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So, how was it for you?

Inevitably, the end of year discussions are already beginning, although admittedly on some of the closed discussion groups that I'm part of. Once again, it has been a great year for electronic music. While sales ain't what they used to be, there were signs that the falls of the past five to six years may have bottomed out (although anecdotal evidence suggests that digital sales may be hurting: witness the demise of DJ Download and consider anecdotal evidence from well-known producers who claim to sell only a few hundred units per release on the main platforms), and there have been some promising new producers, great albums, excellent singles and hey, even a handful of promising new labels. I'm going to refrain from issuing an end of year list until the end of the year (strange, I know), especially because some of the best releases are about to drop -  including Jason Fine's album. In the meantime, I'm going to open the floor to the readers -  how was it for you (so far)?

Death by Download

It looks like DJ Download has gone bust, only to be bought up by Juno. Wonder if this will be the start of a trend in the digital distro sector, aping what has happened to many vinyl distros since the start of this decade?

Here's the official statement:

"It is with great regret that we have to inform you that DJdownload Limited has been placed into administration by the Directors of the company effective today.

The Directors have worked extremely hard over the past few months to try and save the company: overheads were reduced and attempts to increase revenues were made but ongoing efforts to raise further finance were unsuccessful. Despite their best efforts the company was not able to continue to trade.

We would like to thank you for your support and business over the years and we wish you all the best in the future."

Sound Advice?

Call it a guilty pleasure if you want, but last week I went back and listened to a collection of remixes of 80s synth pop hits. Apart from the irresistible version of Propaganda's 'Duel' -  the group's Claudia Bruckner is my ultimate femme fatale - there was an unforgettable, decidely technoid 'New York' rework of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's 'Relax'. While it was released in 1990, a good few years after the original, it still holds up, somehow striking a perfect balance between pop accessibility and underground club edginess. However, what's most significant about the remix is the sound design. While uncredited on the version I possess, I assume it's by the band's svengali-like producer Trevor Horn. This would make sense, as the production is so  warm, its creator's attention to every minute detail so refreshing. Of course, some context is needed to understand why it sounds the way it does. At the tail end of the 80s, major labels were still more willing to pour huge resources into remixes, especially if it was on such a bankable act as FGTH -  despite the fact that by 1990, their success had dimmed. This meant people like Horn had access to massive studios and pretty much a carte blanche with regard to the schedule. I say all of this in relation to the recent post about a techno producer retiring - what would happen if such creatives got engineering jobs with the remaining major studios (perhaps  there are fewer vacancies nowadays, but humour me). By day, they would have to engineer for chart act or a stadium band, but by night when the sessions were finished, surely they would have access to untold riches. This is exactly the reason why Juju & Jordash's debut album is so rewarding: employed by day in one of Amsterdam's main studios, they have used the situation to turn what could have been a pleasant series of deep, discofied house jams into a mutli-dimensional sound tapestry. That it often has a dance floor function is almost to miss the point; this layered, tonal adventure would not have been possible without the inadvertent support of the mainstream infrastructure. Maybe there's a lesson in there for all of Juju & Jordash's frustrated peers.

New Flavour

Well-known poster (here and on RA) and huge techno/house fan Bernardo is the latest addition to the small section of the blogosphere dedicated to underground electronic music. Check out his blog, which starts with a Moodymann review.

Linkage

Me on Traversable Wormhole; Claro Intelecto; XDB; Mike Dehnert and Frenchie on Resident Advisor. For more of my ramblings, head over to LWE where Demdike Stare's chilling 'Symbiosis' is appraised, along with reviews of Robert Hood and Cassy's new mix.   Invariably, when you get sick of reading my reviews, check out the seriously good first column from the multi-talented Donnacha Costello over at Bodytonic, whose sentiments I 100% agree with.

Hello & Goodbye

So some happy and sad news. First of all, some good news. This Friday Test starts its new residency at the Twisted Pepper in Dublin. The club takes place in the Mezz section of the venue and is free in. It's a residents' night and I'm doing the headline slot, so expect to hear a mixture of techno styles. On a less positive note, this is the last ever DEAF weekend. One of the festival's organisers told me that this was going to happen last month when I met him out one night. It would seem that the reason for their decision is that the festival pays them only a very small wage, especially for the amount of work they do on DEAF throughout the year and that it became impossible for them to do other stuff and the festival. Given that it was never a money spinner, surely the argument exists for more state funding for such events. Of course, in light of the parlous state of our economy and with the prospect of huge cuts in the forthcoming budget looming, it would be safe to say that funding fringe music events is probably low on the list of priorities. Anyway, thanks to Eamon, Sunil and Karen for all the work they put into this year's event and for all the great events of the last eight years. You'll be sorely missed.

