Techno is a form of
electronic dance musicElectronic dance music is electronic music produced primarily for the purposes of use within a nightclub setting, or in an environment that is centered upon dance-based entertainment...
(EDM) that emerged in Detroit,
MichiganMichigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word
techno, in reference to a
genreA music genre is a categorical and typological construct that identifies musical sounds as belonging to a particular category and type of music that can be distinguished from other types of music...
of music, was in 1988. Many styles of techno now exist, but
Detroit technoDetroit techno is an early style of electronic music beginning in the 1980s. Detroit, Michigan has been cited as the birthplace of techno music. Prominent Detroit Techno artists include Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson...
is seen as the foundation upon which a number of subgenres have been built.
The initial take on techno arose from the melding of popular
electronic musicElectronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
by artists such as
KraftwerkKraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
,
Giorgio MoroderHansjörg "Giorgio" Moroder is an Italian record producer, songwriter and performer based in Los Angeles. When in Munich in the 1970s, he started his own record label called Oasis Records, which several years later became a subdivision of Casablanca Records...
and
Yellow Magic OrchestraSakamoto first worked with Hosono as a member of his live band in 1976, while Takahashi recruited Sakamoto to produce his debut solo recording in 1977 following the split of the Sadistic Mika Band...
with
African American musicAfrican-American music is an umbrella term given to a range of musics and musical genres emerging from or influenced by the culture of African Americans, who have long constituted a large and significant ethnic minority of the population of the United States...
including
funkFunk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
, electro,
Chicago houseChicago house is a style of house music, a genre of electronic dance music which emerged in Chicago in the mid-1980s. Stylistically, Chicago house has no widely accepted definition, but generally includes the first house music productions by Chicago-based artists throughout the 1980s, and any later...
and
electric jazzJazz fusion is a musical fusion genre that developed from mixing funk and R&B rhythms and the amplification and electronic effects of rock, complex time signatures derived from non-Western music and extended, typically instrumental compositions with a jazz approach to lengthy group improvisations,...
. Added to this is the influence of
futuristicFuturism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city...
and fictional themes that are relevant to life in
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
late
capitalistCapitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
society—particularly the book
The Third WaveThe Third Wave is a book published in 1980 by Alvin Toffler. It is the sequel to Future Shock, published in 1970, and the second in what was originally just a trilogy that was continued with Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century in 1990...
by
Alvin TofflerAlvin Toffler is an American writer and futurist, known for his works discussing the digital revolution, communication revolution, corporate revolution and technological singularity....
. Pioneering
producerA record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
Juan AtkinsJuan Atkins is an American musician. He is widely credited as the originator of techno music, specifically Detroit techno along with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson...
cites Toffler's phrase "techno rebels" as inspiring him to use the word
techno to describe the musical style he helped to create. This unique blend of influences aligns techno with the aesthetic referred to as
afrofuturismAfrofuturism is an emergent literary and cultural aesthetic that combines elements of science fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, Afrocentricity, and magic realism with non-Western cosmologies in order to critique not only the present-day dilemmas of people of color, but also to revise,...
. To producers such as Derrick May, the transference of spirit from the body to the machine is often a central preoccupation; essentially an expression of technological
spiritualitySpirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
. In this manner: "techno dance music defeats what
AdornoTheodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
saw as the alienating effect of mechanisation on the modern consciousness".
Music journalists and fans of techno are generally selective in their use of the term; so a clear distinction can be made between sometimes related but often qualitatively different styles, such as
tech houseTech house is a subgenre of house music that mixes elements of minimal techno into simple, 4-to-4 beats found in soulful deep house. The genre came to prominence in the late-1990s atmosphere of American clubs as soul influenced Detroit-style techno that also borrowed elements from house before...
and
tranceTrance is a genre of electronic dance music that developed in the 1990s.:251 It is generally characterized by a tempo of between 125 and 150 bpm,:252 repeating melodic synthesizer phrases, and a musical form that builds up and breaks down throughout a track...
. "Techno" is also commonly confused with generalized descriptors, such as
electronic musicElectronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
and
dance musicDance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...
.
Origins
The initial blueprint for techno developed during the mid-1980s in
Belleville, MichiganBelleville is a city in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 3,991 at the 2010 census. It is the sister city of Machynlleth, Wales. Belleville is southeast of Ann Arbor and southwest of Detroit.-Geography:...
, a suburb of Detroit by
Juan AtkinsJuan Atkins is an American musician. He is widely credited as the originator of techno music, specifically Detroit techno along with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson...
,
Kevin SaundersonKevin Saunderson is an American electronic music producer. At the age of nine he moved to Belleville, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit where he attended Belleville High School and befriended two students, Derrick May and Juan Atkins...
, Derrick May (the so-called Belleville Three), and
Eddie FowlkesEddie "Flashin'" Fowlkes is a techno DJ from Detroit, Michigan, influential to the early Detroit techno scene.Fowlkes began his career as a DJ in high school, and attended business college briefly before turning full-time to a career in music...
, all of whom attended school together at
Belleville HighBelleville High School is a public high school located in Belleville, Michigan and the only zoned high school in the Van Buren School District.- History :...
. By the close of the 1980s, the four had recorded and released material under various guises: Atkins as
Model 500Juan Atkins is an American musician. He is widely credited as the originator of techno music, specifically Detroit techno along with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson...
, Flintstones, and Magic Juan; Fowlkes simply as Eddie "Flashin" Fowlkes; Saunderson as Reese, Keynotes, and Kaos; with May as Mayday, R-Tyme, and Rhythim Is Rhythim. There were also a number of joint ventures, the most commercially successful of which was "
Big FunParadise is the debut album by Detroit-based house music duo Inner City, released in 1989. The album was a great success in the UK and in US clubs, and was one of the first house-music albums to cross over to the mainstream charts, particularly in Europe...
," the first single by Saunderson's group Inner City; it was produced by Saunderson, mixed by Atkins, re-edited by Saunderson & May, and co-written by Saunderson with vocalist
Paris GreyParis Grey is an American singer, most known for her work with the Detroit-based techno-music producer Kevin Saunderson, as Inner City...
, and fellow DJs
James PenningtonJames Pennington, also known as Suburban Knight, is an artist and DJ and Producer with Underground Resistance , an independent record label based in Detroit, USA...
and Arthur Forest.
Notable influences
In exploring techno's origins writer
Kodwo EshunKodwo Eshun is a British-Ghanaian writer, theorist and film-maker. He studied English Literature at University College, Oxford University and Romanticism and Modernism MA Hons at Southampton University...
maintains that "Kraftwerk are to Techno what Muddy Waters is to the Rolling Stones: the authentic, the origin, the real." Juan Atkins has acknowledged that he had an early enthusiasm for
KraftwerkKraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
and
Giorgio MoroderHansjörg "Giorgio" Moroder is an Italian record producer, songwriter and performer based in Los Angeles. When in Munich in the 1970s, he started his own record label called Oasis Records, which several years later became a subdivision of Casablanca Records...
, particularly Moroder's work with
Donna SummerLaDonna Adrian Gaines , known by her stage name, Donna Summer, is an American singer/songwriter who gained prominence during the disco era of the 1970s. She has a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Summer is a five-time Grammy winner and was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach...
and the producer's own album
E=MC². Atkins also mentions that "around 1980 I had a tape of nothing but Kraftwerk,
TelexThe Belgian synth-pop group Telex was formed in 1978 by Marc Moulin, Dan Lacksman, and Michel Moers, with the intention of "Making something really European, different from rock, without guitar — and the idea was electronic music." Mixing the aesthetics of disco, punk and experimental electronic...
,
DevoDevo is an American band formed in 1973 consisting of members from Kent and Akron, Ohio. The classic line-up of the band includes two sets of brothers, the Mothersbaughs and the Casales . The band had a #14 Billboard chart hit in 1980 with the single "Whip It", and has maintained a cult...
, Giorgio Moroder and
Gary NumanGary Numan is an English singer, composer, and musician, most widely known for his chart-topping 1979 hits "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and "Cars". His signature sound consisted of heavy synthesizer hooks fed through guitar effects pedals.Numan is considered a pioneer of commercial electronic music...
, and I'd ride around in my car playing it." Atkins has also claimed he was unaware of Kraftwerk's music prior to his collaboration with Rick Davis, which was two years after he had first started experimenting with electronic instruments. Regarding his initial impression of Kraftwerk, Atkins notes that they were "clean and precise" relative to the "weird UFO sounds" featured in his seemingly "psychedelic" music.
Derrick May identified the influence of Kraftwerk and other European synthesizer music in commenting that "it was just classy and clean, and to us it was beautiful, like outer space. Living around Detroit, there was so little beauty... everything is an ugly mess in Detroit, and so we were attracted to this music. It, like, ignited our imagination!". May has commented that he considered his music a direct continuation of the European synthesizer tradition. Kevin Saunderson has also acknowledged the influence of Europe but he claims to have been more inspired by the idea of making music with electronic equipment: "I was more infatuated with the idea that I can do this all myself." Beyond Europe, another influence was Japan's
Yellow Magic OrchestraSakamoto first worked with Hosono as a member of his live band in 1976, while Takahashi recruited Sakamoto to produce his debut solo recording in 1977 following the split of the Sadistic Mika Band...
(1978–83), whose music has been described as "proto-techno" and who had used the term "techno" for several songs, particularly "
TechnopolisSolid State Survivor was the second album by Japanese electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra, released in 1979. Solid State Survivor was never released in the United States, but many of the songs from this album were compiled for release in the States as the US pressing of ×∞Multiplies ,...
" (1979), which is considered an "interesting contribution" to the development of Detroit techno, was a tribute to
Tokyo, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
as an electronic mecca, and foreshadowed concepts that Atkins and Davis would later have with Cybotron.
School days
Prior to achieving notoriety, Atkins, Saunderson, May, and Fowlkes shared common interests as budding musicians,
"mix"A DJ mix or DJ mixset is a sequence of musical tracks typically mixed together to appear as one continuous track. When a DJ mix or DJ mixset is recorded onto some medium, it is often referred to as a mix tape...
tape traders, and aspiring DJs. They also found musical inspiration via the
Midnight Funk Association, an eclectic five-hour late-night radio program hosted on various Detroit radio stations, including
WCHBWCHB is an American AM radio station licensed to Taylor, Michigan, at 1200 kHz, and serving the Detroit market. Owned by Radio One, WCHB identifies as NewsTalk 1200 WCHB and airs a News/Talk format.-AM 1440 WCHB:...
,
WGPRWGPR is an FM radio station in Detroit, Michigan brodacasting a Mainstream Urban format. Owned by the International Free and Accepted Modern Masons and operated under local marketing agreement by Radio One, the station operates on 107.5 MHz....
, and WJLB-FM from 1977 through the mid-1980s by DJ Charles "
The Electrifying MojoThe Electrifying Mojo is an American radio personality. He was a disc jockey based in Detroit, Michigan whose on-air journey of musical and social development shaped a generation of music-lovers in Detroit and throughout southeastern Michigan and Canada and was of importance to the development of...
" Johnson. Mojo's show featured
electronic musicElectronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
by artists such as Giorgio Moroder, Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra and
Tangerine DreamTangerine Dream is a German electronic music group founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The band has undergone many personnel changes over the years, with Froese being the only continuous member...
, alongside the funk sounds of acts such as Parliament Funkadelic and dance oriented
new wave musicNew Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
by bands like
DevoDevo is an American band formed in 1973 consisting of members from Kent and Akron, Ohio. The classic line-up of the band includes two sets of brothers, the Mothersbaughs and the Casales . The band had a #14 Billboard chart hit in 1980 with the single "Whip It", and has maintained a cult...
and
the B-52'sThe B-52's are an American rock band, formed in Athens, Georgia in 1976. The original line-up consisted of Fred Schneider , Kate Pierson , Cindy Wilson , Ricky Wilson , and Keith Strickland . Following Ricky Wilson's death in 1985 Strickland switched to guitar...
. Atkins has noted:
Despite the short-lived disco boom in Detroit, it had the effect of inspiring many individuals to take up mixing, Juan Atkins among them. Subsequently, Atkins taught May how to mix records, and in 1981, "Magic Juan", Derrick "Mayday", in conjunction with three other DJ's, one of whom was Eddie "Flashin" Fowlkes, launched themselves as a party crew called Deep Space Soundworks (also referred to as Deep Space). In 1980 or 1981 they met with Mojo and proposed that they provide mixes for his show, which they did end up doing the following year.
