Test

Freaky Chic

Freakn’Chic is Dan Ghenacia’s label outta Paris and they seem to put out whatever pleases them. I loved the Sweet Light singles, ‘Remontees’ – excuse the spelling, my French is rusty – and ‘Abusator’ from last year and wonder what happened to them. Maybe they are making an album. As I was thinking about the label, this new tune by a guy called Sebastien Bouchet came my way. It shows that even this acid loving madcap label is coming under the m*****l influence, but seeing as they’re French, they do it with a lot more style and panache than some of the woeful chancers I’ve heard recently…

Smoked Out

Alex Smoke is a man after my heart: he loves coffee and hates messy drunks and we also agree on global politics, although my outlook is perhaps less pessimistic than his. His new album, ‘Paradolia’ is bloody good too: Alex has narrowed his vision and this mixture of Detroit soul and twiddly, fiddly offbeat linear funk that he usually releases on Vakant is impressive. There’s also a neat classical piece on the album and  Never Want To See You Again ,a muffled vocal track that’s just as melancholic and catchy as ‘Don’t See The Point’. Don’t get me wrong though, there’s loads of razor sharp dance floor tracks on ‘Paradolia’ too, including ‘Persona’ and the recent single, Meany  , although I prefer the original version to Matt John’s rework. The other cool thing about this album is that Alex has promised to give all the money he makes - we don’t know what Soma’s plans are – to the Oxfam, Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth charities. It’s a nice move and, along with new track ‘We Like It Insipid’, makes Alex one of the few politicised techno producers around. What a pity more people can’t behave in the same way

I’m Sticking With You

As far as I can tell, Tiny Sticks is a new label based in the UK and it’s unusual in that it isn’t slavishly following trends in the music press. In fact, they have gone back in time for their latest release, German pop wunderkind Turner’s ‘My Aeroplane Mania’. It’s a pleasant little ditty, but Tiny Sticks have been smart enough to get a load of remixers on board. Personally, I found Baby Ford’s version a bit too timid and introverted, and prefer Martinez and Lawrence’s remixes. I know that I have slagged off Martinez’ work in the past and I still believe that he’s a better remixer than producer, but this remix is great, a scary ride through his textured style. Like everything he does, I’m pretty much smitten by Lawrence’s version , and his echoing acid pulses sound great combined with the original track’s melodies. Hopefully Tiny Sticks can keep up the good work and there’s more to come…

I-F I Could...

