Well delighted to have the series continue today with this guest post from a gent and well respected producer from London. As you know we here at cubikmusik have a bit of a thang for bass and Semtek sure knows how to feed that habit with aplomb. Techno, house, jungle, bass, hip-hop and beyond can be heard in his tunes that are primarily percussion led to capture the dancefloor.
Once again we are treated to the sounds that an artist has grown up with in many ways to influence the music they produce today. We have one tune and mix included to get a flavor of these sounds so enjoy the read and the tunes. You can also check out his 'Bells' EP that just came out on November 24th. Check it on Soundcloud.
Much thanks to Semtek for taking the time out to do this. Much appreciated.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?
More recently though it has been Tango, and in particular the composer Astor Piazzolla, who I have been most interested by. His body of work crosses between jazz, folk and classical music in ways no one else has managed. One example of this is the renditions of his music given by Yo Yo Ma on ‘Spirit Of The Tango’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
The first electronic music that I ever followed closely was the sound of hardcore and jungle. TV station The Box still played a decent selection of hardcore anthems in the mid-nineties. There was also a lot of information in the media about hardcore, with one episode of Inspector Morse in particular centred around the rave scene. The most important aspect of this music, for me, was its total eccentricity. In the episode of Morse that I mentioned, you see one of the characters sampling Mozart’s ‘Ave Maria’. Morse subsequently refers to it as ‘Magpie Music’. Here’s another track that appears in the episode, and also one of the most strangely and brilliantly named tracks that I own - Axe Corner – Tortuga.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Once I had discovered pirate radio there was no longer any need to trawl the TV listings for rave-bashing propaganda in order to get my fix. The most important stations were Dream FM (for happy hardcore and jungle), Kool FM (for jungle) and (for jungle and old school). Although a lot of people disowned happy hardcore, it was very close to jungle in the early stages days, and was a logical progression from what artists like 4 Hero, Nookie, and Jonnie L had been doing previously. ‘Hurt You So’ appeared on R&S eventually, who were championing Belgian techno from artists like Joey Beltram at the time. Thereafter, techno, hardcore and jungle diverged.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Jungle music, as opposed to Drum ‘n’ Bass, is the ultimate party music, I don’t think you can dispute that. The combination of ragga vocals, breakbeats, gunshots, and so on, never fails to kick off a rave. There was more of an art to playing it when it felt futuristic, perhaps, than it is now when it feels ‘old school’. Some of the tracks are certainly better than others. There was also a hip hop element to jungle, which went with the music and the ethos. That inspired some of the best tracks, ‘Punks’ by A-Sides being my favourite.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Hip hop around that time was also a massive influence. The Wu Tang albums from that era were the first hip hop that I really enjoyed. The more West Coast Dre and Snoop sound felt alien, and still does today, and it’s sad that it has been blindly ripped off by so many recent ‘pop’ producers. Out of the East Coast the act I enjoyed most, in part because they were so difficult to get hold of early on, was Mobb Deep. There were legendary stories about their crew smearing excrement on Westwood’s studio wall when they were finally invited to perform on his show. Most of all from that era though, it’s the Eric Sermon produced ‘Tonight’s Da Night’ by Redman which sticks in the mind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
During the late nineties there were two really important nights in London, Sunday and Monday, and we used to do our best to get out on both of them. Sunday was Metalheadz sessions at the Blue Note (r.i.p.) in Hoxton Square. Monday was Gilles Peterson’s That’s How It Is night at Bar Rumba. The Sunday Sessions are still legendary, and after attending it’s almost impossible to imagine a similar club night ever appearing in London. The sound system at the Blue Note was similar to the system that lives at Plastic People now. There was a healthy diversity of sounds up until around 2000 when suddenly drum’n’bass lost its way somewhat, with the more rocksteady sound of Bristol producers like Krust, Die and Roni Size sharing the floor with tech step producers like Ed Rush and Optical, and the more experimental sounds of Photek and other East Anglia based producers like Klute, Digital and Spirit. Of all the music that was played at the Sunday Sessions, the track that stands out as being totally ahead of its time is Krust’s ‘Soul In Motion’. It’s a prototype for modern producers in all kinds of genres doing 10-minute long hypnotic groove-driven trips. You can’t even tell where the downbeat is for much of the track, a true piece of musical genius which transcended its context.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
