In 1991 stealing bits of reggae and hip hop was all the rage thanks to the newfangled Akai S1000 sampler. Way In My Brain features a large chunk of Wayne Smith’s 1985 electro-reggae classic Under Mi Sleng Teng, which incidentally spawned the entire modern dancehall reggae phenomenon and is therefore ultimately responsible for Rihanna. It launched one of the most used riddims of all time (excuse my lapsing into patois innit). The Sleng Teng riddim was just a preset on a cheap Casio synth, the MT41. The original tune totally rocks by the way – which accounts for around 95% of the reason that Way In My Brain does. Putting that wee nugget of reggae goodness into the context of a rave was a massively good move.
If you’ve ever wondered how to turbofoot, just put this on. At around the two minute mark, when the breakbeat kicks back in you’ll find you’ve grown a bob, a silly hat and a pair of baggy jeans and your feet will start stepping around. You’ll look like this bloke. Everyone looked like this bloke in 1991:
Way In My Brain was actually on the B Side to their first hit XL single, DJs Take Control.
I’m not sure what Sleng Teng is but I have a feeling it might not be something you’d be under if you were visiting your mum.
You really don’t get music TV shows like this any more – you know, where a non-ironic journalist asks intelligent questions of someone interesting. I guess the closest thing would be the occasional Culture Show music item.
Here’s the KLF being about the straightest and least silly I’ve sever seen them, talking about how Doctorin The Tardis really came about – trying to create a proper house record with the Dr Who theme and ending up with a novelty pop monster by accident. And then it ends with a nice ambient house tune, bits of Chill Out with a beat underneath – I hadn’t heard it before.
This clip from the BBC’s Micro Live computing show explains pretty everything you need to know about making techno in 1985. Or indeed today. It’s quite scientific, this method of making techno. Unlike the American version which is much more on the creative side.
The 1988 Baby Ford album was the very first house/techno release that I ever owned.
Baby Ford continues to occasionally make genius records. A more recent example would be his Chicken Store release on the best label of the noughties for people who like their house music wonky, Germany’s Perlon label, as Minimal Man – which was his collaboration with another Dad Hero, the sadly no longer with us Ian Loveday aka Eon (The Spice must flow…). That Chicken Store track has excellent wrong vocals on it and hence features on the Dads’ Voodoo House mix.
This track totally stands the test of time. It has a lot of the Mr Fingers Chicago square wave clonk-house sound to it and nice 909 programming. It’s also a bit spooky, there’s a minor chord thing – spooky house rules.
Frequency is Altern8’s best tune. It still kicks. Usually classics are best left alone and the remix job is akin to flogging a dead horse, or rather taking a distinguished old thoroughbred out from its nice warm stable and shooting it stone dead with a gun that fires shit trance buildups and lazy Ableton plugins.
But this is up there with Luke Slater’s epic job on The Horn Track. Production values in olden times can make tunes sound a bit flat when compared to modern stuff. Here the original samples have been kicked into the 21st century by a gaggle of expert remixers, chief among them for my money being Luke Vibert who works his customary fattening up magic. Check the fatness of that remix. Fatter than a deep fried pizza in batter. With extra fat. And foie gras on the side.
There are other great mixes from Ed DMX and Killa Productions (the latter has a certain je ne sais quoi for sure) – but it’s the Vibert that will have me reaching for my Paypal account to grab the limited edition 12″. It’s out on Balkan Vinyl which is an occasional series of vinyl EPs, very dad friendly. Kids and mums will like it too.
Not much jack in this really, mostly quite pumpin techno, some old, some new, some borrowed, some blue. The kind of stuff I used to play at an illegal outdoor rave party around 3am, not the kind of epic shite peddled by Tiesto et al. It does include DIY – Hothead, which would definitely inspire some big fish little fish action from the dreadlocks-and-smocks posse. And it has two Richard D James numbers in it for some reason.
EDIT: That’s the Aphex Twin (I put that in for Google’s benefit).
dj silver – jack in your face
reinhardt voigt – robson ponte
ark – le magicien d’os
autonation – sit on the bass (jerome hill remix)
aphex twin – windowlicker (xxx edit)
jamie principle, green velvet – the call (ante up)
reade truth – frequency sexxx
misc – le weekend
jay denham – i94
dbx – i’m losing control
diy – hothead
love inc – respect (air liquide live remix)
polygon window – quoth
giorgio moroder – the chase (vitalic live remix)
Hey you, you’re losing, you're losing your vitamin C
A real blast from the past, I decided to do an ‘ambient’ mix. I don’t mean ambient in the sense of whale sounds and new age crystal bothering, I mean in the good old fashioned sense of a chillout room like you used to find in early 90s clubs, where you would go to rest your body and twist your mind.