I-F hails from The Hague, Holland - his real name is Ferenc - yet despite his shadowy image - some profiles have portrayed him as a gangster, but he denies any links to Holland’s criminal underworld - his influence on modern dance music has been considerable.
With his mid-90s release, ‘Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass’, he paved the way for the resurgence of electro and, together with fellow Dutch imprints Clone, Crème, Bunker and Murder Capital, his Viewlexx imprint continues to support the new wave of Dutch electro and Italo. I-F’s work as Parallax Corporation, The Conservatives and Inter-ference as well as his ‘Mixed Up In The Hague’ mix series join the dots between the angularity of modern electro purism, the tear-jerking emotions and drugged out warmth of 80s Italo Disco and the primal, jacking funk of Chicago house.
“Holland is the king when it comes to crap music, and because of that, we created an alternative years ago,” he says, explaining the reason for setting up Viewlexx and its predecessor, Unit Moebius, a Dutch version of the Underground Resistance collective.
“I started doing what I'm doing out of frustration with people’s musical ignorance. Not everybody has the energy to create their own movement, but, like Chicago house or Detroit techno, we realised that we are doing in Holland with our scene is unique.”
Despite his underground status, he says that he has no regrets that ‘Space Invaders’ became so popular or that it inadvertently prompted a glut of second-rate electroclash and electro house.
‘I have no complaints about what happened with ‘Space Invaders’,” he says. “The only danger is that you'll be making the same track over and over again for money, but I was aware of that, so I never signed any album deals, although the amounts mentioned were tempting.
“People hijacking the sound will always happen, it’s like fake Rolex watches,” he believes. “Anyway, by now the majors have found out that electro is not their thing and the industry has changed, everybody has their own label now and basically don't need majors to stay alive.”
However, don’t expect I-F to sit back and put out a series of comfortably samey releases.  He remains an outspoken critic of modern electronic music and the apathy that is an attendant part of clubbing, so much so that last year, he contemplated giving up DJing.
“I got tired of it and felt that I was wasting my time. But thanks to the CBS and my booker I end up at the good places now,” he explains. “I really love DJing but not to a bunch of retarded zombies and most DJs are retarded zombies, doing their best to please a crowd with their dead sound.”
He also reserves some of his ire for the upcoming generation of clubbers and music lovers.
“It's too easy to be a fucking consumer,” I-F says. “I'm amazed in these times that there is not a huge punk movement or whatever due to governmental and religious oppression. The kids are happy with their telephones and gadgets and the soulless crap transmitted on radio and TV. It's pretty sad.”
I-F’s independent attitude and his unwillingness to work in the confines of conventional media led him to set up his internet radio station, Cybernetic Broadcasting -  www.cybernetic-broadcasting.net - one of the few online outlets to actually broadcast on a 24/7 basis, and whose play list features everything from blaxploitation soundtracks to futuristic techno.
“Our worldwide recognition is the result of this global communication and I realise the importance of the internet,” he says, momentarily sounding like one of the media executives he patently despises. “The internet was a logical 'next step' for me because, with one push of a button, I eliminate all other media and get my information directly to who wants to hear it. I basically work 24 hours a day on CBS. Radio is what I always wanted to do and now it's possible.”
“I’m in talks about doing another mix CD, but nothing has been confirmed and I won't release any new tracks before March 2006 with my name on them due to publishing issues,” he adds. “To be honest, I love doing CBS almost more than life itself.”

Faking It

Sometimes it’s more advantageous to deny that you are involved with a particular scene or a style in an effort to promote your work. Remember the way that hoary old pub rockers The Stranglers - although I’d never be silly enough to call them that to their faces – sold themselves as the very antithesis of punk but ended up playing in spit-caked punk venues to punk audiences?
Well, the same could be said about new electronic darling Nathan Fake. He has aired a very public dislike for techno music and was even quoted last year as saying – apologies to whoever did the interview because I’ve forgotten where it appeared – that he was playing at the I Love Techno festival in Ghent although “I hate techno.” How strange then that Fake’s latest release, ‘Drowning In A Sea Of Remixes’ features new versions of tracks from his debut album by Apparat  and Jake Fairley (as Fairmont).
Ok, so it’s not like  Border Community commissioned Jeff Mills or Dave Clarke to rework his wispy ramblings into a searing mass of rage, but there is definitely some shrewd anti-marketing going on here which certainly cannot be attributed to the naivety of youth – Fake is a fresh-faced 20 year old.
It’s the UR approach to selling yourself: don’t speak to the press, wear your balaclava at all times, remain anonymous and gradually, the enigma you have created will lure the listeners. It’s a case of ‘don’t build it and they will still come and train spot the catalogue number’, but of course it means nothing if the music doesn’t shape up. In this instance, Fake is lucky to be aided and abetted by two fine producers in their prime. Wonder who will be next to employ this technique?

Miscs of Time...

I had great fun the other night at The Advent, despite one of the crazy drunks trying to mess with the mixer during my set. Mind you, he was probably more skillful than my ‘work’. Still have to pen a critique of the Smoke/Fake/Isolee release threesome, but in the meantime, here’s an insight into the world of the mighty Misc, aka Chrisopher Bleckmann and Hannes Wenner…

When did you and your partner start releasing as Misc? Is it a project only
for Sender Records?

The first EPs as Misc came out in 2000 almost simultaneously on Force
Tracks and Sender, so it was never meant to be an Sender-only project.