During the late 1970s/early 1980s high school clubs such as Brats, Charivari, Ciabattino, Comrades, Gables, Hardwear, Rafael, Rumours, Snobs, and Weekends created the incubator in which techno was grown. These young promoters developed and nurtured the local dance music scene by both catering to the tastes of the local audience of young people and by marketing parties with new DJs and their music. As these local clubs grew in popularity, groups of DJs began to band together to market their mixing skills and
sound systemsA sound system is a group of DJs and engineers contributing and working together as one, playing and producing music.-Origin:The sound system concept originated in the 1950s in Kingston, Jamaica. DJs would load up a truck with a generator, turntables, and huge speakers to set up street parties...
to the clubs in order to cater to the growing audiences of listeners. Locations like local church activity centers, vacant warehouses, offices, and
YMCAThe Young Men's Christian Association is a worldwide organization of more than 45 million members from 125 national federations affiliated through the World Alliance of YMCAs...
auditoriums were the early locations where underage crowds gathered and the musical form was nurtured and defined.
Juan Atkins
Of the four individuals responsible for establishing techno as a genre in its own right, Juan Atkins is widely cited as "The Originator". Atkins' role was likewise acknowledged in 1995 by the American music technology publication
Keyboard MagazineKeyboard Magazine is a magazine that originally covered electronic keyboard instruments and keyboardists, though with the advent of computer based recording and audio technology, they have added digital music technology to their regular coverage, including those not strictly pertaining to the...
, which honored Atkins as one of
12 Who Count in the history of keyboard music.
In the early 1980s, Atkins began recording with musical partner
Richard "3070" DavisRichard Davis is a composer and producer of techno music from Detroit.A veteran of the Vietnam War, he and Juan Atkins met while students at Washtenaw Community College. Following this, they formed the group known as Cybotron in the early 1980s. Davis also released music of his own under the...
(and later with a third member, Jon-5) as Cybotron. This trio released a number of rock and electro-inspired tunes, the most successful of which were
Clear"Clear" is a 1983 Electro song performed by the American group Cybotron, and composed by Cybotron members Juan Atkins and Richard Davis.- Sampled versions :...
(1983) and its moodier followup, "Techno City" (1984).
According to a recent bio on MySpace, Atkins claims to have "coined the term techno to describe their music, taking as one inspiration the works of Futurist and author Alvin Toffler, from whom he borrowed the terms 'cybotron' and 'metroplex.' Atkins has used the term to describe earlier bands that made heavy use of synthesizers, such as Kraftwerk, although many people would consider Kraftwerk's music and Juan's early music in Cybotron as electro." Atkins viewed Cybotron's "Cosmic Cars" (1982) as unique, Germanic, synthesized funk, but he later heard
Afrika BambaataaAfrika Bambaataa is an American DJ from the South Bronx, New York who was instrumental in the early development of hip hop throughout the 1980s. Afrika Bambaataa is one of the three originators of break-beat deejaying, and is respectfully known as the "Grandfather" and the Amen Ra of Universal...
's "
Planet Rock"Planet Rock" is a 1982 song by Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force. In the background and hooks featured Marvella Murray, Yvette Murray, Melissa Johnson and Sandra Wheeler. Although it was only a minor hit in the US, Canada, and UK, it helped change the foundations of hip-hop and dance music...
" (1982) and considered it to be a superior example of the music he envisioned. Inspired, he resolved to continue experimenting, and he encouraged Saunderson and May to do likewise.
Eventually, Atkins started producing his own music under the pseudonym
Model 500Juan Atkins is an American musician. He is widely credited as the originator of techno music, specifically Detroit techno along with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson...
, and in 1985 he established the record label
MetroplexMetroplex is a techno record label in Detroit, founded in 1985 by techno pioneer Juan Atkins. Juan Atkins did most of his work for the label under the pseudonyms Model 500 and Infiniti.-Discography:* M-001 Model 500 - No UFOs/Future...
. In the same year, he released a seminal work entitled "No UFOs," one of the first Detroit techno productions to receive wider attention and an important turning point for the music. Of this time, Atkins has said
Detroit sound
The early producers, enabled by the increasing affordability of sequencers and synthesizers, merged a European
synthpopSynthpop is a genre of popular music that first became prominent in the 1980s, in which the synthesizer is the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic art rock, disco and particularly the "Kraut rock" of...
aesthetic with aspects of
soulSoul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
,
funkFunk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
, disco, and electro, pushing electronic dance music into uncharted terrain. They deliberately rejected the
MotownMotown is a record label originally founded by Berry Gordy, Jr. and incorporated as Motown Record Corporation in Detroit, Michigan, United States, on April 14, 1960. The name, a portmanteau of motor and town, is also a nickname for Detroit...
legacy and traditional formulas of
R&BRhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
and
soulSoul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
, and instead embraced technological experimentation.
The resulting Detroit sound was interpreted by Derrick May and one journalist in 1988 as a "post-soul" sound with no debt to
MotownMotown is a record label originally founded by Berry Gordy, Jr. and incorporated as Motown Record Corporation in Detroit, Michigan, United States, on April 14, 1960. The name, a portmanteau of motor and town, is also a nickname for Detroit...
, but by another journalist a decade later as "soulful grooves" melding the beat-centric styles of Motown with the music technology of the time. May famously described the sound of techno as something that is "...like Detroit...a complete mistake. It's like
George ClintonGeorge Clinton is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and music producer and the principal architect of P-Funk. He was the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and early 1980s, and launched a solo career in 1981. He has been cited as one of the foremost...
and
KraftwerkKraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
are stuck in an elevator with only a sequencer to keep them company." Juan Atkins has stated that it is "music that sounds like technology, and not technology that sounds like music, meaning that most of the music you listen to is made with technology, whether you know it or not. But with techno music, you know it."
The sound exerted an influence on widely differing styles of electronic music, yet it also maintained an identity as a genre in its own right, one now commonly referred to as "
Detroit technoDetroit techno is an early style of electronic music beginning in the 1980s. Detroit, Michigan has been cited as the birthplace of techno music. Prominent Detroit Techno artists include Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson...
."
Chicago
The music's producers, especially May and Saunderson, admit to having been fascinated by the Chicago club scene and influenced by house in particular. May's 1987/1989 hit "Strings of Life" (released under the alias Rhythim Is Rhythim) is considered a classic in both the house and techno genres.
Juan Atkins also believes that the first
acid houseAcid house is a sub-genre of house music that emphasizes a repetitive, hypnotic and trance-like style, often with samples or spoken lines rather than sung lyrics. Acid house's core electronic squelch sounds were developed around the mid-1980s, particularly by DJs from Chicago who experimented with...
producers, seeking to distance house music from
discoDisco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
, emulated the techno sound. Atkins also suggests that the Chicago house sound developed as a result of
Frankie KnucklesFrankie Knuckles is an American DJ, record producer and remix artist. He played an important role in developing house music as a Chicago DJ in the 1980s and he helped to popularize house music in the 1990s, with his work as a producer and remixer...
' using a drum machine he bought from Derrick May. He claims:
In the UK, a club following for house music grew steadily from 1985, with interest sustained by scenes in London, Manchester, Nottingham, and later Sheffield and Leeds. The DJs thought to be responsible for house's early UK success include
Mike PickeringMichael "Duncan" Pickering has DJed at The Haçienda's infamous "Nude" and "Hot" nights and later "Shine". He worked for Factory Records where he signed Happy Mondays, To Hell With Burgundy and James amongst others...
,
Mark MooreMark Moore is a British dance music record producer and DJ. He was founder of the pop/sampling pioneers S'Express, and runs the London nightclubs, 'Electrogogo' and 'Can Can'.-Biography:...
, Colin Faver, and
Graeme ParkGraeme Park is an historic site in Horsham, Montgomery County. It is owned by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and operated by the non-profit group, The Friends of Graeme Park. It is the only surviving residence of a colonial-era Pennsylvania governor...
.
Acid House
By 1988, house music had exploded in the UK, and
acid houseAcid house is a sub-genre of house music that emphasizes a repetitive, hypnotic and trance-like style, often with samples or spoken lines rather than sung lyrics. Acid house's core electronic squelch sounds were developed around the mid-1980s, particularly by DJs from Chicago who experimented with...
was increasingly popular. There was also a long established warehouse party
subcultureIn sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
based around the
sound systemA sound system is a group of DJs and engineers contributing and working together as one, playing and producing music.-Origin:The sound system concept originated in the 1950s in Kingston, Jamaica. DJs would load up a truck with a generator, turntables, and huge speakers to set up street parties...
scene. In 1988, the music played at warehouse parties was predominantly house. That same year, the
BalearicBalearic Beat or either Balearic House and Balearic Trance is an eclectic blend of DJed dance music that originally emerged in the mid-1980s. It later became the name of a more specific style of electronic dance music that was popular into the mid-1990s...
party vibe associated with Ibiza based DJ Alfredo Fiorito was transported to London, when
Danny RamplingDanny Rampling is a British House Music DJ and is widely credited as one of the original founders of the UK's rave/club scene. His long career began in the early 1980s playing hip-hop, soul and funk around numerous bars and clubs in London.-Ibiza:...
and
Paul OakenfoldPaul Mark Oakenfold is a British record producer and a trance DJ.-Early Career: 1979–84:Paul Oakenfold's career was set to be a chef, after having hopes of becoming part of a band. He describes his early life as a "bedroom deejay" in a podcasted interview with Vancouver's 24 Hours, stating he grew...
opened the clubs Shoom and Spectrum, respectively. Both night spots quickly became synonymous with acid house, and it was during this period that the use of MDMA, as a party drug, started to gain prominence. Other important UK clubs at this time included Back to Basics in Leeds, Sheffield's Leadmill and Music Factory, and in Manchester
The HaçiendaFac 51 Haçienda was a nightclub and music venue in Manchester, England. It became most famous during the "Madchester" years of the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the 1990s it was labelled the most famous club in the world by Newsweek magazine...
, where Mike Pickering and Graeme Park's Friday night spot, Nude, was an important proving ground for American EDM, including the first techno from Detroit.
Acid house party fever escalated in London and Manchester, and it quickly became a cultural phenomenon. MDMA-fueled club goers, faced with 2 A.M. closing hours, sought refuge in the warehouse party scene that ran all night. To escape the attention of the press and the authorities, this after-hours activity quickly went underground. Within a year, however, up to 10,000 people at a time were attending the first commercially organized mass parties, called
raves, and a media storm ensued.
The success of house and acid house paved the way for wider acceptance of the Detroit sound, and vice-versa: techno was initially supported by a handful of house music clubs in Chicago, New York, and Northern England, with Detroit clubs catching up later; but in 1987, it was "Strings of Life" which eased London club-goers into acceptance of house, according to DJ Mark Moore.
The New Dance Sound of Detroit
]
The explosion of interest in EDM during the late 1980s provided a context for the development of techno as an identifiable
genreGenre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
. The mid-1988 UK release of
Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit,, an album compiled by ex-Northern Soul DJ and Kool Kat Records boss Neil Rushton (at the time an
A&RArtists and repertoire is the division of a record label that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of recording artists. It also acts as a liaison between artists and the record label.- Finding talent :...
scout for Virgin's "10 Records" imprint) and Derrick May, was an important milestone and marked the introduction of the word
techno in reference to a specific genre of music. Although the compilation put
techno into the lexicon of music journalism, the music was, for a time, sometimes characterized as Detroit's high-tech interpretation of Chicago house rather than a relatively pure genre unto itself. In fact, the compilation's working title had been
The House Sound of Detroit until the addition of Atkins' song "Techno Music" prompted reconsideration. Rushton was later quoted as saying he, Atkins, May, and Saunderson came up with the compilation's final name together, and that the Belleville Three voted down calling the music some kind of regional brand of house; they instead favored a term they were already using,
techno.
Derrick May views this as one of his busiest times and recalls that it was a period where he
Despite
Virgin RecordsVirgin Records is a British record label founded by English entrepreneur Richard Branson, Simon Draper, and Nik Powell in 1972. The company grew to be a worldwide music phenomenon, with platinum performers such as Roy Orbison, Devo, Genesis, Keith Richards, Janet Jackson, Culture Club, Lenny...
' disappointment with the poor sales of Rushton's compilation, the record was successful in establishing an identity for techno and was instrumental in establishing a platform in Europe for the music and its producers. Ultimately, the release served to distinguish the Detroit sound from Chicago house and other forms of EDM that were emerging during the rave era of the late 1980s and early '90s, a period during which techno became more adventurous and distinct.
Music Institute
In mid-1988, developments in the Detroit scene lead to the opening of nightclub called the Music Institute (MI), located at 1315 Broadway in downtown Detroit. The venue was secured by George Baker and Alton Miller with Darryl Wynn and Derrick May participating as Friday night DJs, and Baker and Chez Damier playing to a mostly gay crowd on Saturday nights.