Assault on the Senses

I only made it to one gig during the first weekend of DEAF, but it lived up to the hype. Even on paper, the pairing of Ancient Methods and Planetary Assault Systems was an inspired one, but in practice, it was even greater than I imagined. This was down to a few factors, including the warehouse-style Andrew's Lane venue and booming system - I heard some complaints about this on the night which I just don't understand -  an even enough balance of male and female guests, atypical for a techno night, and Sunil Sharpe and Rory St John, who also performed. I only caught part of Rory's set, but was deeply impressed; from the few minutes I heard, it sounded like a clubby take on the Kalon/Female sound, but that's probably an unfair assessment as I only heard two tracks. There is a recording of Rory's set floating around, so if I can grab it, I will post it here with his permission. Sunil, who organised the show, played a brilliant set before Ancient Methods. Pitch perfect mixing, eg no platter touching, and a great selection of harder edged but really dynamic and inventive techno, finishing with some Drexciya and Suburban Knight's 'Art of Stalking'. Again, if there is a recording, I will post it here. And so to the two out of town acts. I've listened to all of AM's records and their mix for mnml ssg, and, having seen them perform live, I can honestly say that there is no other act like them at the moment. Sure, there are references to the brusing industrial techno of Surgeon, Regis and Downwards or to the east European 'broken' producers, but there is more going on here. Listening to them layer wave upon wave of distorted, fluid noise over their buckled rhythms the other night, I was reminded more of drone rockers like Spacemen 3 or industrial acts like Swans and the Young Gods with some Throbbing Gristle thrown in for good measure rather than anything contemporary. And that's their appeal, as far as I can see (or hear). With most techno and house pursuing a Moebius Strip-like route, AM break this pattern, bring something new and deeply refreshing to the table. I think that the live set is the ideal place for their music, as it allows their mutant sound to be even more fluid. You could see that even Slater was impressed as he took to the stage, and it was tempting to wonder what he was thinking -  these are the new bloods, this music is as wild as the X-tront and Morganistic stuff I did? Irrespective of what was going through his mind, he played an excellently functional, if somewhat linear set, delivering the killer blow at the end with 'Temporary Suspension', which sounds as good as vintage PAS -  followed by the evergreen 'Booster' and 'In From the Night'. The latter provided a rousing finale, and it was great to see new and older fans reacting to it  with the same fervour. Thanks to Sunil and his crew for putting on one of the best techno nights in Dublin this year.

Planet Luke

Here's an interview I did with Luke Slater aka Planetary Assault Systems ahead of of this weekend's show in Dublin for Earwiggle together with Ancient Methods -  probably the best techno line-up of the year in our fair and rainy little city. The interview appeared in yesterday's Metro freesheet.

