Keith Fullerton Whitman (born May 29, 1973) is an American

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

ian who has recorded albums influenced by many genres, including

ambient music Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes Musical tone, tone and atmosphere over traditional Musical form, musical structure or rhythm. Often "peaceful" sounding and lacking Musical composition, composition, beat, and/or structured melod ...

drill and bass Drill 'n' bass is a subgenre of drum and bass which developed in the mid-1990s as IDM artists began experimenting with elements of jungle and breakbeat music. Artists utilized powerful audio software to program frenzied, irregular beats that o ...

, and

krautrock Krautrock (also called , German for ) is a broad genre of experimental rock that developed in Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It originated among artists who blended elements of psychedelic rock, avant-garde composition, and electron ...

. He records and performs using many aliases, of which the best-known is Hrvatski (the Croatian word for ''Croatian''). His works under the Hrvatski moniker mainly fell under the 'drill and bass' subgenre of IDM, and were his main musical outlet in the mid-to-late 1990s. Other solo aliases include ''ASCIII'' and ''Anonymous''. Keith was in many bands in the 1990s, including ''El-Ron'', ''The Liver Sadness'', ''Sheket/Trabant'', ''The Finger Lakes'' and ''Gai/Jin''. Fullerton Whitman started recording using his own name in 2001, and most of his work recorded today is under that name. His brother, former MIT scientist Brian Alexander Whitman and co-founder of

The Echo Nest The Echo Nest is a music intelligence and data platform for developers and media companies. Owned by Spotify since 2014, the company is based in Somerville, MA. The Echo Nest began as a research spin-off from the MIT Media Lab to understand ...

, is also an electronic musician and sound artist performing under name ''Blitter''.

Electronic music career

Whitman studied computer music at

Berklee College of Music Berklee College of Music () is a Private university, private music college in Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known for the study of jazz and modern Music of the United ...

, where he was exposed to modern electronic music composition and synthesis. Whitman says that before this he was initially drawn to making music by listening to the radio in the New York city suburbs in the 1980s. His moniker ''ASCIII'' has released music distributed with an academic journal. His studio and live setup usually consists of a

PowerBook The PowerBook (known as Macintosh PowerBook before 1997) is a family of Macintosh-type laptop computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from 1991 to 2006. It was targeted at the professional market; in 1999, the line was suppl ...

running

Max/MSP Max, also known as Max/MSP/Jitter, is a visual programming language for music and multimedia developed and maintained by San Francisco-based software company Cycling '74. Over its more than thirty-year history, it has been used by composers, pe ...

Logic Pro Logic Pro is a proprietary digital audio workstation (DAW) and MIDI sequencer software application for the macOS platform developed by Apple Inc. It was originally created in the early 1990s as Notator Logic, or Logic, by German software devel ...

, and other analogue instruments, such as

guitar The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming ...

oud The oud ( ; , ) is a Middle Eastern short-neck lute-type, pear-shaped, fretless stringed instrument (a chordophone in the Hornbostel–Sachs classification of instruments), usually with 11 strings grouped in six courses, but some models have ...

s and

synthesizers A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

. Whitman has released albums on labels such as

Editions Mego Mego was an experimental electronic music independent record label based in Vienna, Austria. The label has been superseded by a new company, Editions Mego, which was set up both to keep Mego albums in print and to issue new albums, run by Peter ...

, PAN,

Planet Mu Planet Mu is an English electronic music record label created and run by Mike Paradinas. The label started out as a subsidiary of Virgin Records then Paradinas set up the label independent of Virgin. After releasing intelligent dance music, the ...

, Kranky,

Carpark Records Carpark Records is an independent record label based in Washington, D.C. History Carpark Records was established by Todd Hyman in 1999 in New York City. In 2005, the label relocated to Washington, D.C. Carpark has subsidiary labels. Acute Re ...

as well on his own Entschuldigen and (now defunct) Reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge labels. In 2013, Whitman released ''Greatest Hits'' on

SoundCloud SoundCloud is a German audio streaming service owned and operated by SoundCloud Global Limited & Co. KG. The service enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is ...

: a 12-hour-long audio project developed from samples of pop songs from Whitman's youth. Sample are snipped out, slowed to half speed and then run through Whitman's signature array of boxes and generators to create an "automatic enhancement" of the original tune.