The club closed on November 24, 1989, with Derrick May playing "Strings of Life" along with a recording of clock tower bells. May explains: Though short-lived, MI was known internationally for its all-night sets, its sparse white rooms, and its juice bar stocked with "smart drinks" (the Institute never served liquor). The MI, notes Dan Sicko, along with Detroit's early techno pioneers, "helped give life to one of the city's important musical subcultures – one that was slowly growing into an international scene."
Developments
As the original sound evolved in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it also diverged to such an extent that a wide spectrum of stylistically distinct music was being referred to as techno. This ranged from relatively pop oriented acts such as
MobyRichard Melville Hall , better known by his stage name Moby, is an American musician, DJ, and photographer. He is known mainly for his sample-based electronic music and his outspoken liberal political views, including his support of veganism and animal rights.Moby gained attention in the early...
to the distinctly anti-commercial sentiments of
Underground ResistanceUnderground Resistance is a musical collective from Detroit, Michigan, in the United States of America. They are the most militantly political example of modern Detroit Techno, with a grungy, four-track musical aesthetic and a strictly anti-mainstream business strategy...
. Derrick May's experimentation on works such as
Beyond the Dance (1989) and
The Beginning (1990) were credited with taking techno "in dozens of new directions at once and having the kind of expansive impact John Coltrane had on Jazz". By the late 1980s and early '90s, the original techno sound had garnered a large underground following in the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, The Netherlands and
BelgiumBelgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
. The growth of techno's popularity in Europe between 1988 and 1992 was largely due to the emergence of the party scene known as
raveRave, rave dance, and rave party are parties that originated mostly from acid house parties, which featured fast-paced electronic music and light shows. At these parties people dance and socialize to dance music played by disc jockeys and occasionally live performers...
and a thriving club culture.
Exodus
In America, apart from regional scenes in Detroit,
New YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and Chicago, interest was limited. Producers from Detroit, frustrated by the lack of opportunity in their home country, looked to Europe for their future livelihood. This first wave of Detroit expatriates was soon joined by a number of up-and-coming artists, the so called "second wave", including
Carl CraigCarl Craig is a Detroit-based producer of techno music, and is considered to be one of the most important names in the Detroit second generation of techno producers and DJs...
,
Octave OneOctave One is a group of American Techno musicians composed of siblings Lenny Burden and Lawrence Burden, sometimes associated with their three other brothers, Lorne Burden, Lynell Burden and Lance Burden. In 1989, The band debuted on Derrick May's Transmat record label with the single "I Believe"...
, Jay Denham,
Kenny LarkinKenny Larkin is an American techno producer from Detroit. He has been described by Allmusic as "massively influential" on American, British, and German techno....
, and
Stacey PullenStacey Pullen is an American techno musician based in Detroit.Pullen was raised in Detroit, where he became interested in electronic music early in his life. He began working on the Detroit techno scene in 1990, studying with Derrick May and working with him on business ventures. He used the...
, with
URUnderground Resistance is a musical collective from Detroit, Michigan, in the United States of America. They are the most militantly political example of modern Detroit Techno, with a grungy, four-track musical aesthetic and a strictly anti-mainstream business strategy...
's
Jeff MillsJeff Mills is an American techno DJ and producer.-Career:Starting in the early 1980s, Mills, using the name "The Wizard", was a recurring guest DJ on "The Electrifying Mojo" radio show on WJLB...
,
Mike BanksMichael Anthony Banks, better known as "Mad" Mike Banks, is an American techno producer. He is the co-founder, along with Jeff Mills, of US record label Underground Resistance and was a key player in the "second generation" of Detroit techno....
, and
Robert HoodRobert Hood is an American electronic music producer and DJ. He is a founding member of group Underground Resistance as a 'Minister Of Information' with Mad Mike Banks & Jeff Mills. He is often considered to be one of the founders of minimal techno....
pushing their own unique sound. A number of New York producers were also making an impression at this time, notably
Frankie BonesFrankie Bones is an American techno and house music disc jockey from New York City. He is best known for bringing the rave culture to the United States after playing at a hangar party in the UK during 1989...
, Lenny Dee, and
Joey BeltramJoey Beltram is an American DJ and record producer, best-known for the pioneering recordings "Energy Flash" and "Mentasm"....
. In the same period, close to Detroit (
Windsor, OntarioWindsor is the southernmost city in Canada and is located in Southwestern Ontario at the western end of the heavily populated Quebec City – Windsor Corridor. It is within Essex County, Ontario, although administratively separated from the county government. Separated by the Detroit River, Windsor...
),
Richie HawtinRichard Hawtin is an English-Canadian electronic musician and DJ who was an influential part of Detroit techno's second wave of artists in the early 1990s and a leading exponent of Minimal techno since the mid 1990s...
, with business partner
John AcquavivaJohn Acquaviva is an Italian-born Canadian second-wave techno artist and club DJ from London, Ontario. His friend Richie Hawtin co-founded the Plus 8 record label with him in 1990.In 2006, Acquaviva reached #22 on the ....
, launched the influential imprint
Plus 8Plus 8 is a Canadian techno record label, based in Windsor, Ontario and founded in 1990 by DJs Richie Hawtin and John Acquaviva. Initial releases were by the pair themselves and their friends using aliases such as States of Mind and Cybersonik, along with other Detroit-based musicians such as...
Records.
Developments in American-produced techno between 1990 and 1992 fueled the expansion and eventual divergence of techno in Europe, particularly in Germany. In
BerlinBerlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, following the closure of a free party venue called
UfoThe Ufo was the first Acid House club in Berlin. It was the pioneer place for the Techno scene during the reunification. Club's residents and guests DJs included, among others, to Tanith, Jonzon, Rok, Dr...
, the club
TresorTresor is an underground techno nightclub and record label. The club was founded in March 1991 in the vaults of the former old Wertheim department store in Mitte, the central part of the former East Berlin, next to the famous Potsdamer Platz, however the history of the club goes back to 1988 when...
opened in 1991. The venue was for a time the standard bearer for techno and played host to many of the leading Detroit producers, some of whom relocated to Berlin. By 1993, as interest in techno in the UK club scene started to wane, Berlin was considered the unofficial
techno capital of Europe.
Although eclipsed by Germany,
BelgiumBelgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
was another focus of second-wave techno in this time period. The
GhentGhent is a city and a municipality located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital and biggest city of the East Flanders province. The city started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Lys and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of...
-based label
R&S RecordsR&S Records is an independent record label. Founded in 1984 in Ghent, Belgium, it is now based in London and managed by Andy Whittaker and Dan Foat.R&S represents the initials of Renaat Vandepapeliere and Sabine Maes, the couple that created the label...
embraced harder-edged techno by "teenage prodigies" like Beltram and C.J. Bolland, releasing "tough, metallic tracks...with harsh, discordant synth lines that sounded like distressed Hoovers," according to one music journalist.
German techno scene
Germany's engagement with American EDM during the 1980s paralleled that in the UK. By 1987 a German party scene based around the Chicago sound was well established. The following year (1988) saw acid house making as significant an impact on popular consciousness in Germany as it had in England. In 1989 German DJs
WestbamWestBam, real name Maximilian Lenz , is techno DJs in Germany. His brother is Fabian Lenz, also known as DJ Dick....
and Dr. Motte established the
Ufo clubThe Ufo was the first Acid House club in Berlin. It was the pioneer place for the Techno scene during the reunification. Club's residents and guests DJs included, among others, to Tanith, Jonzon, Rok, Dr...
, an illegal party venue, and co-founded the
Love ParadeThe Love Parade was a popular electronic dance music festival and parade that originated in 1989 in West Berlin, Germany. It was held in Germany annually between 1989 and 2003 in Berlin, and then from 2006 to 2010 in the Ruhr region...
. After the
Berlin WallThe Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
fell on 9 November 1989, free underground techno parties mushroomed in
East BerlinEast Berlin was the name given to the eastern part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990. It consisted of the Soviet sector of Berlin that was established in 1945. The American, British and French sectors became West Berlin, a part strongly associated with West Germany but a free city...
, and a rave scene comparable to that in the UK was established. East German DJ
Paul van DykMatthias Paul, better known by his stage name Paul van Dyk is a German Grammy Award-winning Electronic Dance Music DJ, musician and record producer...
has remarked that techno was a major force in reestablishing social connections between East and West Germany during the unification period.
In 1991 a number of party venues closed, including
UfoThe Ufo was the first Acid House club in Berlin. It was the pioneer place for the Techno scene during the reunification. Club's residents and guests DJs included, among others, to Tanith, Jonzon, Rok, Dr...
, and the Berlin Techno scene centered itself around three locations close to the foundations of the Berlin Wall:
Planet (later renamed
E-WerkThe E-Werk was a techno music club in Berlin, which was previously an electrical substation. Located near Checkpoint Charlie, it was for many years one of Berlin's most well known techno clubs. It closed on 24 July 1997....
by Paul van Dyk),
Der Bunker, and the relatively long-lived
Tresor. It was in Tresor at this time that a trend in paramilitary clothing was established (amongst the techno fraternity) by a DJ called
TanithThomas Andrezak , better known as Tanith, is a German DJ and producer of electronic dance music. From 1990 to 1996 he was one of the most popular German Tekkno DJ ....
; possibly as an expression of a commitment to the underground aesthetic of the music, or perhaps influenced by
URUnderground Resistance is a musical collective from Detroit, Michigan, in the United States of America. They are the most militantly political example of modern Detroit Techno, with a grungy, four-track musical aesthetic and a strictly anti-mainstream business strategy...
's paramilitary posturing. In the same period, German DJs began intensifying the speed and abrasiveness of the sound, as an acid infused techno began transmuting into
hardcoreHardcore techno is a type of electronic music typified by the rhythmic use of distorted and atonal industrial-like beats and samples...
. DJ Tanith commented at the time that "Berlin was always hardcore, hardcore
hippieThe hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
, hardcore punk, and now we have a very hardcore house sound." This emerging sound is thought to have been influenced by Dutch
gabberGabber , is a style of electronic music and a subgenre of hardcore techno. "Gabber" is a slang word of Yiddish origin that means "mate", "buddy" or "friend"....
and Belgian hardcore; styles that were in their own perverse way paying homage to
Underground ResistanceUnderground Resistance is a musical collective from Detroit, Michigan, in the United States of America. They are the most militantly political example of modern Detroit Techno, with a grungy, four-track musical aesthetic and a strictly anti-mainstream business strategy...
and Richie Hawtin's Plus 8 Records. Other influences on the development of this style were European
Electronic Body MusicElectronic body music or industrial dance is a music genre that combines elements of industrial music and electronic dance music...
(EBM) groups of the mid-1980s such as
DAF-Science, nature and technology:* Decay accelerating factor, a protein involved in the complement system* Delayed auditory feedback, a device used to delay a person's voice to their own ear, which reduces stuttering and cluttering...
,
Front 242Front 242 is a pioneering Belgian electronic music group that came into prominence during the 1980s. They are known for being the premier pioneer of electronic body music and as a major influence on the electronic and industrial music genres.-Formation:...
, and
Nitzer EbbNitzer Ebb is a British EBM group formed in 1982 by Essex school friends Vaughan "Bon" Harris , Douglas McCarthy , and David Gooday .-Band name:...
.
Changes were also taking place in Frankfurt during the same period but it did not share the egalitarian approach found in the Berlin party scene. It was instead very much centred around discothèques and existing arrangements with various club owners. In 1988, after the Omen opened, the Frankfurt dance music scene was allegedly dominated by the club's management and they made it difficult for other promoters to get a start. By the early 1990s
Sven VathSven Väth is a Frankfurt-based DJ who has produced an extensive range of work since his career began in 1982. From 1985, he was part of the band OFF which released the hit "Electrica Salsa" in 1986...
had become perhaps the first DJ in Germany to be worshipped like a rock star. He performed centre stage with his fans facing him, and as co-owner of Omen, he is believed to have been the first techno DJ to run his own club. One of the few real alternatives then was The Bruckenkopf in
MainzMainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...
, underneath a Rhine bridge, a venue that offered a non-commercial alternative to Frankfurt's discotech based clubs. Other notable underground parties were those run by Force Inc. Music Works and Ata & Heiko from Playhouse records (Ongaku Musik). By 1992 DJ Dag & Torsten Fenslau were running a Sunday morning session at Dorian Gray, a plush discothèque near the
Frankfurt airportFrankfurt Airport may refer to:Airports of Frankfurt, Germany:*Frankfurt Airport , the largest airport in Germany*Frankfurt Egelsbach Airport, a general aviation airport*Frankfurt-Hahn Airport , a converted U.S...
