Holger Hiller

Who is Holger Hiller?

Holger Hiller is a German musician.

Holger Hiller studied art at the art school in Hamburg, where he met Walter Thielsch and Thomas Fehlmann and recorded first works with them. With Fehlmann he later founded the band Palais Schaumburg in 1980, of which he was the singer. At the same time his solo career began. Hiller was one of the first musicians in Europe to use the sampler as his main or sole instrument.

From 1984 on he lived in London, eventually working as producer for Mute Records. In 1988 he recorded "Ohi Ho Bang Bang" with video artist Akiko Hada. The video shows Hiller and Karl Bonnie creating different sounds from every item in a room, from those sounds the song is made by means of cutting, whereas every sound is still in sync with the video footage of its creation. This transfer of sampling techniques from music to video might have been pioneering, only 10 years later it got popular with "Timber" by Coldcut who used custom-made software to create it.

Since 2003 Holger Hiller has worked as a language teacher in Berlin.