echopilot releases “Fragile Ep” in tribute to this album.

4. Metallica – One

No song means more to me than this one. It introduced me to heaviness, sadness, melancholy and storytelling, all in one track. Before One, I listened to whatever my parents listened to. After it, I was a metalhead. It was the first time I understood that volume could carry emotion, not just noise.

5. Nalin & Kane – Beachball

The record that got me into DJing. It was part of my first real exposure to clubbing, and I fell for its groove instantly. For a late-90s record, it's remarkably minimal, and that groove hasn't aged a day, especially the instrumental version. It was the first time I felt a whole room get turned up by one track.

6. The Prodigy – Firestarter

‍The Fat of the Land broke my teenage brain, and Firestarter was the fuse. I was a rock kid, and this was the first electronic music I'd heard that could rock as hard as anything on my shelf. That grinding guitar lick lifted from The Breeders, the "hey!" stabs borrowed from Art of Noise, the breakbeat hammering underneath, and Keith Flint snarling over the top: electronic music plugged straight into the mains. It pushed me further and further towards electronic music, and my ears have never quite recovered.

7. Ricardo Villalobos – Easy Lee

When Alcachofa came out, all I wanted make was tracks with vocals, especially vocoded ones, and Easy Lee is why. Ricardo's voice is pushed through a distorted vocoder until the words dissolve, and nobody has ever quite worked out what he's singing. Around it, wet, blippy percussion drips and clicks for minutes on end without ever getting boring. His ability to build grooves that could run forever is unmatched to this day. He proved you don't need to push every fader to the top to make something feel huge. You just have to let it breathe.

8. Tool – Lateralus

I had never heard anything like Lateralus before. The polyrhythms bend your mind: patterns that fold over each other, drift apart and then lock back into place when you least expect it. The title track is built around the Fibonacci sequence. The syllables in Maynard's vocal lines follow it, and the chorus cycles through 9/8, 8/8 and 7/8, which spells out 987, itself a Fibonacci number. The album sounds enormous, dense, and physical, like standing in front of a wall of speaker cabinets that are also doing maths. It taught me that rhythm itself can be the hook.

9. Aphex Twin – Come to Daddy

The first song that ever actually scared me. The older I got, the more I wanted to understand why. Chris Cunningham's video for it hugely influenced my aesthetic choices later on, and I loved how the whole thing let me tap into the darker sides of my mind. It's feedback in the truest sense: a signal that loops back on itself until it screams.

10. 2 Dollar Egg – Naxos 2

I'm deeply in love with everything happening on this record: how it's produced, its epic vibe, its punchy beat, its intricate sound design. Every detail has room to be heard, and yet it still hits like a full stack at maximum. It's a timeless gem and will forever sit deep in my DJ and producer heart.

Buy / Stream Amplified LP HERE

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