. They initially played a mix of different styles including Belgian New Beat,
Deep HouseDeep house is a subgenre of house music that fuses elements of Chicago house into the 1980s jazz-funk and touches of soul music. In the early compositions , influences of jazz music were most frequently brought out by using more complex chords than simple triads which are held for many bars and...
, Chicago House, and synthpop such as Kraftwerk and Yello and it was out of this blend of styles that the Frankfurt trance scene is believed to have emerged.
In 1993-94 rave became a mainstream music phenomenon in Germany, seeing with it a return to "melody, New Age elements, insistently kitsch harmonies and timbres". This undermining of the German underground sound lead to the consolidation of a German "rave establishment," spearheaded by the party organisation Mayday, with its record label
Low SpiritLow Spirit Recordings was a German Techno Record Label. It wasfounded in 1986 by Maximilian Lenz , Fabian Lenz, William Röttger and Klaus Jankuhn.-Artists:*CIRC*DJ Dick*Eastbam*Genlog*Hardy Hard*Lexy & K-Paul*Marc de Clarq*Mark 'Oh*Marusha...
, DJ Westbam,
MarushaMarusha, real name Marusha Aphrodite Gleiß is a German Techno, Happy hardcore, Breakbeat and Eurodance artist/DJ, who was on the hit lists in the mid '90s....
, and a music channel called Viva TV. At this time the German popular music charts were riddled with Low Spirit "pop-Tekno" German folk music reinterpretations of tunes such as "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and "Tears Don't Lie", many of which became hits. At the same time, in Frankfurt, a supposed alternative was a music characterised by Simon Reynolds as "moribund, middlebrow Electro-Trance music, as represented by Frankfurt's own Sven Vath and his
HarthouseHarthouse is a German record label specializing in techno music. The label has been responsible for many success stories in the electronic world including Oliver Lieb, Eternal Basement, Hardfloor, Sven Väth and Koxbox....
label."
Tekkno
In Germany, fans started to refer to the harder techno sound emerging in the early 1990s as
Tekkno (or
Bretter). This alternative spelling, with varying numbers of
ks, began as a tongue-in-cheek attempt to emphasize the music's hardness, but by the mid-1990s it came to be associated with a controversial point of view that the music was and perhaps always had been wholly separate from Detroit's
techno, deriving instead from a 1980s EBM-oriented club scene cultivated in part by DJ/musician
Talla 2XLCTalla 2XLC, real name Andreas Tomalla, is an electronic music producer and DJ whose work has spanned from industrial music to trance music.-History:In 1979, Talla 2XLC began DJing with the sounds of Kraftwerk, YMO, and Depeche Mode....
in Frankfurt. Talla, in the early to mid 1980s, worked in City Music at Frankfurt Station and began to categorize artists such as
New OrderNew Order are an English rock band formed in 1980 by Bernard Sumner , Peter Hook and Stephen Morris...
,
Depeche ModeDepeche Mode are an English electronic music band formed in 1980 in Basildon, Essex. The group's original line-up consisted of Dave Gahan , Martin Gore , Andy Fletcher and Vince Clarke...
, Kraftwerk,
Heaven 17Heaven 17 are an English synthpop band originating from Sheffield in the early 1980s. The trio comprises Martyn Ware , Ian Craig Marsh and Glenn Gregory...
and Front 242 under the heading
techno, to sum up all technologically created music. In 1984 Talla started an event called Technoclub on Sunday afternoons at Frankfurts Disco No name, which then moved to the Dorian Gray club in 1987. Talla's club spot served as the hub for the regional EBM and electronic music scene, and according to Jürgen Laarmann, of Frontpage magazine, it had historical merit in being the first club in Germany to play almost exclusively electronic music. Technoclub was "more or less an underground thing for suburban kids," it was, according to Laarmann, "never really hip to go there."
At some point tension over "who defines techno" arose between scenes in Frankfurt and Berlin. DJ Tanith has expressed that Techno as a term already existed in Germany but was to a large extent undefined. Dimitri Hegemann has stated that the Frankfurt definition of techno associated with Talla's Technoclub differed from that used in Berlin. Frankfurt's Armin Johnert viewed techno as having its roots in acts such DAF,
Cabaret VoltaireCabaret Voltaire were a British music group from Sheffield, England.Initially composed of Stephen Mallinder, Richard H. Kirk and Chris Watson, the group was named after the Cabaret Voltaire, a nightclub in Zürich, Switzerland that was a centre for the early Dada movement.Their earliest performances...
, and
SuicideSuicide is an American electronic protopunk musical duo, intermittently active since 1970 and composed of vocalist Alan Vega and Martin Rev on synthesizers and drum machines. They are an early synthesizer/vocal musical duo....
, but a younger generation of club goers had a perception of the older EBM and Industrial as handed down and outdated. The Berlin scene offered an alternative and many began embracing an imported sound that was being referred to as
Techno-House. The move away from EBM had started in Berlin when acid house became popular, thanks to Monika Dietl's radio show on SFB 4. Tanith distinguished acid based dance music from the earlier approaches, whether it be DAF or Nitzer Ebb, because the latter was aggressive, he felt that it epitomised "being against something," but of acid house he said, "it's electronic, it's fun it's nice." By Spring 1990, Tanith, along with Wolle XDP, an East-Berlin party organizer responsible for the X-tasy Dance Project, were organizing the first large scale rave events in Germany. This development would lead to a permanent move away from the sound associated with Techno-House and toward a hard edged mix of music that came to define Tanith and Wolle's Tekknozid parties. According to Wolle it was an "out and out rejection of disco values," instead they created a "sound storm" and encouraged a form of "dance floor socialism," where the DJ was not placed in the middle and you "lose yourself in light and sound."
A Techno Alliance
In 1993, the German techno label Tresor Records released the compilation album
Tresor II: Berlin & Detroit – A Techno Alliance, a testament to the influence of the Detroit sound upon the German techno scene and a celebration of a "mutual admiration pact" between the two cities. As the mid-90s approached Berlin was becoming a haven for Detroit producers;
Jeff MillsJeff Mills is an American techno DJ and producer.-Career:Starting in the early 1980s, Mills, using the name "The Wizard", was a recurring guest DJ on "The Electrifying Mojo" radio show on WJLB...
and Blake Baxter even resided there for a time. In the same period, with the assistance of Tresor, Underground Resistance released their X-101/X-102/X103 album series, Juan Atkins collaborated with 3MB's
Thomas FehlmannThomas Fehlmann , is a Swiss-born composer/producer who currently lives in Berlin, and has been active in electronic music as far back as the 1980s. He is currently active on the Kompakt record label based in Germany...
and
Moritz Von OswaldMoritz von Oswald , half of both Basic Channel and Maurizio, went on to become one of the most influential producers of techno music in the 1990s. In the 1980s he was percussionist for Palais Schaumburg and The Associates, but would segue into electronic music by the late 80s and early 90s...
and Tresor affiliated label
Basic ChannelBasic Channel is a production team and record label, composed of Moritz Von Oswald and Mark Ernestus, that originated in Berlin, Germany in 1993. The duo released a number of vinyl-only tracks under various aliases, each of which employed their signature brand of dissonant dub techno...
had taken to having their releases mastered by Detroit's National Sound Corporation; the main mastering house for the entire Detroit dance music scene. In some sense popular electronic music had come full circle;
DüsseldorfDüsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
's Kraftwerk having been a primary influence on the electronic dance music of the 1980s. The dance sounds of Chicago also had a German connection as it was in
MunichMunich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
that
Giorgio MoroderHansjörg "Giorgio" Moroder is an Italian record producer, songwriter and performer based in Los Angeles. When in Munich in the 1970s, he started his own record label called Oasis Records, which several years later became a subdivision of Casablanca Records...
and Pete Bellotte had first produced the 1970s Eurodisco synth pop sound.
Minimal techno
As EDM continued to transmute a number of Detroit producers began to question the trajectory techno was taking. One response came in the form of so-called
minimal technoMinimal techno is a minimalist sub-genre of techno. It is characterized by a stripped-down aesthetic that exploits the use of repetition, and understated development. This style of dance music production generally adheres to the motto less is more; a principle that has been previously utilized, to...
(a term producer
Daniel BellDaniel Bell was an American sociologist, writer, editor, and professor emeritus at Harvard University, best known for his seminal contributions to the study of post-industrialism...
found difficult to accept, finding the term
minimalism, in the artistic sense of the word, too "arty"). It is thought that
Robert HoodRobert Hood is an American electronic music producer and DJ. He is a founding member of group Underground Resistance as a 'Minister Of Information' with Mad Mike Banks & Jeff Mills. He is often considered to be one of the founders of minimal techno....
, a Detroit based producer and one time member of UR, is largely responsible for ushering the emergence of the minimal strain of techno. Hood describes the situation in the early 1990s as one where techno had become too
"ravey"Rave, rave dance, and rave party are parties that originated mostly from acid house parties, which featured fast-paced electronic music and light shows. At these parties people dance and socialize to dance music played by disc jockeys and occasionally live performers...
, with increasing tempos leading to the emergence of
gabberGabber , is a style of electronic music and a subgenre of hardcore techno. "Gabber" is a slang word of Yiddish origin that means "mate", "buddy" or "friend"....
. Such trends saw the demise of the
soulSoul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
infused techno that typified the original Detroit sound leading Hood and others to redefine the music as "a basic stripped down, raw sound. Just drums, basslines and funky grooves and only what's essential. Only what is essential to make people move". Hood explains:
Jazz influences
Some techno has also been influenced by or directly infused with elements of jazz. This led to increased sophistication in the use of both rhythm and harmony in a number of techno productions.
ManchesterManchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
(UK) based techno act
808 State808 State are a British electronic music outfit, formed in 1987 in Manchester, taking their name from the Roland TR-808 drum machine and their common state of mind...
helped fuel this development with tracks such as
Pacific State from the mini-album
QuadrastateQuadrastate is a 12" extended play by 808 State, released in 1989 on the Creed Records label. It contains the original version of "Pacific State", one of the most popular tracks by 808 State, which later made the band famous after extended airplay on BBC Radio 1 led to the band being signed to...
, and
Cobra Bora, taken from the 1989 release
NinetyNinety is the second full-length album and first on ZTT Records by British house music pioneers 808 State, released in 1989 and featuring the UK Top 40 single "Pacific State" which reached #10 in November 1989. It was released in the US as Utd...
. In Detroit, a producer heavily influenced by said jazz sensibilities at this time was Detroit's Mike Banks, a demonstration of which can be found on the influential
Underground ResistanceUnderground Resistance is a musical collective from Detroit, Michigan, in the United States of America. They are the most militantly political example of modern Detroit Techno, with a grungy, four-track musical aesthetic and a strictly anti-mainstream business strategy...
release
Nation 2 Nation (1991). By 1993, Detroit acts such as
Model 500Juan Atkins is an American musician. He is widely credited as the originator of techno music, specifically Detroit techno along with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson...
and
URUnderground Resistance is a musical collective from Detroit, Michigan, in the United States of America. They are the most militantly political example of modern Detroit Techno, with a grungy, four-track musical aesthetic and a strictly anti-mainstream business strategy...
had made explicit references to the genre, with the tracks "Jazz Is The Teacher" (1993) and "Hi-Tech Jazz" (1993), the latter being part of a larger body of work and group called
Galaxy 2 GalaxyGalaxy 2 Galaxy is a live electronic and jazz music collective featuring members of Underground Resistance. The name comes from an EP created by Mike Banks in 1993...
, a self-described jazz project based on Kraftwerk's "man machine" doctrine. This lead was followed by a number of techno producers in the UK who were evidently influenced of both jazz and
URUr or ur may refer to:In toponymy:*Ur, an ancient city in southern Mesopotamia**Royal Game of Ur, two game boards found in Royal Tombs of Ur and dating from the First Dynasty of Ur, before 2600 BC*Hay Ur, a neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq...
,
Dave AngelDavid Angelico Nicholas Gooden , better known as Dave Angel, is an English techno musician.-Early years:Angel was born in Chelsea, London in 1966. He is the son of a London-based jazz musician, and the elder brother of rapper Monie Love...
s'
Seas of Tranquility EP (1994) being a case in point. Other notable artists who set about expanding upon the structure of "classic techno" include Dan Curtin, Morgan Geist, Titonton Duvante and Ian O'Brien.
Intelligent techno
In 1991 UK music journalist Matthew Collin wrote that "Europe may have the scene and the energy, but it's America which supplies the ideological direction...if Belgian techno gives us riffs, German techno the noise, British techno the breakbeats, then Detroit supplies the sheer cerebral depth." By 1992 a general rejection of rave culture, by a number of European producers and labels who were attempting to redress what they saw as the corruption and commercialization of the original techno ideal, was evident. Following this the ideal of an
intelligent or Detroit derived
pure techno aesthetic began to take hold. Detroit techno had maintained its integrity throughout the rave era and was inspiring a new generation of so called
intelligent techno producers.
