Holger Hiller

Hiller studied art at the Hochschule für bildende Künste 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 started a band project called Ohi Ho Bang Bang with video artist Akiko Hada, recording a song/video called "The Two," releasing it as both a 12" single and a CD Video. The video shows Hiller and Karl Bonnie creating different sounds from every item in a room, which Hada edited together to make a song out of the sounds whilst keeping the video footage of their creation intact. 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, Hiller lives in Berlin, working as an English language teacher.