Maschine Brennt issues ‘Music for Machines’ as limited CD edition – first full album since 2022’s ‘Grief’
Maschine Brennt
Swedish machine-pop project Maschine Brennt (Joacim Thenander) has released “Music for Machines” as a limited CD edition of 250 hand-numbered copies in a standard jewel case with an 8-page booklet. The 14-track CD album spans 12 main tracks and two bonus tracks and was already released digitally by Razgrom Music on February 27, 2026. It marks the project’s first full-length release since “Grief” in 2022.
The two bonus tracks on the CD version are “Electric Music” in a 1st demo version and “DCY” in a previously unreleased club mix.
The album concept, as reflected in its title and artwork, centres on the idea of music created by machines for machines – a theme Thenander has explored since the project’s founding.
Two official videos accompany the release. The album teaser for “Music for Machines” and an official video clip for the track “Maschine”.
About Maschine Brennt
Maschine Brennt is a solo electronic music project by Joacim Thenander, based in Sweden. The project name is taken from a B-side of a Falco single. Thenander established the project around 1991–1992 as a side outlet alongside Cultivated Bimbo, the Uppsala-based EBM and experimental electronics duo for which he served as the primary creative force.
Before Cultivated Bimbo, Thenander was a member of the industrial synth band Systema The Affliction. During the 1990s he also produced house, techno, and drum’n’bass material under separate aliases, including Joey Lucas and Killa Dawgs.
The Maschine Brennt concept shows a machine-first approach: whole-tone scales, hard-quantized rhythms, and robotic vocal processing were used to minimize the human element in the music. As Thenander says in a 2018 Side-Line interview, “The main reason was to present music as if the machines had made it.”
After performing a small number of live shows between 1992 and 1994, Maschine Brennt went dormant. Thenander revived the project in 2014 after joining the Swedish collective label Plonk, whose focus on DĂĽsseldorf-influenced computer music aligned with the project’s original direction.
The debut full-length, “The Hearing Aid”, was released in 2017 digitally through Plonk and on CD through Razgrom Music, the latter edition containing four additional unreleased tracks. A second album, “Puls”, followed in 2021 on both Plonk and Razgrom Music. In October 2021, the two-track “Loop Remix” EP appeared on Plonk, featuring a Syntronik rework and a 2020 Carebots Mix of the “Puls” track “Loop”. Syntronik is a further alias Thenander uses for old-school electro material.
In March 2022, Maschine Brennt released “Grief”, a conceptual ambient-instrumental album drawing on Berlin School electronics and experimental electronic music. The digital edition appeared March 31, 2022; a limited CD edition of 150 hand-numbered copies with two bonus tracks, “Ice” and “Last”, followed in July 2022 through Razgrom Music. Between “Grief” and the current release, Thenander issued a number of digital singles without a full-length follow-up.
“Music for Machines” is Maschine Brennt’s fourth studio album and the project’s return to machine-pop after the ambient detour of “Grief”. The limited CD edition of 250 hand-numbered copies is available now, including 2 bonus tracks.
Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!
Since you’re here …
… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading Side-Line Magazine than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can - and we refuse to add annoying advertising. So you can see why we need to ask for your help.
Side-Line’s independent journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we want to push the artists we like and who are equally fighting to survive.
If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps fund it, our future would be much more secure. For as little as 5 US$, you can support Side-Line Magazine – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.
The donations are safely powered by Paypal.