As the mid-1990s approached, the term had gained common usage in an attempt to differentiate the increasingly sophisticated takes on EDM from other strands of techno that had emerged,including overtly commercial strains and harder, rave-oriented variants such as
breakbeat hardcoreBreakbeat hardcore is a derivative of the acid house and techno, of the late 1980s and early 1990s, that combines four-to-the-floor rhythms with breakbeats, and is associated with the UK rave scene.-The rave scene:...
,
SchranzSchranz is a European style of music derived from techno. It originated in Germany.-Etymology:The term emerged in 1994 when Frankfurt-based DJ Chris Liebing and The Advent described a certain type of techno while searching for records at the now closed "Boy Records" store. The next time he visited...
,
DutchThe Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
GabberGabber , is a style of electronic music and a subgenre of hardcore techno. "Gabber" is a slang word of Yiddish origin that means "mate", "buddy" or "friend"....
. Simon Reynolds observes that this progression "involved a full-scale retreat from the most radically posthuman and hedonistically functional aspects of rave music toward more traditional ideas about creativity, namely the auteur theory of the solitary genius who humanizes technology."
Warp RecordsWarp, commonly referred to as Warp Records, is a pioneering independent British record label, founded in Sheffield in 1989, notable for discovering some of the more enduring artists in electronic music....
was among the first to capitalize upon this development with the release of the compilation album
Artificial Intelligence Of this time, Warp founder and managing director Steve Beckett has said
Warp had originally marketed
Artificial Intelligence using the description
electronic listening music but this was quickly replaced by
intelligent techno. In the same period (1992–93) other names were also bandied about such as armchair techno, ambient techno, and
electronicaElectronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...
, but all were used to describe an emerging form of
post-rave dance music for the "sedentary and stay at home". Following the commercial success of the compilation in the United States,
Intelligent Dance MusicIntelligent dance music is a term that describes an electronic music genre that emerged in the early 1990s. The genre is influenced by a wide range of musical styles particularly electronic dance music such as Detroit Techno...
eventually became the phrase most commonly used to describe much of the experimental EDM emerging during the mid to late 1990s.
Although it is primarily Warp that has been credited with ushering the commercial growth of IDM and electronica, in the early 1990s there were many notable labels associated with the initial
intelligence trend that received little, if any, wider attention. Amongst others they include:
Black Dog ProductionsThe Black Dog was founded by Ken Downie along with Ed Handley and Andy Turner. Widely regarded as legends, the group are pioneers who, along with acts like Autechre, Aphex Twin, µ-ziq and LFO, came to define the techno movement known as intelligent dance music in the early 1990s.-Early career:In...
(1989),
Carl Craig'sCarl Craig is a Detroit-based producer of techno music, and is considered to be one of the most important names in the Detroit second generation of techno producers and DJs...
Planet E (1991),
Kirk Degiorgio'sKirk Degiorgio, better known as As One, is a British techno producer and DJ. Born in the late 60s in Stepney, east London, and raised in Suffolk, he started producing music in the early 90s. He founded the labels A.R.T. Records and Op-Art Records and releases on them as well as B12 Records, R&S...
Applied Rhythmic Technology (1991), Eevo Lute Muzique (1991), General Production Recordings (1991), New Electronica (1993),
Mille PlateauxMille Plateaux is an influential electronica record label founded 1993 by Achim Szepanski in Frankfurt, Germany. It is known for mostly releasing minimal techno, glitch music and other experimental electronic music.-History:...
(1993), 100% Pure (1993), and Ferox Records (1993).
Free techno
In the early 1990s a post-rave,
DIYThe DIY ethic refers to the ethic of self-sufficiency through completing tasks oneself as opposed to having others who are more experienced or able complete them for one's behalf. It promotes the idea that an ordinary person can learn to do more than he or she thought was possible...
,
free partyA free party is a party "free" from the restrictions of the legal club scene, similar to the free festival movement. It typically involves a sound system playing electronic dance music from late at night until the time when the organisers decide to go home. A free party can be composed of just one...
scene had established itself in the UK. It was largely based around an alliance between warehouse party goers from various urban
squatSquatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use....
scenes and politically inspired
new age travellersNew Age Travellers are groups of people who often espouse New Age or hippie beliefs and travel between music festivals and fairs in order to live in a community with others who hold similar beliefs. Their transport and homes consist of vans, lorries, buses, narrowboats and caravans converted into...
. The new agers offered a readymade network of countryside festivals that were hastily adopted by squatters and ravers alike. Prominent among the
sound systemsA sound reinforcement system is the combination of microphones, signal processors, amplifiers, and loudspeakers that makes live or pre-recorded sounds louder and may also distribute those sounds to a larger or more distant audience...
operating at this time were Tonka in
BrightonBrighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
,
DiYThe DiY Sound System was one of Britain's first house sound systems. The group "divided their activities between free parties and legal club nights, acting as a bridge between counter-culture and the mainstream"....
in
NottinghamNottingham is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England. It is located in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and represents one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group...
,
BedlamBedlam may refer to:* Bethlem Royal Hospital, London hospital first to specialise in the mentally ill and origin of the word "bedlam" describing chaos or madness-Places:* Bedlam, North Yorkshire, a village in England...
, Circus Warp, LSDiesel and London's
Spiral TribeSpiral Tribe is a free party sound system which existed in the first half of the 1990s, and became active again in 2007. The collective originated in west London and later travelled across Europe and North America. According to one member, the name came to him when he was at work, staring at a...
. The high point of this free party period came in May 1992 when with less than 24 hours notice and little publicity more than 35,000 gathered at the
Castlemorton Common FestivalThe Castlemorton Common Festival was a week-long free festival and rave held in the Malvern Hills near Malvern, Worcestershire, England in 1992....
for 5 days of partying.
This one event was largely responsible for the introduction in 1994 of the
Criminal Justice and Public Order ActThe Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It introduced a number of changes to the existing law, most notably in the restriction and reduction of existing rights and in greater penalties for certain "anti-social" behaviours...
; effectively leaving the British
free partyA free party is a party "free" from the restrictions of the legal club scene, similar to the free festival movement. It typically involves a sound system playing electronic dance music from late at night until the time when the organisers decide to go home. A free party can be composed of just one...
scene for dead. Following this many of the traveller artists moved away from Britain to Europe, the US,
GoaGoa , a former Portuguese colony, is India's smallest state by area and the fourth smallest by population. Located in South West India in the region known as the Konkan, it is bounded by the state of Maharashtra to the north, and by Karnataka to the east and south, while the Arabian Sea forms its...
in
IndiaIndia , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Koh Phangan in
ThailandThailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
and
Australia'sAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
East Coast. In the rest of Europe, due in some part to the inspiration of traveling sound systems from the UK, rave enjoyed a prolonged existence as it continued to expand across the
continentContinental Europe, also referred to as mainland Europe or simply the Continent, is the continent of Europe, explicitly excluding European islands....
.
Spiral Tribe, Bedlam and other English sound systems took their cooperative techno ideas to Europe, particularly
Eastern EuropeEastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
where it was cheaper to live, and audiences were quick to appropriate the free party ideology. It was European
TeknivalTeknivals are large free parties which take place worldwide. They take place most often in Europe and are often illegal under various national or regional laws. They vary in size from dozens to thousands of people, depending on factors such as accessibility, reputation, weather, and law enforcement...
free parties, such as the annual
Czechtekthumb|Cztk00CzechTek was an annual teknival normally held on the weekend at the end of July in the Czech Republic. It attracted thousands of free tekno dancers from several European countries...
event in the Czech Republic that gave rise to several French, German and Dutch sound systems. Many of these groups found audiences easily and were often centered around squats in cities such as
AmsterdamAmsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
and
BerlinBerlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
.
Divergence
By 1994 there were a number of techno producers in the UK and Europe building on the Detroit sound, but a growing range of EDM styles were by then vying for attention. Some drew upon the Detroit techno aesthetic, while others fused components of preceding dance music forms. This led to the appearance (in the UK initially) of inventive new music, some of which bore little, if any, relation to the original techno sound;
jungleJungle is a genre of electronic music that incorporates influences from genres including breakbeat hardcore, and reggae/dub/dancehall. There is debate as to whether jungle is a separate genre from drum and bass as many use the terms interchangeably...
(
drum and bassDrum and bass is a type of electronic music which emerged in the late 1980s. The genre is characterized by fast breakbeats , with heavy bass and sub-bass lines...
) being a primary example, its origins having more to do with hip-hop, soul, and
reggaeReggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
, than with the EDM from Detroit and Chicago.
With an increasing diversification (and commercialization) of dance music, the collectivist sentiment prominent in the early
raveRave, rave dance, and rave party are parties that originated mostly from acid house parties, which featured fast-paced electronic music and light shows. At these parties people dance and socialize to dance music played by disc jockeys and occasionally live performers...
scene diminished, each new faction having its own particular attitude and vision of how dance music (or in certain cases, non-dance music) should evolve. Some examples not already mentioned are
tranceTrance is a genre of electronic dance music that developed in the 1990s.:251 It is generally characterized by a tempo of between 125 and 150 bpm,:252 repeating melodic synthesizer phrases, and a musical form that builds up and breaks down throughout a track...
, industrial techno,
breakbeat hardcoreBreakbeat hardcore is a derivative of the acid house and techno, of the late 1980s and early 1990s, that combines four-to-the-floor rhythms with breakbeats, and is associated with the UK rave scene.-The rave scene:...
,
acid technoAcid techno is the term used to describe a style of techno that developed out of late 1980s Chicago Acid house. Acid house was essentially house music made with a specific sound, obtained by using very distinctive instruments created mainly by Roland, such as the TB-303 for bass and lead sounds,...
, and
happy hardcoreHappy hardcore, also known as happycore, is a genre of music typified by a very fast tempo , often coupled with solo vocals and sentimental lyrics. Its characteristically 4/4 beat "happy" sound distinguishes it from most other forms of hardcore techno, which tend to be "darker". It is typically in...
. Less well-known styles related to techno or its subgenres include the primarily Sheffield (UK) based bleep techno, a regional variant that had some success between 1989 and 1991, and a scene that was responsible for putting Warp Records on the map (largely as a result of its fifth release, LFO's self-titled 12″).
According to
MuzikMuzik was a UK dance music magazine published by IPC Media from June 1995 to August 2003.Muzik was created by two former Melody Maker journalists, Push and Ben Turner. Push was the editor of Muzik from its launch until he left the magazine in 1998, at which point Turner took over as editor...
magazine, by 1995 the UK techno scene was in decline and dedicated club nights were dwindling. The music had become "too hard, too fast, too male, too drug-oriented, too anally retentive." Despite this, weekly night at clubs such as Final Frontier (London), House of God (Birmingham), Pure (Edinburgh), and Bugged Out (Manchester) were still popular. With techno reaching a state of "creative palsy," and with a disproportionate number of EDM enthusiasts more interested in the sounds of rave and jungle, in 1995 the future of the UK techno scene looked uncertain as the market for "pure techno" waned. Muzik described the sound of UK techno at this time as "dutiful grovelling at the alter of American techno with a total unwillingness to compromise."
By the end of the 1990s a number of post-techno EDM styles had emerged including
ghettotechGhettotech or Detroit club music is a form of electronic dance music originating from Detroit. It combines elements of Chicago's ghetto house with electro, hip hop, techno, and grafts the perceived raunch of Miami Bass as the vocal stamp of the music. It is usually faster than most other dance...
(a style that combines some of the aesthetics of techno with hip-hop and
house musicHouse music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...
),
nortecNortec is an electronic musical genre from Tijuana that first gained popularity in 2001...
,
glitchGlitch is a term used to describe a genre of electronic music that emerged in the mid to late 1990s. The glitch aesthetic is characterized by a deliberate use of glitch based sonic artifacts that would normally be viewed as unwanted disturbances reducing the overall sound quality and are thus...
,
digital hardcoreDigital hardcore is a subgenre of hardcore punk incorporating influences from electronic music. Digital hardcore fuses elements of hardcore punk with various forms of electronic music...
, and so-called
no-beat techno.
