Techno/House Bobbins of the past

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

Kurupt - C Walk (1998)

crisp and autumnal

I like this expansive definition of 'bobbins' that includes the C-Walk.

No expansive only core

Psychedelic Research Lab - Taraneh (Spy's Sub Mix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKoc38QTzvw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpEstBxLGcA
molinaro - "jtl" (2019)

love those drums

Merrick Brown - Stealth Crime (pretty sure the video is mislabelled)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcSW40mzT3U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mklI8PwKmBc

Liebe Ist Cool - Hymn (2006)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ota60aWnXdM

Xen Mantra - All That Shakin'

Mark Archer of Altern 8 and might be his best one too

Soul Parlor - Hearing Comfort

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRGHYlxzEU8

that Soul Parlor is wonderful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34jrTJHUIGk

Junkie Sartre - Let's Take It Over

smooth sailing with Patti Smith on vocals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX7FTygXSHU

DKMA - Can't Turn Around (DKMA Millennium Dub) (1999)

smooth sailing after Patti disembarks

Junkie Sartre is v intriguing - not surprised to learn it’s Richard Davis, always loved his work.

re: DKMA, Dana Kelly another deeply reliable producer (gonna take a moment to feel gratitude for those callisto represses for awhile back)

Finn posted this on twitter, captured me instantly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwkVR3VeKas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zChr_yZ5CYA

Willie Snickers - Set The Fire (1996)

Turns out its Boo Williams

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjLnP_XLW5c

Lynn Lockamie - Love So Strong (Metro Dub)

Textbook delivery

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

Fozbee and Bigdrum - Truth

a different textbook

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCcAA28rhwc

Snaky Snake - Wish Of Jazz (1999)

a jaunty outlook

great stuff

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

Cortex - A Winning Team (1979)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT9DsybF9ok

Kamasutra - Night Walk (1994)

ambling and meandering

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ1p7lIk8U4

Alex Font - Randolph's (2016)

late summer shimmering from Valencia Spain

Can't remember where I heard about this, maybe ILM, anyway I'm glad I did ...

https://stefangoldmann.bandcamp.com/album/macrospective

loving this Yukiyo Takabayashi EP from 1996, which as far as I can tell is her only release. she showed up on some other artists' releases doing remixes, but otherwise there's nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2McZ3nfY138

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOG5b8f1XW4

Elan - Reminiscing Avec Moi (Maria's Secret)

Woozy slow jam bobbins from 1993 on Left Coast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WmM169LLjc

2 Deep - Te Adoro (Original 2 Deep Mix)

brrrreeezy

Love the Callisto records but don't miss out on DKMA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjt9etdGOb4

This is my fav Dana record but of course there are so many

― saer, Saturday, 30 November 2019 03:33 (four years ago) link

Caught a copy of this in the wild (pardon the 4 year xpost, thought this was the DKMA track posted last june. In any case, finding dana kelly records is always an occasion)

wild planet - synethetic

Had never heard of Wild Planet, but they’ve out out albums on warp and 430 West (interesting since I can’t think of too many artists outside Michigan/US they release).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsLkTVAbv3I

just uploaded this mystical deep house obscurity from 1995, hang in there for the piano...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0UQzGB7EIs
Stoned Cold feat. Keri Greenaway - So Determined (Deep House, UK, 1995)

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

Fabulous Baker Boys - Oh Boy (Ramsey & Fen Remix) (1997)

a nod and a wink

biiiiig big big tune:

Neurotic Drum Band - Vibrate (In a White Room) (2004)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oybsE1-WEuw

Just saw one of them at a friend's birthday party in Brooklyn. John and Elliot were pretty influential in the techno into italo-revival kind of thing back then. Elliot through the party at Plant Bar where I went to see Metro Area DJ and I met Luke from the Rapture and thus started my post-punk disco party. He also promoted bigger parties bringing Adult. and I-F. Very dot com electroclash era.

Those were some good days! I think I saw I-F at "fun" back then.

Inspired by a random post on Reddit I've ended up working through every last 'master release' on Discogs in the broader 'Techno' genre chronologically from the very start - a mammoth and thankless OCD task but surprisingly easy to manage while working from home on a pretty much unsupervised data engineering job. I've always loved the genre and over the years built up a decent collection from circa 1998 but felt like I was missing some key stuff I'd have loved that never became 'canon'.

At this point I've just finished 1993 and have amassed a spreadsheet of about 750 absolutely amazing releases so far, a decent amount of which I've snapped up directly on Bandcamp. I've also listened to about 5 seconds of, and then skipped, realistically about 5,000 absolutely dire pop techno horrors(mainly Italian and Dutch) and a tonne of increasingly comically hard Gabba tracks. Not sure how far I'll go with the project before I go insane / get sacked / go bankrupt, or what I'll end up doing with the knowledge but it's been a joy so far. Listening to how styles evolved, seeing producers pop up and improve or change course over periods of time, encountering the Detroit / Berlin crossover in 'real time' etc. It's like going record shopping down the local dance shop all over again.

Either way, the biggest hit of the last few days has been this absolute pelter - probably not new to most of you but I somehow totally missed it:

Acid Scout - 4 Degrees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y6H0Z-mduw

Acid Scout were so good. So utterly unapologetic

Might need you to share that spreadsheet.

and a tonne of increasingly comically hard Gabba tracks

Lenny Dee has been the most interesting case for that so far - in maybe an 18 month period his releases morph from relatively mild Frankie Bones style housey breakbeat to fast as hell, ridiculously fierce walls of saturated kick drums and noise. Kind of retrospectively worried for him at this point. Who hurt you Lenny, here’s to a better 1994 lol

How it all felt to me as clubber + record collector in 1991-1993 was that the relatively limited sonic palette of Detroit techno + Chicago house had kickstarted a much more exciting/varied sonic landscape with Jungle in the UK, Trance in Germany & Belgium, IDM in the UK, Acid/Goa etc. That crazy hardcore/gabber one-upmanship going on in Holland (also finding an audience in NY and the UK scenes) was part of that wild everything-is-possible-what-will-they-think-of-next experience.