You also release as Niederflur  - what would you say are the main
differences in the sound of both projects?

With Niederflur we tried to figure out how little it needs to do a minimal
track. It is a very strict and conceptual project which not necessarily
heads for the dance floor. On the other side we wanted have a project very
open to all the other techno styles possible. That’s also why we chose the
name Misc. Misc tracks are definitely much more danceable for the audience
and playable for DJs.

How did you hook up with Sender?

Classic! We liked the very early Sender releases (e.g. Konfekt, Krokant,
T.Raumschmiere) and we saw in a magazine, that Benno Blome, the head of the
Label, rated Niederflur tracks in his DJ charts. So we sent him an e-mail
asking, if he would like to listen to this other stuff we did. The first
CD-R we sent him led to the first EP, ‘Relay’

You are one of the main artists on Sender - would you say that
you have helped to define the sound of the label?

Our impression is that the development is a parallel one. We started to work on this more edgy sound and Benno dug it immediately. From that point on, it may also be that our sound influenced other Sender artists. But that is something you’d have to ask them.

What I love about Misc is that it sounds dirty, darker and not clean like some of the glitchy techno; is this your aim, to sound dirty and dark?

We don’t necessarily think it’s about darkness, it’s more about intensity.
We don’t want to do tracks that get lost in the mix of a DJ (which can be a
good thing at times, too ), we want to create moments to remember. We love
the moment when you are in a club and the DJ drops a tune where you just
can’t believe what’s happening. The dirt aspect is probably also a Sender
thing. We like it if things aren’t too sterile. Maybe because it would be a lie. Life isn’t just clean and nice and music always reflects life.

Who would you say influences the Misc sound? Apart from techno influences
are there any other musical and non-musical influences?

That is always hard to tell yourself. You don’t sit down and listen to your
own tracks analysing what sound was influenced by who or what. Music is
always influenced by everything you do, see and hear, it’s really hard to
see details in that concern. Doubtless is that both of us are influenced by the D&B of the late 90s.

Would you agree that Misc is also harder and clubbier than the usual minimal
stuff?

Most definitely. As mentioned above, we like to create stunning moments. Most
of the minimal stuff is more made to fit in the flow of a long and sometimes
almost anonymous sounding set. We also like that moment when you get lost
in the flow of the night, but it is not our approach with misc.

A strong bass is present in all your releases; is this important for you?

Absolutely. Electronic dance music is nothing without a strong bass.
Probably this is also influenced by our past as D&B-producers as Monophace. That’s something we miss in some of the techno tracks: basslines to
remember!

There was a rumour last year that you were going to sign to Skint in the UK; is this untrue? Have any other labels made offers to you?

We don’t tend to comment on rumours. But as a matter of fact, we did some
12"s on other labels: on Kompakt Extra we had Status Now at the end of
last year. More recently we did one side on the debut of Portuguese label
Soniculture and a 12" on Klang, Hey Du! So again, Misc is not a
only-Sender project. We like to work with different people.

What releases have you got coming up next year and on what labels? Also, are
you doing any remixes or live CDs?

Remixing is becoming rather important recently since we did remixes for
underground artists like Rocco Branco or Christopher Just’s classic I’m A Disco Dancer just as for the all time heroes Depeche Mode. Right now we are working on a remix EP for the album Like Morning In Your Eyes. We are just contacting some artists who we like to ask them to do nice remixes for us. Also we did new Niederflur material but there is nothing set about this by now.