Apologies to Kris for the photo…it was just too perfect not to use, as it was taken in The Cooler at Edinburgh’s last ever Pure in 2006 – a proper chillout room that was the scene of many a unique experience.
EDIT: Maxed out the Soundcloud download limit so I’ve now stuck this on Mediafire.
Klf – Justified And Ancient Seems A Long Time Ago
Beaumont Hannant – Mind Colours
Deelite – Trymeon (Plaid Remix)
Atom Tm – Excelban
Wevie Stonder – Autopilot
Ulf Lohmann – Before 01
Boards Of Canada – Olson
Blue Calx – Blue Calx
Burial – Forgive
Ulf Lohmann – Before 04
The Orb – Little Fluffy Clouds (Live In Tokyo 1993)
The Orb ft Alan Parker Urban Warrior – Grey Monotonous Clouds
Burial – Forgive
Ulf Lohmann – Before 04
Barbarella – Barbarella (Irresistable Force Remix)
The Cinematic Orchestra – “And Relax!
Neu! – Leb Wohl
Freeform – Wonderplucks
The Octagon Man – Second Shape
Sand – Burning Man
John Fahey – Impressions Of Susan
KLF – Madrugada Eternal (Excerpt)
The Muppet Show – Statler and Waldorf Speak The Truth
A vacuum cleaner yesterday, sounding nothing like an Alpha Juno 2
The first thing to say about the hoover noise is it sounds nothing like a hoover. It was a preset called ‘WHAT THE…’ on an adequate but otherwise unremarkable synth, the Roland Alpha Juno 2 (EDIT: also on the Alpha Juno 1 actually). Putting the oscillators together, slightly detuned with some chorus and pulse width modulation gives this totally monstrous sound. Many synth noises have at least some relationship to a real instrument – not this one. It is one of those rare noises that has the distinction of sounding like nothing else other than itself.
J Edgar Hoover plotting the elimination of crypto-Communists yesterday
There is some geeky chat around who was the first to record the hoover noise on a record. I hesitate to award them any sort of medal as it was so mental sounding that someone was bound to record it sooner or later. Really, the person who should be winning a medal is a faceless engineer at Roland.
You can still read the debate straight from the horses’ mouths on Discogs – Joey Beltram and Adam X discussing whether it was Mundo Muzique who recorded it first. This debate can be summed up as follows:
ADAM: Mundo says he probably recorded it first.
JOEY: Well I’m not sure, but it doesn’t matter because then we did Mentasm.
ADAM: OK.
(EDIT: I’m being a tad dismissive, Joey’s chat on there about writing Energy Flash is pretty fascinating for a techno fanboy/girl)
So it may have been pipped at the post by one or other Mundo Muzique releases, but the tune that introduced it to the world was Mentasm, by Second Phase (which was Joey and Mundo Muzique together anyway). They released it on R&S in 1991 (a very good year for techno).
The riff in Mentasm is superb, and was sampled to death by a gazillion inferior hardcore techno and gabba records. It was all over drum n bass. The hoover spread like wildfire as all who heard it had their minds blown by its enormous synthetic weirdness. The most notable other tune to depend on it totally was another 1991 R&S number: Human Resource Dominator – bigger and bolder and rougher and tougher. There is no other. Words that still hold true to this day. And Beltram turned in an absolutely killer remix of that one too for good measure.
Brooklyn's Joey Beltram insisting he recorded it first
The hoover has even recently turned up in the pop charts in Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance. I found myself having to play said Lady Gaga tune at a cheesy party recently (I do get into some odd pickles), and I thought to myself – hmm, what is this shit? It’s stadium house. And I was suddenly inspired to mix What Time Is Love by KLF in – worked a treat. Lady Gaga and KLF? Think about it.
Mentasm is still up there as one of the best Dad Dancing tunes of all time. When the filter action starts happening on the hoover riff…classic.
One of the more ludicrous of the first wave of Mentasm-sampling records:
This tune is huge. It’s made for those moments when the lighting monkey is a bit drunk and trigger happy with the smoke machine, and then forgets to turn off the strobes. Boof.
Mike Ink is a bit of an unsung techno hero, and not just for his hair. In 1994 much of euro techno was in the process of disappearing up its own arse into horrible trance in a haze of LSD and dreadlocks. This has a bit of a trance feel to it yes, there is a 303, but there’s something special about Mike Ink productions – they JACK.
This tune still sounds like it just landed from space despite coming from Englandshire in 1990. From Network Records. For more of this peculiarly British and spooky take on house/techno music, see also early Warp tunes (most famously LFO).
Play it through a massive sound system, watch your gusset I’m tellin ya – serious brown note action.
When techno went glam
techno dads 