Techno/House Bobbins 2010

eyyy, hope im posting this in the right place. Anyway, a friend of a friend is doing an MA in journalism and asked me to contribute some stuff on music for his final project. I wrote this about Kompakt. Bare in mind that it's aimed at people who've probably never heard anything on Kompakt/other techno labels before.

Just over ten years ago, Michael Mayer, Jürgen Paape and Wolfgang Voigt founded a record label in the German city of Cologne. Despite their credentials as producers and DJs, Voigt in particular was already regarded as one of the most important figures in European electronic music, they had little idea that their label, Kompakt, would go on to be one that would define the sound of techno over the course over the next decade.

In order to assess the influence the label has on today’s music, we must place it in the wider context of techno as a genre. Three friends from the Detroit suburb of Belleville: Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson created futuristic, soulless (the lack of ‘soul’ in early techno records is largely what differentiated it from the emerging house scene that was developing in Chicago at the same time) black music that was heavily inspired by the robotic minimalism of Kraftwerk as much as the bass heavy funk of George Clinton’s Parliament and Funkadelic. They called it techno. Their music was influenced by their surroundings: by the early 80s Detroit had gone from the home of Motown and car manufacturing to a kind of post-industrial wasteland and the futuristic sound of the genre seemed apt. Eventually the scene gathered momentum, becoming a staple in clubs all over the US. Since the early days there has been an affinity between Detroit and Germany. It was Berlin that was the first city to embrace techno in a major way and the Tresor nightclub became one of the most highly regarded in the world.

Techno was, and still can be, pummeling, relentless and downright brutal. Perhaps this is why it remains ever popular with Germans. The Kompakt sound is somewhat different. The insistent 4/4-kick drum that almost defines the genre is there, but the hard edges are laced with crystalline melodies, melancholy vocals and a sense of hopeless romanticism. It is probably for this reason that techno elitists sneer at the it: the music on Kompakt appeals to people who haven’t spent their lives searching for rare Theo Parrish white labels. There is a pronounced pop sensibility to the best Kompakt material, the idea that these are songs and not just tracks, tools for DJs. In an interview with Pitchforkmedia, Mayer himself states that, ‘Techno in the early years was a lot like model trains; two guys playing with the machines all day long, super serious. We always had a different approach-- it was about having fun, having a good time, even if the music is abstract and very modern, it's still about disco and about having a good time.’

My introduction to Kompakt, and techno in general, came by chance. I spent the summer after my GCSE’s looking out of my bedroom window at cornfields and woods listening to a select few records over and over. One of these was Erlend Oye’s DJ Kicks (!K7, 2004). The first track on the album was Jürgen Paape’s beguiling ‘So Wiet Wie Noch Nie’, a record that remains, partly because of nostalgia and partly because of the sheer brilliance of it, one of my favorite songs of the decade. Built around lilting, swooning synth pads and a dusty vocal sampled from an old Sonya Lubke record, it was the most beautiful four minutes of music I’d heard. There were other examples of the microhouse sound that I would come to become obsessed with in the following years: Skatebard’s fizzy ‘Metal Chix’ and Ricardo Villalobos’ ‘Dexter’ a track that seems to both melt, and slow down time. After Erlend, I delved into the Kompakt catalogue starting with various compilations and mixes, and they were a formative part of my musical education. I got into harder, more obscure stuff as a result and for a long time, listened to nothing but minimal techno, much to the annoyance of friends and flatmates.

Kompakt are undeniably stylish. In the 90s techno was associated with austere looking bald men wearing severe glasses and green coats, and Kompakt, along with the likes of BPitch, Get Physical and Perlon, was one of the labels that made the genre ‘sexy’ again. The music was warmer than the original Detroit tracks, more inviting to outsiders and easier to dance too. The label’s aesthetic is all clean lines and bold text. This uniformity seems oddly fitting for a label that has a roster including the likes of Kaito (blissed out trance), Gui Boratto (infectious house straight out of South America) and GAS (Wolfgang Voigt’s modern-classical/ambient moniker).

It is Michael Mayer, though, who has become the undoubted star of the label. Though his solo productions aren’t necessarily among Kompakt’s finest releases he can lay claim to have put out three of the finest mixes of all time in Fabric 13, Immer and the Peel Session. DJs often talk about ‘narratives’ and ‘journeys’ and the importance of tracks flowing, combining to create something new. Mayer is the master of letting his song selections breathe, giving them time to develop, to unveil themselves fully. He doesn’t go in for the flashy mixing style like some, preferring subtle transitions. The album he released for the Farringdon based club is a perfect snapshot of the heavier side of his record collection, and the session he did for John Peel is an excellent introduction to the ‘schaffel’ (imagine glam rock meeting techno. But not as awful as that should be.) sound that briefly dominated the label’s release schedule, but it is Immer that is most deserving of a closer look. Immer is, and I have to admit that I can only talk about this record in hyperbolic terms, a masterpiece. It’s 70 minutes of the finest techno of the decade that manages to incorporate birdsong (Superpitcher’s remix of ‘Crokus’ by Carsten Jost) swathes of portentous German classical music (Tobias Thomas and Superpitcher’s edit of ‘Perfect Lovers’ by Phantom/Ghost) and what sounds like an electric saw breaking (‘Surface’ by Paul Nazca). It’s become one of the defining techno records of the decade and probably the one that secured Kompakt’s place in the electronic music canon.

