Ulrich Schnauss was born in the northern German town of Kiel in 1977. During his formative years, he came to love a wide spectrum of music, ranging from My Bloody Valentine to Tangerine Dream, from Chapterhouse to early bleep and breakbeat tracks. There was not much opportunity to see his musical heroes in Kiel, so he moved to Berlin in 1996. By that time, Ulrich was already a prolific musician in such genres as ambient and drum and bass, with a variety of pseudonyms (most notably View to the Future and Ethereal 77).