List(less) Behaviour

  Haven't posted up on the site in exactly a week, which is a long time in the real world and an eternity in the microsecond attention spans that the internet has spawned. It's been a pretty busy time for me though -  last weekend was spent in Luciano and Loco Dice's company in Neuss just outside Dusseldorf. The club they were playing in, Tribe House was something very special and they were booked into the smaller second room. Timo Maas was in the main one, but he isn't really my thing so I stayed upstairs. The most noticeable thing about techno crowds on the continent compared to the UK or Ireland is that - well, how can I put this without pissing people off? - they're much better looking and more glamorous and that they don't pull gurning faces. In fact, everyone in the small room seemed perfectly happy to chuck back Jagermeister and get locked onto Luciano's set -  more about that later. The other striking thing about the club was that it went on until 8am. We left at 6am as we had to check out and had planes to catch, but the place was still bloody heaving and Loco Dice - who seems to have coined or at least have a major interest in the phrase 'yo, bro' - was insistent that himself and his Chilean buddy would be rocking an after-party until well into Sunday afternoon. We really have a lot to learn from this way of interacting with music in Ireland.
Maybe Jamie, the photographer on the trip,  can part with some of the pictures he took of this club because it's certainly worth looking at. The guys who own it were telling me that they only open it 35 times a year - aren't the Germans great at giving you an exact figure for everything? 'Ja Richard, last year, 136 of my mixes were perfect and only 27 were out of time for over 10 seconds'  -  the rest of the time, they're too busy doing high-end design for swish penthouses and other people's clubs or throwing open air parties in the summer at a nearby lake that go on for days.
Tribehouse lies idle for the rest of the year and is used for occasional showcases and corporate events, but that's it and they want to keep it that way so on the rare night it is open, people flock to it.  Jamie certainly took loads of shots if the place, but he seems to be the only person still left using film as opposed to digital so I'm not sure if this will happen. The digital/film debate is similar to the digital/vinyl topic, but thankfully Luciano was a vinyl-only performer yet his set was smoother than most Ableton/Scratch perfectionists. He played for four hours and got this hypnotic groove going throughout: at times, some of the music had a loose, organic, offbeat feel, at other times it was more typically glitchy and minimalist -  truer to his mix for Soma - but it was also jacking and had hints of Detroit. When he played that remix of Theo Parrish by Carl Craig, even the ultra-cool Germans went batshit crazy. Shit dancers though.
Earlier on, Luciano was talking about his new projects, which include a follow up to the Lucien'n'Luciano 'Blind Behaviour' album and a new album release on Cadenza, which he claims will be revolutionary, an atypically ambitious claim for one so mellow and unassuming, so he must have something serious up his sleeves. Speaking of major works, one of my colleagues in DJ Mag  is doing one of these best dance albums of all time lists, so she asked me for my top three. It's an impossible task -  it's entirely dependent on the mood you're in on the day in question as to what you'll listen to -  but off the top of my head, I reeled off these: Orbital: 'Brown Album', the 'Deeper Shades Of Techno' compilation and I-F's  Mixed Up In The Hague  Volume 1 .. later on I regretted not choosing something by Drexciya, Sterac's 'Secret Life Of Machines' or even Public Enemy's 'Nation Of Millions'...
Have to post soon on this year's best album contenders soon  -  the main ones being Alex Smoke, Nathan Fake and Isolee - and I'm off to Glasgow on Friday next to do a feature on Mr Smoke, a rough (literally!) guide to his favourite parts of the city... If you're in Dublin tonight -  Saturday -  come and say hello at the Music Centre, where myself and Jay Galligan, Eddie Brennan and Decal are on the same bill as The Advent. Now if only we could get our own night back and running soon, we'd all be happy!