They may not be releasing must-have 12”s as regularly as they were a few years back, but there’s still a lot to get excited about. Next year should see new releases from the likes of Superpitcher, DJ Koze and Ewan Pearson. The classic Kompkat sound, ‘a mix of minimalism, melody, and melancholy, often with an underlying pop sensibility’ is one that resonates with a huge number of people: Mayer and co regularly play some of the biggest clubs in the world. And, well, to end on a personal note, I can’t imagine what my life would be like if I’d never heard ‘So Weit Wie Noch Nie’ way back in 2006.

Three friends from the Detroit suburb of Belleville: Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson created futuristic, soulless (the lack of ‘soul’ in early techno records is largely what differentiated it from the emerging house scene that was developing in Chicago at the same time) black music that was heavily inspired by the robotic minimalism of Kraftwerk as much as the bass heavy funk of George Clinton’s Parliament and Funkadelic. They called it techno.

immediately, i want to warn against calling Detroit techno "soulless"; be careful dude

Seconded.

Elsewhere, the Benjamin Brunn Modyfier mix is super lush stuff. The only other person I can think of who gets as much warmth out of his machines is er... Move D!

:( thirded.

probably just "soul" as signify "vocals"

also bobbins = sewing machine spindle = totally soul less soulless souless fuc wat soulles.

sam500, that Benjamin Brunn is great!!! Thks - love the Andy Warhol interview loop and track 3 is quite special.

the two hieroglyphic being records on mathematics sub label +++ are flat out amazing. even though the tracks are already collected on the synthetic love life cd, i had to get them on vinyl (it seems this dude just lives to tax european noobs like myself)

if you like weird endlessly evolving but constantly jacking house music i cannot recommend these enough. there's a really manic, restless energy in this music, all of these unfeasible melodies and rhythms competing to be heard over the layers of cassette fuzz

there's a track on another new ep on mathematics that's just this african flute melody over huge tribal toms. it's so good but such a pain to mix with - it seems like the sequencer keeps going out of sync or something

anyone feeling Nina Kraviz - Pain In The Ass / I'm Gonna Get You on Rekids? Can't decide which track I like better... (might technically be VERY late 2009, not sure)

xpost: yeah, i love "I'm Gonna Get You" - great, great slice of deepness + nice vocals.

Didnt really get into the "Pain In The Ass" prob due to that bantering voiceover.

it kicks in around 3.30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqh4UE4fIJ0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN7k8V6UhIs

Techno was, and still can be, pummeling, relentless and downright brutal. Perhaps this is why it remains ever popular with Germans.

Hmm.

lol

that was tl;dr so thanks for highlighting that for my amusement.

any tips for any new pummeling, relentless and downright brutal new techno?

maybe this?:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWtF8SNphPk

Mike Dehnert's Dico EP sounds excellent from the samples I've heard.

Delta Funktionen "Silhouette (Marcel Dettmann rmx)" left me pretty underwhelmed on first listen, but that's worth checking out.

heard this at optimo recently
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md_OaPX4_j4

i'm quite enjoying this label at the moment

http://www.discogs.com/label/Do+Not+Resist+The+Beat!

noisy industrial techno from berlin

ha, what's that bauhaus thing? (if there are samples of the band in there, i don't hear it; maybe they mean the german version of home depot.) sounds like radio slave!

rionat, milton bradley has a really good remix on one of the new prologue 12"s (i think the last cio d'or 12"?) that sounds a lot like DNRTB #4...

hey, thanks for the sarky comments, REALLY APPRECIATED!

new mike dehnert ep is great, so is the alex cortex ep on pomelo

i don't hear any samples of bauhaus the band in there either. the youtube clip says "marcel dettmann??" in the description, so there's some fuel for the rumor mill.

I gave a shot at doing a top 100 bobbins of the decade, and I've kind of settled on these top 50, that is if anyone cares.