The rapid gentrification of Detroit/Chicago at the time as the tasteful middle-brow sound for mature discerning clubbers who were 'real underground', in-the-know, respectful of the history etc felt intensely boring to me, I guess in the same way that so many people (used to? still? not my scene tbh) dismiss backpacker/boom bap Hip-Hop. Now that I'm older I can appreciate it more, there are indeed many gems among the crud, kudos for sifting through it all.

In retrospect this wild expansionist time was really a surprisingly short period, things got codified into subgenres with strict sonic conventions very quickly.

I got off the hardcore/gabber train around 1992 when it all got a bit too fast and sonically abrasive to me to dance to or listen at home (Death/Black Metal scratched that itch much better), also the audience at the clubs quickly became way too football hooligan for me. I've checked back in occasionally over the years, I can listen to and appreciate it in small doses.

Re: Detroit becoming ‘tasteful’ - there’s a bit in the ‘Der Klang Der Familie’ book where Thomas Fehlmann describes how whenever the Detroit guys were booked for Tresor in the very early days they would stay for a week or 2, get in Maurizio / Fehlmann’s studio and craft an EP.

Blake Baxter then mentions that, at that point, the Detroit guys were just producing on a couple Roland boxes direct to a mixer, but the Berlin guys had a room full of synths and used a PC for sequencing, which blew their minds.

Wading through all these old tracks you can pretty much spot when most of the main Detroit guys must have flown over, as their releases suddenly dip from ‘raw and funky as hell’ to a few grandiose ‘this is my magnum opus’ washes of synths and notes unlike anything previously. Thanks for nothing Thomas!

That aside, coming across ‘Sun Electric’ (another Thomas Fehlmann associated act) has been another real treat, another act I had totally slept on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ITMRG7ATk

Sun Electric were amazing, I was a huge fan then and now.

One of the remarkable things is that this kind of lush hi-fi atmospheric stuff was a central part of the German trance scene at the time but retrospectively post-Tiësto/Armin all that got retconned as "techno", and much of the stuff that actually was called "techno" then got airbrushed out of history as "rave" or "hardcore".

I can see that - there is a lot of stuff tagged as Techno in Discogs from 90-92 that your modern fan would likely shudder at. Some of the early Spanish stuff especially is absolutely dire.

Re: the German trance scene, you can also pretty much spot when key synths are released. Everyone at one point seems to have got hold of a Korg Wavestation and made an ambient album or B side at minimum 😂

It's a remarkable turnaround where at the time (1991-1995) the trance scene was seen as a more musically ambitious step up from overly simplistic/populist Techno bangers for pilled-up ravers (much like Jungle & atmospheric Drum & Bass).

But retroactively the whole oldschool Trance scene got airbrushed and re-labeled as Techno, to the point where you almost get banned by 20-year-old mods on Discogs for suggesting that tracks like "Acid Eiffel", "Acperience" or those old Sun Electric, Speedy J and Quazar tracks have any connection to Trance, which would've been absolutely baffling to any DJ or clubber who was in that scene.

Definitely, you can see the German side of things rapidly splitting along the lines of notes and melodies vs sound design. Then Waveform Transmissions v1 comes along and pretty much defines what the genre ends up becoming, which where I’ve just got to :)

I only ever came across any of the proto-trance stuff on this late night weekend show on UK Channel 4 that played it over space video clips, along with Black Dog etc.

I caught the very tail end (no pun intended) of the non-shit trance era via Megadog dance tents / market stall raves / chill out areas at my first few festivals as a teen but would have loved to have caught it out in the wild properly.

On that note, this was another ‘holy shit’ moment when it popped up on Discogs after another 20 ‘James Brown is Dead’ knockoffs:

Barbarella - Barbarella (The Irresistible Force mix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2a51A2eMaU

Some of the early Spanish stuff especially is absolutely dire.

A lot of the Spanish & Italian stuff from that time was still clunky second-rate EBM, just sped up a bit and relabeled as Techno.

Speaking of which, I was revisiting the old Technopolis/Techno Club compilations a bit back, it's really interesting to see the point where the German producers pivot from EBM to techno/trance in 1989-1991.

Yeah the EBM > Trance pathway wasn’t something I’d really considered before.

It’s pretty wild that fucking *Laibach* of all people end up putting out some pretty hands in the air bangers at one point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49VkhI-kCTY

Also following the career arc of Torsten Fenslau from EBM to Culture Beat has been far more enjoyable than I might have admitted if I was forced to listen to all his tunes out of the context of other tunes of the era. Aged like milk obviously nowadays, but sonically he was way ahead of his dance pop peers for a bit.

i think the early Torsten Fenslau tracks have aged well. "Alone It's Me" is all time. Force Legato and even Der Erdbeermund still sound good to me.

I was a huge Lenny D fan in the late 80s / early 90s. i booked him right at the point he went full on Gabba. i thought it was funny for 90 seconds and then had had enough it but the crowd loved it.

Yeah it must have been wild booking people a few months in advance back then - imagine having to worry about a booking inventing a whole new genre before their gig came around 😂