Other activities

Whitman has run Mimaroglu Music Sales which offered distribution of an extensive collection of

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

music. Mimaroglu Music Sales has been rechristened Alpha State NYC in 2019. Whitman also operates Creel Pole, a bootleg record label that "re-issues" early electroacoustic & experimental recordings in CD-R format in small editions.

Influences

As influences on his work, Whitman has mentioned the composers Bernard Bonnier,

Luis de Pablo Luis de Pablo Costales (28 January 1930 – 10 October 2021) was a Spanish composer belonging to the generation that Cristóbal Halffter named ''the Generación del 51''. Mostly self-taught as a composer and influenced by Maurice Ohana and Max ...

Pietro Grossi Pietro Grossi (15 April 1917, in Venice – 21 February 2002, in Florence) was an Italian composer pioneer of computer music, Visual arts, visual artist and hacker ahead of his time. He began experimenting with electronic techniques in Italy in t ...

Costin Miereanu Costin Miereanu (born 27 February 1943) is a French composer and musicologist of Romanian birth. Biography Miereanu was born in Bucharest in 1943. At the age of eleven, he enrolled in the Bucharest School of Music, where he completed six year ...

Basil Kirchin Basil Kirchin (8 August 1927 – 18 June 2005) was an English drummer and composer. His career spanned from playing drums in his father's big band at the age of 13, through scoring films, to electronic music featuring tape manipulation of the ...

, Dub Taylor,

François Bayle François Bayle (born 27 April 1932 in Toamasina, Madagascar) is a composer of Electronic Music, Musique concrète. He coined the term '' Acousmatic Music''. Career In the 1950s he studied with Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Sto ...

, Steve Birchall, Michael Czajkowski, Douglas Leedy, Jacques Lejeune, and

Richard Pinhas Heldon was a French electronic rock band originally active between 1974 and 1978, and led by guitarist Richard Pinhas. Other members included synthesizer player Patrick Gauthier and drummer François Auger. The name of the band was taken from th ...

Discography

As Hrvatski

* ''Okapi Tracks'' (mp3.com, 1999) * ''Oiseaux 96-98'' (Reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge, 1999) * ''Swarm & Dither'' (Planet Mu, 2002) * ''Untitled 7"'' (Planet Mu, 2002) * ''Irrevocably Overdriven Break Freakout Megamix'' (Entschuldigen, 2005)

As Keith Fullerton Whitman

*''21:30 for Acoustic Guitar...'' CD (Apartment B, 2001) *'' Playthroughs'' CD (Kranky, 2002) *''Dartmouth Street Underpass'' CD (Locust Music, 2003) *''Antithesis'' LP (Kranky, 2004) *''Schöner Flußengel'' LP (Kranky, 2004) *''

Multiples Multiple may refer to: Economics *Multiple finance, a method used to analyze stock prices *Multiples of the price-to-earnings ratio *Chain stores, are also referred to as 'Multiples' *Box office multiple, the ratio of a film's total gross to tha ...

'' CD (Kranky, 2005) *''Twenty Two Minutes for Electric Guitar'' CD (Entschuldigen, 2005) *''Yearlong'' CD (with Greg Davis) (Carpark, 2005) *''Lisbon'' CD (Live Oct. 4 2005 in

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

) (Kranky 2006) *''Taking Away'' Cass. (Digitalis Ltd. 2009) *''Dream House Variations'' 4xCass. (Arbor 2009) *''Disingenuity B/W Disingenuousness'' LP, (Pan 2010) *''Generator'' Cass. (Root Strata 2011) *''Generators'' LP (Editions Mego 2012) *''Occlusions'' LP (Editions Mego 2012) *''Live Occlusions (1)'' Cass, (Protracted View 2013) *''Live Occlusions (2)'' Cass, (Protracted View 2013)

Compilation appearances

*"20041203.Wfmu" on '' Brainwaves'' (2006)

References

External links

*
Allmusic entry for Keith Fullerton WhitmanAllmusic entry for Hrvatski
{{DEFAULTSORT:Whitman, Keith Fullerton 1973 births Living people American electronic musicians Berklee College of Music alumni Carpark Records artists Planet Mu artists Locust Music artists Kranky (record label) artists Breakcore musicians