Commercial exposure
While techno and its derivatives only occasionally produce commercially successful mainstream acts—
UnderworldUnderworld are a British electronic group, and principal name under which duo Karl Hyde and Rick Smith have recorded together since 1980.- Early years: 1979–1986 :...
and
OrbitalOrbital are a British electronic dance music duo from Sevenoaks, England consisting of brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll. Their career initially ran from 1989 until 2004, but in 2009 they announced that they would be reforming and headlining The Big Chill, in addition to a number of other live shows...
being two better known examples—the genre has significantly affected many other areas of music. In an effort to appear relevant, many established artists, for example
MadonnaMadonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...
and
U2U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
, have dabbled with dance music, yet such endeavors have rarely evidenced a genuine understanding or appreciation of techno's origins. The mainstream music industry has been responsible for the growth of a huge
remixA remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
industry. This is largely a drive to gain club scene exposure for artists that are not identified with club styles such as house, techno, and drum & bass. Many club acts and dance DJs have made very successful careers out of remixing alone,
Armand Van HeldenArmand Van Helden is a record producer, DJ and remixer whose biggest commercial successes came from his remixes of the 1996 Tori Amos song "Professional Widow" , which reached number 1 in the UK Singles Chart in January 1997, and his own track "U Don't Know Me ", which went to number 1...
being a good example.
One R&B artist,
Missy ElliottMelissa Arnette "Missy" Elliott , is an American rapper, singer-songwriter, record producer, and actressA five-time Grammy Award winner, Elliott, with record sales of over seven million in the United States, is the only female rapper to have five albums certified platinum by the RIAA, including one...
, inadvertently exposed the popular music audience to the Detroit techno sound when she featured material from Cybotron's
Clear on her 2006 release "Lose Control"; this resulted in
Juan AtkinsJuan Atkins is an American musician. He is widely credited as the originator of techno music, specifically Detroit techno along with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson...
' receiving a
Grammy AwardA Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
nomination for his writing credit. Elliott's 2001 album
Miss E... So Addictive also clearly demonstrated the influence of techno inspired club culture.
In recent years, the publication of relatively accurate histories by authors Simon Reynolds (
Generation Ecstasy aka
Energy Flash) and Dan Sicko (
Techno Rebels), plus mainstream press coverage of the
Detroit Electronic Music FestivalThe Detroit Electronic Music Festival , and its successors comprise an annual series of electronic dance music showcases held in Detroit each Memorial Day weekend since 2000...
, have helped to diffuse the genre's more dubious mythology. Even the Detroit-based company Ford Motors eventually became savvy to the mass appeal of techno, noting that "this music was created partly by the pounding clangor of the Motor City's auto factories. It became natural for us to incorporate Detroit techno into our commercials after we discovered that young people are embracing techno." With a marketing campaign targeting under-35s, Ford used "Detroit Techno" as a print ad slogan and chose Model 500's "No UFO's" to underpin its November 2000
MTVMTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
television advertisement for the Ford Focus. In attempting to sum up the changes since the heyday of Detroit techno, Derrick May has since revised his famous quote in stating that "Kraftwerk got off on the third floor and now George Clinton's got
Napalm DeathNapalm Death are a death metal band formed in Birmingham, England in 1981. While none of its original members remain in the group, the lineup of vocalist Mark "Barney" Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mitch Harris and drummer Danny Herrera has remained consistent for most of the band's ...
in there with him. The elevator's stalled between the pharmacy and the athletic wear store."
Proto-techno
The noted popularity of
Euro discoEuro disco is an all encompassing colloquial term used to describe a variety of European electronic dance music that first originated from disco in the 1970s; incorporating elements of pop, New Wave and rock into disco-like continuous dance atmosphere...
and
Italo discoItalo disco encompasses much of the dance music output in Europe during the 1980s. It is one of the world's first forms of mostly electronic dance music and evolved during the late 1970s and early 1980s in Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and other parts of Europe...
music of various acts including Moroder,
Alexander RobotnickAlexander Robotnick is an Italian electronic musician. He made his debut on the Italian music scene as the founding member of Avida, a dance-cabaret band featuring Daniele Trambusti and Stefano Fuochi....
, and
Claudio SimonettiClaudio Simonetti is an Italian composer who has specialized in the scores for Italian and American horror films since the 1970s.- Biography :...
(referred to as
progressive in Detroit) and
new romanticNew Romanticism , was a pop culture movement in the United Kingdom that began around 1979 and peaked around 1981. Developing in London nightclubs such as Billy's and The Blitz and spreading to other major cities in the UK, it was based around flamboyant, eccentric fashion and new wave music...
synth pop performers such as
VisageVisage are a British New Wave rock band. Formed in 1978, the band became closely linked to the burgeoning New Romantic fashion movement of the early 1980s, and are best known for their 1980 hit "Fade to Grey".-New Wave years :...
,
Duran DuranDuran Duran are an English band, formed in Birmingham in 1978. They were one of the most successful bands of the 1980s and a leading band in the MTV-driven "Second British Invasion" of the United States...
,
Depeche ModeDepeche Mode are an English electronic music band formed in 1980 in Basildon, Essex. The group's original line-up consisted of Dave Gahan , Martin Gore , Andy Fletcher and Vince Clarke...
,
The Human LeagueThe Human League are an English electronic New Wave band formed in Sheffield in 1977. They achieved popularity after a key change in line-up in the early 1980s and have continued recording and performing with moderate commercial success throughout the 1980s up to the present day.The only constant...
, and
Heaven 17Heaven 17 are an English synthpop band originating from Sheffield in the early 1980s. The trio comprises Martyn Ware , Ian Craig Marsh and Glenn Gregory...
on the Detroit high school party scene from which techno emerged has prompted a number of commentators to try and redefine the origins of techno, by incorporating musical precursors to the Detroit sound as part of a wider historical survey of the genres development. This results in a chronologically distinct point of origination being removed. To support this view, they point to examples such as "Sharevari" (1981) by A Number of Names, danceable selections from Kraftwerk (1977–83), the earliest compositions by Cybotron (1981), Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's "I Feel Love" (1977), Moroder's "From Here to Eternity" (1977), and
Manuel GöttschingManuel Göttsching is a German musician and composer.As the leader of the group Ash Ra Tempel or Ashra, one of the most notable German groups of the 1970s and 80s, as well as a solo artist, he is one of the most important guitarists of the Kosmische Musik genre. He also participated in the Cosmic...
's "proto-techno masterpiece"
E2-E4E2-E4, released in 1984, is the first solo recording album by Ash Ra Tempel / Ashra guitarist, Manuel Göttsching. The album consists of a minimalistic hour-long progressive electronic track that is subdivided into single tracks according to the stage of the song. The second half of the record is...
(1981). Another example is a record entitled
Love in C minor, released in 1976 by Parisian Euro disco producer Jean-Marc Cerrone; cited as the first so called "conceptual disco" production and the record from which house, techno, and other EDM styles flowed. Yet another example is
Yellow Magic OrchestraSakamoto first worked with Hosono as a member of his live band in 1976, while Takahashi recruited Sakamoto to produce his debut solo recording in 1977 following the split of the Sadistic Mika Band...
's work, which has also been described as "proto-techno" music.
Prehistory
It is apparent that certain electro-
discoDisco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
and European synth pop productions share with techno a dependence on machine-generated dance rhythms but comparisons are not without contention. Efforts to regress further into the past, in search of earlier antecedents, entails a further regression, to the sequenced electronic music of
Raymond ScottRaymond Scott was an American composer, band leader, pianist, engineer, recording studio maverick, and electronic instrument inventor....
, whose "The Rhythm Modulator," "The Bass-Line Generator," and "IBM Probe" are considered early examples of techno-like music. In a review of Scott's
Manhattan Research Inc.Manhattan Research Inc. is a two-CD compilation of electronic music created by the musician, composer and inventor, Raymond Scott and his company, "Manhattan Research Inc." Posthumously released in 2000 by Basta Music of Holland, the album contains selected samples of Scott's work from the 1950s...
compilation album the
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
newspaper
The IndependentThe Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
suggested that "Scott's importance lies mainly in his realization of the rhythmic possibilities of
electronic musicElectronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
, which laid the foundation for all electro-pop from disco to techno." Another example of early EDM-like music has recently come to light (2008). On a tape, reportedly made in the mid to late 1960s by the original composer of the
Doctor WhoDoctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
theme,
Delia DerbyshireDelia Ann Derbyshire was an English musician and composer of electronic music and musique concrète. She is best known for her electronic realisation of Ron Grainer's theme music to the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and for her work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.-Early...
, is evidence of music virtually indistinguishable from contemporary EDM.
Paul HartnollPaul Hartnoll is one of two brothers , who made up the electronic dance act Orbital.-History:...
, formerly of the dance group
OrbitalOrbital are a British electronic dance music duo from Sevenoaks, England consisting of brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll. Their career initially ran from 1989 until 2004, but in 2009 they announced that they would be reforming and headlining The Big Chill, in addition to a number of other live shows...
describes the example as "quite amazing" and notes that it sounds not unlike something that "could be coming out next week on
Warp RecordsWarp, commonly referred to as Warp Records, is a pioneering independent British record label, founded in Sheffield in 1989, notable for discovering some of the more enduring artists in electronic music....
." Another notable example that has recently received attention is
Charanjit SinghCharanjit Singh is a former field hockey player from India. He captained the Indian hockey team that won the gold medal in the 1964 Summer Olympics at Tokyo, Japan....
's
Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat (1982), which has been compared to
acid houseAcid house is a sub-genre of house music that emphasizes a repetitive, hypnotic and trance-like style, often with samples or spoken lines rather than sung lyrics. Acid house's core electronic squelch sounds were developed around the mid-1980s, particularly by DJs from Chicago who experimented with...
music (though not a known influence on the genre).
Stylistic considerations
In general, techno is very
DJA disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
-friendly, being mainly
instrumentalAn instrumental is a musical composition or recording without lyrics or singing, although it might include some non-articulate vocal input; the music is primarily or exclusively produced by musical instruments....
(commercial varieties being an exception) and is produced with the intention of its being heard in the context of a continuous
DJ setA DJ mix or DJ mixset is a sequence of musical tracks typically mixed together to appear as one continuous track. When a DJ mix or DJ mixset is recorded onto some medium, it is often referred to as a mix tape...
, wherein the DJ progresses from one record to the next via a synchronized
segueA segue is a smooth transition from one topic or section to the next.-In music:In music, segue is a direction to the performer. It means continue without a pause. It comes from the Italian "it follows". The term attacca is also used in classical music.For written music it implies a transition...
or "mix." Much of the
instrumentationIn music, instrumentation refers to the particular combination of musical instruments employed in a composition, and to the properties of those instruments individually...
in techno emphasizes the role of
rhythmRhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
over other musical parameters, but the design of
syntheticA synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
timbreIn music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
s, and the creative use of
music production technologyMusic technology is a term that refers to all forms of technology involved with the musical arts, particularly the use of electronic devices and computer software to facilitate playback, recording, composition, storage and performance. This subject is taught at many different educational levels,...
in general, are important aspects of the overall
aestheticTraditionally, the aesthetics of music or musical aesthetics concentrated on the quality and study of the beauty and enjoyment of music. The origin of this philosophic sub-discipline is sometimes attributed to Baumgarten in the 18th century, followed by Kant...
practice.
Unlike other forms of EDM that tend to be produced with
synthesizer keyboardsA keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
, techno does not always strictly adhere to the
harmonic practiceIn music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
of
Western musicClassical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
and such strictures are often ignored in favor of timbral manipulation alone. The use of
motivic developmentIn music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition....
(though relatively limited) and the employment of conventional musical frameworks is more widely found in commercial techno styles, for example
Euro-tranceThe term Euro-trance describes all "trance"-like European imports into the American dance music market, especially those recorded in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.-Dream house:...
, where the template is often an
AABA song structureThe thirty-two-bar form, often called AABA from the musical form or order in which its melodies occur, is common in Tin Pan Alley songs and later popular music including rock, pop and jazz...
.
The main drum part is almost universally in
common time"Common Time" is a science fiction short story written by James Blish. It first appeared in the August 1953 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and has been reprinted several times: in the 1959 short-story collection Galactic Cluster; in The Testament of Andros ; in The Penguin Science Fiction...
(4/4); meaning 4
quarter noteA quarter note or crotchet is a note played for one quarter of the duration of a whole note . Often people will say that a crotchet is one beat, however, this is not always correct, as the beat is indicated by the time signature of the music; a quarter note may or may not be the beat...
pulsesIn music and music theory, the pulse or tactus consists of beats in a series of identical yet distinct periodic short-duration stimuli perceived as points in time occurring at the mensural level...
per bar. In its simplest form,
timeTime is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
is marked with kicks (
bass drumBass drums are percussion instruments that can vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum . It is the largest drum of...
beats) on each quarter-note pulse, a
snareThe snare drum or side drum is a melodic percussion instrument with strands of snares made of curled metal wire, metal cable, plastic cable, or gut cords stretched across the drumhead, typically the bottom. Pipe and tabor and some military snare drums often have a second set of snares on the bottom...
or clap on the second and fourth pulse of the bar, with an open
hi-hatA hi-hat, or hihat, is a type of cymbal and stand used as a typical part of a drum kit by percussionists in R&B, hip-hop, disco, jazz, rock and roll, house, reggae and other forms of contemporary popular music.- Operation :...
sound every second eighth note. This is essentially a
discoDisco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
(or even
polkaThe polka is a Central European dance and also a genre of dance music familiar throughout Europe and the Americas. It originated in the middle of the 19th century in Bohemia...