It was around this point at which I stopped listening to drum ‘n’ bass after one of my friends began to introduce me to house music again. I’d enjoyed tracks like Frankie Knuckles ‘Tears’ and Rosie Gaines ‘Closer Than Close’ when they first came out, but we had been too young to go to the house clubs at that stage. The first house DJs I started to enjoy again were Sasha and Danny Tenaglia. Bedrock at Heaven was still a very successful night on a Thursday when we started going in around 2000. At the same time there was also a lot of UK tech house around of a superb quality. Bushwacka’s label Oblong was putting out forward thinking dancefloor music at around 130 bpm with a distinctly house groove. When people refer to tech house now they’re often talking about what I’d call minimal house, which is something quite different. UK tech house was loud and banging, not at all subtle or polite, and made with a great deal of skill by some of my true heroes. Lee Renacre, otherwise known as the100hz, is one of the most talented producers to ever have come out of the UK and its only a tribute to the modesty and laid back attitude of that generation that they haven’t been more widely acknowledged. Ian Loveday, aka Eon and Minimal Man, another producer of that generation, recently passed away and it’s his track ‘Semprini Rising’ that I’ll choose to exemplify the skill that they possessed in such abundance for making dance music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
House and techno clubs can be miserable affairs, there’s no doubt. The programmatic approach that promoters sometimes adopt is depressing, to say the least. One club that broke the mould when it first started and chose to do something decidedly different was Foreign Muck, at the Key. It was the first night to fully embrace European DJs who weren’t on the international scene, but had built their own parties abroad. Ivan Smagghe, D’Julz, Ata, M.A.N.D.Y. were just some of the acts that I saw there over the two years that it was running. While the music towards the end was becoming more minimal, it had started out with a very particular blend of disco, house, techno and dark ambiences that acts like Blackstrobe were championing around the time. In a way it was Electroclash, without the negative connotations endowed by the media. It was also around this time that Swayzak were at the top of their form, and if I was to choose a cd that recalls the sound of that era best, it would be the Swayzak Fabric 7 mix. Here’s one of the bittersweet masterpieces that I discovered, and still play a lot, on the back of that mix: Felix Da Housecat ‘What Does It Feel Like?’ (Royksopp Mix)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
It felt as though minimal house might destroy itself at one point around 2005, when literally every track that was being produced had the same sound family and structure. In a way it was the resurgence of disco, Chicago house and Detroit techno that saved 4/4 music from itself. Already around 2002 labels like Eskimo were releasing old disco masters which were featuring heavily in the sets of djs like the Glimmers, Soulwax, and so on. The cosmic (re) movement had its own crimes of fashion at time, with some ‘disco’ that might once have been called ‘trip hop’ and stuck at the back of Woolies for £2.50 passing under the noses of even the most ‘tasteful’ djs. However there have also been some massive successes, in my mind mainly amongst the tracks that have improvised at the slower speeds with more techno sound palettes. Force Of Nature, from Japan, are one of the acts who have been consistently excellent in this genre. Another is Ilija Rudman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
There’s a familiarity to a lot of the old Chicago tracks anyway because they have for so long appeared in the sets of DJs much more experienced and well-versed in house music than myself. It’s important though to do the research and understand the wheat from the chaff. A lot of the sound people associate with Chicago came from the use of certain Roland hardware, such as the 303, 808 and 909. There were a lot of artists experimenting with those machines around that time, and often my favourite ‘Chicago’ tracks aren’t from Chicago at all. One example would be Paul Rutherford (of Frankie Goes To Hollywood) ‘Get Real’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
In terms of the producers that are coming through now, I’m most excited about the ones who are taking an old school approach, learning their chops and trying to achieve a particular overall sound. It seems easy to make dance music nowadays to some people, but if you listen to the real heads who have been sitting at their mixing desks for twenty-odd years trying to hone their own style, you can hear how far ahead they are, and how effortlessly they blow away the competition, especially when you hear the tracks over a half-decent soundsystem. The same is true of DJs as well. It isn’t difficult to put on a couple of records, get a haircut and start demanding bottles of whisky every time you play. It is difficult to program a set of obscure music such that a crowd of people who have never heard it before, have never heard you before, and never even thought they liked dance music, are irrepressibly forced to move their feet. The DJ today who personifies this most, and without a doubt the best DJ of our generation is the mighty Prosumer, and here’s one of the more recent tracks I have heard him play which really exemplifies everything we should be about as musicians today. Crisp, emotive, subtle and loving.
Justus Kohncke ‘Alright’ (Remix from Dirk Leyers (who with Matias Aguayo forms one half of Closer Musik)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
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The appreciation is of beauty in irregularity, in lines that suggest rhythm and movement and gesture.
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