Sci Fi Highs

Looks like we have finally may have a new real-world home for Test, but in the absence of a confirmation, which we have been assured will be next week, I think that I'll let you know about a few records and CDs that have been setting my world alight. Luciano, that suave doyen of Euro-Latino techno understatement has done the second instalment of the 'Sci Fi Hi Fi' mix series for Soma and it's a beauty, inhabiting the hazy, freeform headspace as much of his own work. One of his latest productions, 'Father' with Thomas Melchior on Cadenza appears near the end of the mix, its lazy and loose shuffling rhythms, muffled vocal and overall sense of serene a sweet contrast to what went before it, namely Adam Beyer's wild and admittedly overplayed 'Walking Contradiction', Donnacha Costello's insistent 'That's Great' and that throbbing update of Maurizio textures that Serafin did on Liebe Detail last year and notable inclusions form Matt John, Dumb Unit, Perlon, Intacto and the promising Freizeitglauben label. You probably won't hear from me for a few days either because I'm off to Germany to meet up with the author for a feature for DJ Mag. If you're in Tribe House in Dusseldorf tomorrow night, come up and say hi!
In between all of this jetting about, there is the more serious business of tune hunting and: Afrilounge have - apparently there are three of them - have done a fitting follow-up to their Poker Flat classic from last year, 'Phonix', this time on co-conspirator Patrick Chadronnet's new Conaisseur label. Although it's a bit glitchier than before, the climaxing melodies remain amid the complexities of
‘Nightwatch’ and ‘Soaring’, kind of like a cross between Booka Shade and Herbert.
I haven't been a big fan of Speedy J's in a good few years, but that 'Metalism' album he did with Chris Liebing last year was excellent in places - mainly in the places where he stopped making senselessly banging techno and started going all weird again, dissecting rhythms, ignoring conventional time signatures and generally messing about. He's done it again with his new collaboration with George Issakidis from The Micronauts for erm, 'Collabs 401'. Loving the tantalisingly slow acid of ‘Overblaak’ and the way he revisits the dreamy depths of 'Ginger', only to impale them over dead slow noisy drums. Mad stuff and not very DJ friendly, but who cares, there's loads of cool new techno, like Karmarouge's increasingly broken-beat sub label Noir. Check the churning bass distortion on Pablo Akaros' 'Celofans' if the noisy end of minimalism is your thing - it's certainly mine - and in a similar vein, Aspro & Reynold's harsh and crunchy 'Angle', the first thing on the Trenton label that has really impressed me.
Pan Pot have escaped Mobilee's K-hole, but only temporarily and they pop up with 'Pious Sin EP', more clicky, trippy, breakdown-lovin weirdness on Einmal Musik. The wild reverberating bass on
‘Micra Mire’ is worth the price alone. Finally, the great Claro Intelecto starts 2006 in the same kind of form as he was in during 2005, managing to make deeper sounds dynamic and somewhat menacing with the slamming beats and moody vibe of 'Warehouse Sessions Volume 1'. If anyone is going to drag Detroit-inspired techno out of its torpor, it's Mr Stewart's clarity of sound. 'Warehouse' is on Modern Love in case you're interested, which I hope you are!

Source of Bemusement

Ever wondered what happened to some of techno's big guns from the 1990s? What is DJ Skull doing these days? Is Fumiya Tanaka still scaring the hell out of Tokyo teenagers with his searing sets? And will we ever hear from Steve O'Sullivan again? The recent death of Marc Spoon and, of course the inherent transience of music got me thinking about how some really respected names have all but disappeared. Then, by coincidence a record from Martinez' Out Of Orbit label arrived in the post by Robert Leiner. Remember him? He used to make anthemic, rousing 150 bpm techno and, in his quieter moments, grandiose ambience. He was like a Scandinavian version of CJ Bolland, only without the attitude. He made some great records and an album, 'The Source Experience', but, get this, Robert's new EP is innocuous, navel-gazing tech-house fluff, the kind of inoffensive pap that progressive house DJs play when they say that they are 'going deeper these days'.
I must be one of the few people not to rate Martinez at the moment - although he had one great moment, his remix of Phil Stumpf from last year, also on Out Of Orbit - and his layered swoonings. It's all just a bit to safe in its textured nothingness to register with me, but how can Leiner have stooped so low? If you know of any other techno legends who have made a comeback, be it good bad, or indifferent, then let me know about it. In the meantime, the same postal consignment that delivered Mr Leiner also dispatched the new Alex Smoke and Isolee artist albums, so expect some feedback on them soon...