) drum pattern and is common throughout house music and house-influenced genres such as techno. The
tempoIn musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...
tends to vary between approximately 120 bpm (quarter note equals 120 pulses per minute) and 150 bpm, depending on the style of techno.
Some of the
drum programmingA drum machine is an electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the sound of drums or other percussion instruments. They are used in a variety of musical genres, not just purely electronic music...
employed in the original Detroit-based techno made use of
syncopationIn music, syncopation includes a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected in that they deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak but also powerful beats in a meter . These include a stress on a normally unstressed beat or a rest where one would normally be...
and
polyrhythmPolyrhythm is the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms.Polyrhythm in general is a nonspecific term for the simultaneous occurrence of two or more conflicting rhythms, of which cross-rhythm is a specific and definable subset.—Novotney Polyrhythms can be distinguished from...
, yet in many cases the basic disco-type pattern was used as a foundation, with polyrhythmic elaborations added using other
drum machineA drum machine is an electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the sound of drums or other percussion instruments. They are used in a variety of musical genres, not just purely electronic music...
voices. This syncopated-feel (
funkFunk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
iness) distinguishes the Detroit strain of techno from other variants. It is a feature that many DJs and producers still use to differentiate their music from commercial forms of techno, the majority of which tend to be devoid of syncopation. Derrick May has summed up the sound as 'Hi-tech Tribalism': something "very spiritual, very bass oriented, and very drum oriented, very percussive. The original techno music was very hi-tech with a very percussive feel... it was extremely, extremely Tribal. It feels like you're in some sort of hi-tech village."
Compositional techniques
There are many ways to create techno, but the vast majority will depend upon the use of loop-based
step sequencingThe music sequencer is a device or computer software to record, edit, play back the music, by handling note and performance information in several forms, typically :...
as a compositional method. Techno musicians, or
producersA record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
, rather than employing traditional
compositional techniquesMusical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music. People who practice composition are called composers.- Musical compositions :...
, may work in an
improvisatoryMusical improvisation is the creative activity of immediate musical composition, which combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians...
fashion, often treating the electronic music studio as one large instrument. The collection of devices found in a typical studio will include units that are capable of producing unique timbres and effects but technical proficiency is required for the technology to be exploited creatively. Studio production equipment is generally
synchronizedSynchronization is timekeeping which requires the coordination of events to operate a system in unison. The familiar conductor of an orchestra serves to keep the orchestra in time....
using a hardware- or computer-based MIDI sequencer, enabling the producer to combine, in one arrangement, the sequenced output of many devices. A typical approach to utilizing this type of technology compositionally is to
overdubOverdubbing is a technique used by recording studios to add a supplementary recorded sound to a previously recorded performance....
successive layers of material while continuously looping a single measure, or sequence of measures. This process will usually continue until a suitable
multi-trackMultitrack recording is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole...
arrangement has been produced.
Once a single loop based arrangement has been generated, a producer may then focus on developing a
temporal frameworkTime is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
. This is a process of dictating how the summing of the overdubbed parts will unfold in time, and what the final structure of the piece will be. Some producers achieve this by adding or removing layers of material at appropriate points in the mix. Quite often, this is achieved by physically manipulating a
mixerIn professional audio, a mixing console, or audio mixer, also called a sound board, mixing desk, or mixer is an electronic device for combining , routing, and changing the level, timbre and/or dynamics of audio signals. A mixer can mix analog or digital signals, depending on the type of mixer...
, sequencer, effects, dynamic processing,
equalizationEqualization, is the process of adjusting the balance between frequency components within an electronic signal. The most well known use of equalization is in sound recording and reproduction but there are many other applications in electronics and telecommunications. The circuit or equipment used...
, and
filteringAn audio filter is a frequency dependent amplifier circuit, working in the audio frequency range, 0 Hz to beyond 20 kHz. Many types of filters exist for applications including graphic equalizers, synthesizers, sound effects, CD players and virtual reality systems.Being a frequency dependent...
while recording to a multi-track device. Other producers achieve similar results by using the automation features of computer-based
digital audio workstationA digital audio workstation is an electronic system designed solely or primarily for recording, editing and playing back digital audio. DAWs were originally tape-less, microprocessor-based systems such as the Synclavier and Fairlight CMI...
s. Techno can consist of little more than cleverly programmed rhythmic sequences and looped motifs combined with
signal processingDigital signal processing is concerned with the representation of discrete time signals by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals. Digital signal processing and analog signal processing are subfields of signal processing...
of one variety or another, frequency
filteringAn audio filter is a frequency dependent amplifier circuit, working in the audio frequency range, 0 Hz to beyond 20 kHz. Many types of filters exist for applications including graphic equalizers, synthesizers, sound effects, CD players and virtual reality systems.Being a frequency dependent...
being a commonly used process. A more idiosyncratic approach to production is evident in the music of artists such as Twerk and
AutechreAutechre are an English electronic music duo consisting of Rob Brown and Sean Booth, both natives of Rochdale, Greater Manchester. Formed in 1987, they are one of the most prominent acts signed to Warp Records, a label known for its pioneering electronic music and through which all Autechre albums...
, where aspects of
algorithmic compositionAlgorithmic composition is the technique of using algorithms to create music.Algorithms have been used to compose music for centuries; the procedures used to plot voice-leading in Western counterpoint, for example, can often be reduced to algorithmic determinacy...
are employed in the generation of material.
Retro technology
Instruments used by the original techno producers based in Detroit, many of which are now highly sought after on the retro music technology market, include classic drum machines like the Roland TR-808 and TR-909, devices such as the Roland TB-303 bass line generator, and synthesizers such as the
Roland SH-101Roland SH-101 is a synthesizer from the early 1980s, manufactured by Roland. It is a small, 32 key, monophonic analog synthesizer. It features one oscillator with 3 simultaneous waveforms, an 'octave-divided' square sub-oscillator, triangle and square/pwm waveform. It has a low-pass filter/VCF...
, Kawai KC10,
Yamaha DX7The Yamaha DX7 is an FM Digital Synthesizer manufactured by the Yamaha Corporation from 1983 to 1986. It was the first commercially successful digital synthesizer. Its distinctive sound can be heard on many recordings, especially Pop music from the 1980s...
, and Yamaha DX100 (as heard on Derrick May's seminal 1987 techno release
Nude Photo). Much of the early music sequencing was executed via MIDI (but neither the TR-808 nor the TB-303 had MIDI, only
DIN syncThe SYNC standard, often called "DIN sync" or "sync24" , defines an interface for electronic music instruments. It was introduced in the 1980s by Roland Corporation for synchronization of music sequencers, drum machines, arpeggiators and similar devices. The SYNC standard uses the signals clock ...
) using hardware sequencers such as the Korg SQD1 and Roland MC-50, and the limited amount of
samplingIn music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
that was featured in this early style was accomplished using an Akai S900.
The TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines have since achieved legendary status, a fact that is now reflected in the prices sought for used devices. During the 1980s the 808 became the staple beat machine in
Hip hopHip hop is a form of musical expression and artistic culture that originated in African-American and Latino communities during the 1970s in New York City, specifically the Bronx. DJ Afrika Bambaataa outlined the four pillars of hip hop culture: MCing, DJing, breaking and graffiti writing...
production while the 909 found its home in
House musicHouse music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...
and techno. It was "the pioneers of Detroit techno [who] were making the 909 the rhythmic basis of their sound, and setting the stage for the rise of Roland's vintage Rhythm Composer." In November 1995 the UK music technology magazine
Sound on SoundSound on Sound is an independently-owned monthly music technology magazine published by SOS Publications Group, based in Cambridge, UK. The magazine includes product tests of electronic musical performance and recording devices, and interviews with industry professionals...
noted:
By May 1996
Sound on Sound was reporting that the popularity of the 808 had started to decline, with the rarer TR-909 taking its place as "the dance floor drum machine to use." This is thought to have arisen for a number of reasons: the 909 gives more control over the drum sounds, has better programming and includes MIDI as standard.
Sound on Sound reported that the 909 was selling for between £900 and £1100 and noted that the 808 was still collectible, but maximum prices had peaked at about £700 to £800. Such prices have held in the 12 years since the article was published, this can be evidenced by a quick search on
eBayeBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
. Despite this fascination with retro music technology, according to Derrick May "there is no recipe, there is no keyboard or drum machine which makes the best techno, or whatever you want to call it. There never has been. It was down to the preferences of a few guys. The 808 was our preference. We were using Yamaha drum machines, different percussion machines, whatever."
Emulation
In the latter half of the 1990s the demand for vintage drum machines and synthesisers motivated a number of software companies to produce computer based emulators. One of the most notable was the
ReBirth RB-338ReBirth RB-338 is a software synthesizer for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS 8-9 and iOS for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. It was developed by Propellerhead Software, and its first alpha version was publicly released in December 1996. Propellerhead Software ceased developing the original program in...
, produced by the Swedish company Propellerhead and originally released in May 1997. Version one of the software featured two TB-303s and a TR-808 only, but the release of version two saw the inclusion of a TR-909. A
Sound on Sound review of the RB-338 V2 in November 1998 noted that Rebirth had been called "the ultimate techno software package" and mentions that it was "a considerable software success story of 1997". In America
Keyboard Magazine asserted that ReBirth had "opened up a whole new
paradigmThe word paradigm has been used in science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα" , "pattern, example, sample" from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" , "exhibit, represent, expose" and that from "παρά" , "beside, beyond" + "δείκνυμι" , "to show, to point out".The original Greek...
: modeled analog synthesizer tones, percussion synthesis, pattern based sequencing, all integrated in one piece of software". Despite the success of ReBirth RB-338, it was officially taken out of production in September 2005. Propellerhead then made it freely available for download from a website called the "ReBirth Museum". The site also features extensive information about the software's history and development.
In March 2001, with the release of Reason V1, Propellerhead upped the ante in providing a £300 software based electronic music studio, comprising a 14-input automated digital mixer, 99-note polyphonic 'analogue' synth, classic Roland-style drum machine, sample-playback unit, analogue-style step sequencer, loop player, multitrack sequencer, eight effects processors, and over 500 MB of synthesizer patches and samples. With this release Propellerhead were credited with "creating a buzz that only happens when a product has really tapped into the
zeitgeistZeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...
, and may just be the one that many [were] waiting for." Reason has since achieved popular appeal and is now (as of 2011) at version 6.
Technological advances
In recent years, as computer technology has become more accessible and music software has advanced, interacting with music production technology is now possible using means that bear no relationship to traditional
musical performanceA performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...
practices: for instance, laptop performance (
laptronica) and
live codingLive coding is a performance practice centred upon the use of improvised interactive programming and real-time computing in creating sound and image based digital media. Live coding is particularly prevalent in computer music, combining algorithmic composition with improvisation...
.
In the last decade a number of software-based virtual studio environments have emerged, with products such as Propellerhead's Reason and
Ableton LiveAbleton Live is a loop-based software music sequencer and DAW for Mac OS and Windows by Ableton. The latest major release of Live, Version 8, was released in April 2009. In contrast to many other software sequencers, Live is designed to be an instrument for live performances as well as a tool for...
finding popular appeal. These software-based music production tools provide viable and cost-effective alternatives to typical hardware-based production studios, and thanks to advances in
microprocessorA microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
technology, it is now possible to create high quality music using little more than a single laptop computer. Such advances have democratized music creation, leading to a massive increase in the amount of home-produced music available to the general public via the internet. Artists can now also individuate their sound by creating personalized software synthesizers, effects modules, and various composition environments. Devices that once existed exclusively in the hardware domain can easily have virtual counterparts. Some of the more popular software tools for achieving such ends are commercial releases such as Max/Msp and
ReaktorReaktor is a graphical modular software music studio of proprietary license developed by Native Instruments. It lets musicians and sound specialists design and build their own instruments, samplers, effects and sound design tools. It is supplied with many ready-to-use instruments and effects, from...
and
freewareFreeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...
packages such as
Pure DataPure Data is a visual programming language developed by Miller Puckette in the 1990s for creating interactive computer music and multimedia works. While Puckette is the main author of the program, Pd is an open source project with a large developer base working on new extensions to it. It is...