1 Soul Capsule – Law Of Grace
2 Akufen – Skidoos
3 Luomo – Tessio
4 Farben – Beautone
5 Matthew Dear – Dog Days
6 Pantha Du Prince – Saturn Strobe
7 Alex Smoke – Chica Wappa
8 Jurgen Paape – So Weit Wie Noch Nie
9 Luciano – La Limonida de Pepe Bombilla / Amelie on Ice
10 Vladislav Delay – Huone
11 Deadbeat – Organ in the Attic Sings the Blues
11 Ricardo Villalobos – Easy Lee
12 Closer Musik – You Don’t Know Me
13 Polmo Polpo – Kiss Me Again and Again
14 Burial – Archangel / Broken Home
15 The Juan Maclean - Happy House
16 DJ Sprinkles – Ball’r (Madonna Free Zone)
17 Isolée – Schrapnel / Pillowtalk
18 LCD Soundsystem – Losing My Edge
19 Lawrence – Along the Wire (Superpitcher Remix)
20 Jichael Mackson – The Grass is Always Greener
21 Martin Buttrich – Full Clip
22 Hercules and Love Affair – Blind (Club Mix)
23 Dominique Leone - Clairevoyage
24 Partial Arts – Trauermusik
25 Metro Area – Miura
26 Matt John – Hawaii You
27 Peverelist – Junktion
28 Le Noir – Eleny (Radioslave Remix)
29 Rex the Dog – I Look Into Mid Air
30 Dave Aju - Anyway
31 Kalabrese – Auf Dem Hof
32 Ellen Allien – Sensucht
33 Petre Inspirescu - Le Crème Bonjour
34 Alex Under – La Bicicleta Son Para El Verano / Multiplicanciones D
35 Audion – Mouth to Mouth
36 Booka Shade – In White Rooms / Mandarine Girl
37 Oni Ayhun – OAR003 B
38 Narcotic Syntax – Cowabunga!
39 Lindstrom – I Feel Space
30 Ramadanman – Blimey
41 Hot Chip – Boy From School (Erol Alkan Remix)
42 Richard Davis – This Time
43 Delia Gonzales and Gavin Russom – Revelée (Carl Craig Remix)
44 Cobblestone Jazz – W/ Dump Truck
45 Chic Miniature – Escalando
46 Mari Boine – Vuoi Vuoi Mu (Henrik Schwarz Remix)
47 Mathew Jonson – Marionette
48 Nathan Fake – Dinamo / Undoing the Laces
49 Metaboman – Easy Woman (Robag Whrume Mix)
50 Sutekh – Untitled (Periods.Make.Sense. Track 8)

I don't know what to think about the fact that this is pretty well just white males.

Pretty boring list, actually, but nevertheless it's a pretty spot on representation of me (also take into account that I didn't start listening to dance music until 2006).

cozen that motor track is brutal

it is ridic

Oh god, Easy Woman is properly sexy.

1 Soul Capsule – Law Of Grace
2 Akufen – Skidoos
3 Luomo – Tessio
4 Farben – Beautone
5 Matthew Dear – Dog Days

luv u edb

This is worth looking into:

http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=7104

god, just wanted to say that the post about Kompakt above reminded me that i have been listening to A LOT of early Jurgen Paape recently. in fact, its mostly been UR, Jurgen Paape, and Ian loveday tracks in these parts as of recent. nothing new.

also, hey, it just occurred to me: whatever happened to Jichael Mackson?

yeah i agree, new music is shit

sike, just kidding

i'm thoroughly enjoying the new "alex o smith" record. was kinda lukewarm on here with me, the new one is a bit more upbeat, star-gazing ashra style arpeggios

the drums on "kosmos 1402" are so... crispy

afaik jichael mackson hasn't put anything out since the same but different ep last year. unless he has a new pseudonym

forgot about the polmo polpo cover version - nice inclusion!

http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/lwe-podcast-42-anthony-shake-shakir/

Should be picking up Frictionalism sometime in the next few days...

new gui boratto mix thing sounds great to me

UR - Somewhere In Japan - 12EP
Code: WPA-4UR-079
COMING SOON.......LATE FEBRUARY / EARLY MARCH 2010!!!
W.P.A. Mail Order ONLY release.

can you elaborate on that sir ilx-a-lot? been hammering No Turning Back (and the Whignomy Bros mix) recently.

ha, you can call me cutty

it's called "renaissance - the mix collection"

http://www.recordstore.co.uk/images/covers10/01.2010/renaissance_mix_collection_gui_boratto-300.jpg

i always am wary of people who started DJing after successful production career ie green velvet, james holden(for the first few years), half the kitsune roster. smacks of rank opportunism

what about the other way around?

more like smacks of rank wanting to eat

Dj's are now taking time off to produce tracks so they can get more DJ bookings. Don't hate the player (of records), hate the game (of booking).

SELLOUTS

I know sod all about techno/house bobbins but I do know that James Holden had a local DJing residency years before he produced a track successful enough for me to go "damn, I wish I'd turned up to that" so perhaps that is unfair (or perhaps I should fuck back off the bobbins thread)

though yes, production famous before DJing, point taken, just questioning "started"

Hmmm, the tracklisting for the Gui Borrato mix looks interesting enough but the proliferation of podcasts (I usually grab ones on FACT, RA, LWE regularly) has kinda given me mix fatigue. Maybe I should just stop downloading them....