,
SuperColliderA Supercollider is a high energy particle accelerator. The term may refer to:* Superconducting Super Collider, planned 80 km project in Texas, canceled in 1993...
, and
ChucKChucK is a concurrent, strongly timed audio programming language for real-time synthesis, composition, and performance, which runs on Mac OS X, Linux, Microsoft Windows, and iPhone/iPad. It is designed to favor readability and flexibility for the programmer over other considerations such...
. In some sense, as a result of technological innovation, the DIY mentality that was once a core part of dance music culture is seeing a resurgence.
Noted artists
- The Future Sound Of London
The Future Sound of London is a prolific British electronic music band composed of Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans. The duo are often credited with pushing the boundaries of electronic music experimentation and of pioneering a new era of dance music...
(UK)
- John Acquaviva
John Acquaviva is an Italian-born Canadian second-wave techno artist and club DJ from London, Ontario. His friend Richie Hawtin co-founded the Plus 8 record label with him in 1990.In 2006, Acquaviva reached #22 on the ....
(Canada)
- The Advent
The Advent is a British electronic music act. It was originally founded in 1993 by Cisco Ferreira and Colin McBean. Soon after leaving school, Ferreira began working as an engineer at Jack Trax Records, a job which enabled him to glimpse first-hand the work of such artists as Derrick May and...
(UK)
- Dave Angel
David Angelico Nicholas Gooden , better known as Dave Angel, is an English techno musician.-Early years:Angel was born in Chelsea, London in 1966. He is the son of a London-based jazz musician, and the elder brother of rapper Monie Love...
(UK)
- Juan Atkins
Juan Atkins is an American musician. He is widely credited as the originator of techno music, specifically Detroit techno along with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson...
(USA/Detroit)
- Si Begg
Si Begg is electronic dance music DJ, musician and record producer Simon Begg, from Leicester, England.His music combines elements of Experimental, Downtempo, Breakbeat Ambient, Drum and bass, Turntablism and Jazz. Begg grew up in Leamington Spa and moved to London in 1991...
(UK)
- Daniel Bell
Daniel Bell is an American minimal techno DJ. He was born in Sacramento, California, but grew up outside of Toronto, Canada, and later moved to Detroit where he collaborated with Richie Hawtin as Cybersonik for three years on Plus 8 records...
(USA/Detroit)
- Joey Beltram
Joey Beltram is an American DJ and record producer, best-known for the pioneering recordings "Energy Flash" and "Mentasm"....
(USA/New York)
- Adam Beyer
Adam Beyer is a Swedish techno producer and DJ. He is the founder of Drumcode Records, Truesoul Records, Code Red and Mad Eye Recordings...
(Sweden)
- C. J. Bolland
C. J. Bolland is a British electronic music producer and remixer.Born in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, Bolland's family moved to Antwerp, Belgium when he was three years old...
(Belgium)
- Frankie Bones
Frankie Bones is an American techno and house music disc jockey from New York City. He is best known for bringing the rave culture to the United States after playing at a hangar party in the UK during 1989...
(USA/New York)
- Thomas Brinkmann
Thomas Brinkmann is a highly regarded German producer of experimental minimal techno music. Although experimenting with records since the early eighties, he gained wide reputation with his re-workings of material by fellow artists Mike Ink and Richie Hawtin released in the second half of the 90s...
(Germany)
- Basic Channel
Basic Channel is a production team and record label, composed of Moritz Von Oswald and Mark Ernestus, that originated in Berlin, Germany in 1993. The duo released a number of vinyl-only tracks under various aliases, each of which employed their signature brand of dissonant dub techno...
(Germany)
- Dave Clarke
Dave Clarke is an English techno producer and DJ, often given the title, 'The Baron of Techno'.-Life and career:...
(UK)
- Carl Cox
Carl Cox is a British techno and house music DJ.-Biography:Cox grew up in Oldham, Lancashire, before attending Glastonbury High Boys secondary modern school on Glastonbury Road in Morden. Cox began his career as a hardcore and rave DJ in the mid 1980s...
(UK)
- Carl Craig
Carl Craig is a Detroit-based producer of techno music, and is considered to be one of the most important names in the Detroit second generation of techno producers and DJs...
(USA/Detroit)
- Kirk Degiorgio
Kirk Degiorgio, better known as As One, is a British techno producer and DJ. Born in the late 60s in Stepney, east London, and raised in Suffolk, he started producing music in the early 90s. He founded the labels A.R.T. Records and Op-Art Records and releases on them as well as B12 Records, R&S...
(UK)
- Vladislav Delay
Vladislav Delay is one of the pseudonyms of Sasu Ripatti , a Finnish electronic musician. He has also recorded as Luomo, Sistol, Uusitalo and Conoco.-Background:...
(Finland)
- The Black Dog
The Black Dog was founded by Ken Downie along with Ed Handley and Andy Turner. Widely regarded as legends, the group are pioneers who, along with acts like Autechre, Aphex Twin, µ-ziq and LFO, came to define the techno movement known as intelligent dance music in the early 1990s.-Early career:In...
(UK)
- Drexciya
Drexciya was an electronic music band from Detroit, Michigan. The late James Stinson was the only officially identified member of Drexciya, but it was considered an open secret that he had a partner, Gerald Donald.- Style :...
(USA/Detroit)
- Darren Emerson
Darren Emerson is a dance music DJ, and former member of the UK electronic music outfit, Underworld.-Career:Emerson began mixing Hip-Hop records at the age of 14, and by 16 was DJing regularly at local venues...
(UK)
- A Guy Called Gerald
A Guy Called Gerald is the stage name for the musician, record producer and DJ Gerald Simpson ....
(UK)
- Laurent Garnier
Laurent Garnier , is a French techno music producer and DJ. Garnier began DJ-ing in Manchester during the late 1980s. By the following decade, he had a broad stylistic range, able to span deep house, Detroit techno, trance and jazz...
(France)
- Hardfloor
Hardfloor is a German techno and acid trance duo, consisting of Oliver Bondzio and Ramon Zenker. Their most famous track is "Acperience 1" ....
(Germany)
- Richie Hawtin
Richard Hawtin is an English-Canadian electronic musician and DJ who was an influential part of Detroit techno's second wave of artists in the early 1990s and a leading exponent of Minimal techno since the mid 1990s...
(Canada)
- DJ Hell
This article is about Helmut Josef Geier. You may also be looking for Darryl Hell.Helmut Josef Geier, professionally known as DJ Hell is a German house-techno DJ...
(Germany)
- Robert Hood
Robert Hood is an American electronic music producer and DJ. He is a founding member of group Underground Resistance as a 'Minister Of Information' with Mad Mike Banks & Jeff Mills. He is often considered to be one of the founders of minimal techno....
(USA/Detroit)
- Ken Ishii
is a Japanese techno DJ and producer from Sapporo. He graduated from Hitotsubashi University. He has released work under his own name as well as under the pseudonyms: FLR, Flare, UTU, Yoga, and Rising Sun....
(Japan)
- Speedy J
Speedy J , is a Dutch electronic music producer based in the city of Rotterdam. His breakthrough came with the release in 1992 of the minimal techno track Pullover...
(Netherlands)
- Oliver Lieb
Oliver Lieb is a German electronic music producer and DJ. Lieb is known to have more than a dozen aliases with over 200 productions and remixes in various electronic genres such as, trance, house, and techno. He has also produced tracks for other artists...
(Germany)
- Cari Lekebusch
Cari Lekebusch is an electronic music producer and DJ based in Stockholm. His productions range from techno to hip hop. He owns a record label, H. Productions, founded and managed by himself...
(Sweden)
- LFO (UK)
- Chris Liebing
Chris Liebing is dj, producer, radio host of a weekly show and the driving force behind the labels CLR and Spinclub Recordings. His sound has continuously evolved during his dj career, always true to his Techno roots. He was one of the first djs that used the new possibilities in the course of the...
(Germany)
- Derrick May (USA/Detroit)
- Jeff Mills
Jeff Mills is an American techno DJ and producer.-Career:Starting in the early 1980s, Mills, using the name "The Wizard", was a recurring guest DJ on "The Electrifying Mojo" radio show on WJLB...
(USA/Detroit)
- Orbital
Orbital are a British electronic dance music duo from Sevenoaks, England consisting of brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll. Their career initially ran from 1989 until 2004, but in 2009 they announced that they would be reforming and headlining The Big Chill, in addition to a number of other live shows...
(UK)
- James Pennington
James Pennington, also known as Suburban Knight, is an artist and DJ and Producer with Underground Resistance , an independent record label based in Detroit, USA...
(USA/Detroit)
- Regis
Regis is a British techno musician and record label boss.As label boss of Downwards Records, O'Connor, alongside his label-mate Surgeon , forged a sound that blended Chicago house with darker European electronics...
(UK)
- Kevin Saunderson
Kevin Saunderson is an American electronic music producer. At the age of nine he moved to Belleville, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit where he attended Belleville High School and befriended two students, Derrick May and Juan Atkins...
(USA/Detroit)
- Slam
Slam are a producer/DJ duo from Glasgow, consisting of Stuart MacMillan and Orde Meikle . They are co-founders of Soma Quality Recordings. Their music style consists of house and techno.-History:...
(Scotland, UK)
- Luke Slater
Luke Slater is an English electronic musician, DJ and record producer, who has concentrated on techno since the beginning of the 1990s....
(UK)
- Pan Sonic
Pan Sonic was a Finnish experimental electronic music duo consisting of Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen.-Music:...
(Finland)
- 808 State
808 State are a British electronic music outfit, formed in 1987 in Manchester, taking their name from the Roland TR-808 drum machine and their common state of mind...
(UK)
- Surgeon
Surgeon is the pseudonym of Anthony Child, an English electronic musician and DJ. Child releases music on his own labels Counterbalance and Dynamic Tension. Established imprints, such as Tresor, Soma, and Harthouse, have also released Surgeon's original material and remixes...
(UK)
- System 7
System 7 are a British ambient dance band. Due to the existence of another band called System Seven, they were initially marketed as 777 in North America...
(UK)
- Keith Tucker
Keith Tucker is an American electronic musician and DJ from Detroit, Michigan.-Career:Tucker began his career playing cover versions of Juan Atkins’ Electro hits from the 1980s with his childhood friend Tommy Hamilton. The live ensemble achieved local renown for combining break-dancing, and...
(USA/Detroit)
- Aphex Twin
Richard David James , best known under the pseudonym Aphex Twin, is an Irish-born electronic musician and composer described as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music"...
(UK)
- Umek
Uroš Umek is an internationally acclaimed DJ and music producer from Slovenia, author of more than 500 releases for world renown record labels such as Renaissance, Armada, Cocoon Records, Audiomatique, Hell Yeah, Tronic, Datapunk amidst many others...
(Slovenia)
- UR
Underground Resistance is a musical collective from Detroit, Michigan, in the United States of America. They are the most militantly political example of modern Detroit Techno, with a grungy, four-track musical aesthetic and a strictly anti-mainstream business strategy...
(USA/Detroit)
- Underworld
Underworld are a British electronic group, and principal name under which duo Karl Hyde and Rick Smith have recorded together since 1980.- Early years: 1979–1986 :...
(UK)
- Sven Väth
Sven Väth is a Frankfurt-based DJ who has produced an extensive range of work since his career began in 1982. From 1985, he was part of the band OFF which released the hit "Electrica Salsa" in 1986...
(Germany)
- Ricardo Villalobos
Ricardo Villalobos is a Chilean-German electronic music producer and DJ. He is well-known for his work in the minimal techno and microhouse genres, and is one of the most significant figures in today's minimal techno scene....
(Chile)
- Cristian Vogel
Cristian Vogel is an experimental electronic musician.-Biography:Cristian Vogel was born in Chile and moved to England in the mid 1970s. Vogel first began working with electronic compositions in the late 1980s with the Cabbage Head Collective...
(UK)
- Adam X (USA/New York)
- Pacou (Germany)
Filmography
- High Tech Soul – Catalog No.: PLX-029; Label: Plexifilm; Released: 2006-09-19; Director: Gary Bredow; Length: 64 minutes.
- Technomania – Released: 1996 (screened at NowHere, an exhibition held at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, between May 15 and September 8, 1996); Director: Franz A. Pandal; Length: 52 minutes.
- Tresor Berlin: The Vault and the Electronic Frontier – Label: Pyramids of London Films; Released 2004; Director: Michael Andrawis; Length: 62 minutes – Label: Les Films à Lou; Released: 1996; Director: Dominique Deluze; Length: 63 minutes.
- We Call It Techno! – A documentary about Germany's early Techno scene and culture – Label: Sense Music & Media, Berlin, DE; Released: June 2008; Directors: Maren Sextro & Holger Wick.
External links
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