^ Completely! To be honest, I've always been a mix junky so I find it very hard to resist. Having said that, the most exciting recent mixes have come from the UK / dubstep camp e.g. Scuba Substance, Shed FACT, Appleblim Fabric, Oneman's Winter Mix. Finding little to get excited about on the 4 to the floor side (with the exception of the mnml ssgs series).

the gui boratto mix is eh. most mixes are kind of eh, have no patience with them any longer.

also, pretty much any mix a la Renaissance or Cocoon or Mobilee or Get Physical = total garbage toss-off bullshit.

Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit by Chasing Voices

thank you

That Chymera track is just pure loveliness. I've been all for the general direction of whatever Chymera I've heard, but I've always felt it needed a bit softening at the edges, and this delivers just that.

And that Storm Queen track IS kinda nice, kinda really nice.

saw alex barck (jazzanova) last night and wow was he awesome. not really from a technical stand point but more from the way he played these wtf-is-that unknown/unreleased tracks. one standout track is the one with a "hard knock life" sample (annie soundtrack). any idea what that could be?

love that storm queen track

really feelin' this track from earlier this year, esp. when the distorted voices come in about halfway thru

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCJX4_JbYAE

this koze/isolee thing on beats in space is awesome

anyone diggin this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pUhQLRe6w4

nice acid-y cosmin trg remix here. He also did good EP earlier in the year, Liebe Suende

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEgg-p5oTzk

This is too much fun/too mad to pass up...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EkGZK2g2qo

Along with MMM and Workshop 11 its prob my fave techno bits from '10

http://www.smileyhut.com/smileys/headbang.gifInner City - Good Life (Unreleased Schermate Tool) - 2010 - Unknownhttp://www.smileyhut.com/smileys/headbang.gif

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNFqlWBzmdc

Picked up that Bakey Ustl 10" today (along with Hype Williams' Find Out What Happens.. LP). The Bakey Ustl is frickin' awesome!!

i really really want mp3s of that bakey ustl ;_;

fkn vinyl-only releases

vinyl only has hit me quite a bit this year, ended up buying quite a few records even though i don't have decks or a record player, then had to get them digitized elsewhere. That said, totally understand the financial reasoning behind vinyl only releases (though I have basically no desire to get into that particular debate)

Haven't been able to afford much vinyl this year, but I did buy that Bakey Ustl the first time I heard it. Very fine.

I'm kind of surprised how little Glass Eights talk there is on ILM. In any case, I'm 1.2 listens into it and it's reeeeeal purdy.

'glass eights' is very nice! john roberts is playing here with omar-s and d'julz next weekend, i'm excited to hear him live.

A-side tracks of this: http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=8436

if the ep had only been the a-side, might have snuck into my top 10 for 2010

I hope it's alright to revive a past year's Techno Bobbins, as I wasn't sure where else to post this, but... I picked up The Traveller by Shed a few weeks ago, and it has grown to become something I listen to almost every day. It's really sublime, really creative without being ostentatious about it, it sounds great, it displays restraint and lays ideas bare without being "minimal," it feels gently enigmatic like lots of my favorite techno does.

Side question: how much digging into past year's techno/house do you guys tend to do? The scenes move fast, and given that I didn't buy much new music at all (relatively speaking) for the past few years, I'm playing catchup on '09 and '10 (and discovering lots!).

lots!!!

i actually spend much more time digging than checking new stuff.

i feel like when an album sounds "current" and it's from this year big fucking deal

but when i dig up something from 06 or 08 that sounds fresher than it did at the time, it's like a buried treasure rush

now that i think about that, maybe it's because i tend to hear one track, learn about a new label, and then sort of relentlessly track down their whole back catalogue if i like it enough

last year i found out about artless / mojuba

I have so, so far to go in exploring techno, but the ravenously-explore-label approach seems pretty sound... I suppose the labels I'm really starting to dig into at this point are Rush Hour, Delsin (mainly because of that Morphosis record from this year), and Ostgut Ton...

now that i think about that, maybe it's because i tend to hear one track, learn about a new label, and then sort of relentlessly track down their whole back catalogue if i like it enough

otm, I do this with artists or related artists

Honestly, fuck staying current. Not that I don't follow new stuff with very much enjoyment, to have the question "did it come out in the last year" define your listening tastes is myopic, counterproductive, and just silly. (This is why, for instance, I would welcome '10 or even '09 stuff in the 2011 thread. Better it be spoken there than have nowhere to go).

the nuum only moves forward iirc

sometimes doesn't bother to even look backward, or sideways