Luke Slater is one of the UK’s most talented techno producers, but has dealt with critical failure and personal upheaval to make a spectacular comebacks. Since the early 90s, Slater released inspirational electronic music in many shapes and forms - from abrasive club tracks to gloriously mellow ambience – under the Planetary Assault Systems, X-Tront, Clementine, Morganistic, 7th Plain and Clementine guises and under his own name
But then in 2002, his life changed. Deviating from his underground approach, he hooked up with vocalist Ricky Barrow from The Aloof and released ‘Allright on Top’, an album’s worth of pleasant if forgettable pop songs.
By his own admission, he wasn’t prepared for the reaction it received.
“It was a real experience - I didn’t actually realise how many of my fans I had alienated with the album,” he laughs. “There were so many people who were committed to my techno work. Being part of the pop world was like having a real job and I just couldn’t toe the line,” Luke adds. “One of the things that annoyed me was playing in live venues. I didn’t see the music as pop music, but that’s where it got placed. I have no regrets about doing that album, even though I’ll never do it again. The techno world is a much nicer place.”
Slater didn’t feel the same way about techno at the start of this decade: he had stopped writing electronic music and although he was still gigging regularly, he admits he was doing so to pay the bills.
“By about 2002 I had done so much and I didn’t want to keep repeating myself,” he explains. “I also felt that the scene was turning into something wrong - techno wasn’t meant to carry on like it did in the 90s. It needed a break especially as the whole scene had gone mad for ten years.”
Luke says that he enjoyed the good times as much as everyone else and had “no control over anything, but I was kind of enjoying that”. However one day, he ended up in a doctor’s surgery and was told that he needed treatment.
“I was diagnosed as being bipolar or having manic depression,” he says. “I always had a tendency towards depression and it helped my creativity, but suddenly things were out of control and I needed to get a handle on what was going on.”
While Luke says that he only sporadically suffered episodes, it caused chaos in his private life.
“On occasions I locked myself away, but I was in a relationship and it started to go hideously wrong due to my behaviour,” he recalls. “Rather than being creative, I’d hit the town and even though I’d feel good, it would turn into madness in my head. I would end up doing destructive things like spending money I didn’t have, I just didn’t realise I was doing anything wrong. I didn’t get to the stage where I was running down the road naked, but it was messy.”
Thankfully, Slater overcame these problems and refocused his energy on music production and started releasing as Planetary Assault Systems again, a guise that had yielded classic techno tracks like ‘Booster’, ‘In From The Night’ and ‘Gated’ during the 90s.
Earlier this year, he issued an impressive album and an EP, both called ‘Temporary Suspension’, which lived up to the classic hard-edged, pulse-racing Planetary techno sound.
The fact that the new material was released on Ostgut, the label run by notorious Berlin club Berghain, was no coincidence, as its resident DJs, Ben Klock and Marcel Dettmann, cite Slater as a major influence.
“A few years back I made the decision to find one club in Berlin and to stick with it,” he explains. “There are so many clubs in that city, but few of them are the right ones. I was looking for a club with an anything goes policy, so I chose Berghain,” Luke adds. “I feel that there is a lot of good techno music around again - it’s like the newer producers looked to what was really good about the 90s and added to it, but the groove and the feeling behind it is the same,” he says.
With Luke touring the Planetary album heavily across Europe, including his first live show in Dublin this weekend, Slater has also found time to reactivate one of his other projects. In 2007, Luke wrote a piece of music as 7th Plain to accompany a modern dance performance by the Berlin Staatsballet.
“I ended up doing an hour’s worth of music to accompany one of their performances and it may get a commercial release,” he says. “My experiences have taught me that there isn’t one direction in life, there are many aspects - never have any regrets and never say never!”

Back on Trax

Pardon the terrible pun, but following last week's gloomy atmosphere due to the news about Cortex, a batch of new music has arrived to lift the spirits. First up is Rob Hood's excellent new 'Superman'/'Range' release. The Detroit producer's previous record sounded like he was going through the motions, but this is a serious return to form, with pitched up percussion, bristling hi hats and on 'Range' an eerie organ riff to rival Mills's 'Solid Sleep'. Marcel Dettmann impresses too on 'MDR6'; while two of the track are based on Detroit-inspired metallic rhythms, the killer tracks are the disorted industrial bass workouts, with Dettmann audibly pushing all of the levels to red in the studio and leaving them there for the duration. If you're looking for something less abrasive, then Hakim Murphy's 'Black Robots Having Sex' on Dan Curtin's Metamoprhic is well worth hunting down. Based on the kind of raw shuffling drums, analogue percussion and bleepy melody lines that the label owner's own productions used to hinge on, the only weak spot on this EP is, surprisingly, Morgan Geist's remix. Speaking of remixers, the underrated Matt O'Brien has done a version of new artist Roberto Bosco's 'Log In Exact' on Mowar. In its original format, 'Log In' is one of the better examples of modern deep house,  right down to the moody vocal snippet in the breakdown, but O'Brien rips it up and starts again. Upping the tempo, deploying a creepy synth riff and introducing a wall of chiming bells, this is a highly distinctive remix - hopefully it gets the recognition it deserves. MLZ is another artist who should really have a far higher profile; his Demdike Stare and Pendle Coven LPs this year were excellent - and varied -  and 'One Cycle' sees him delve again into spaced out textures, this time anchored to an effective clipped metallic rhythm. Miles also does a really good tracky take on DJ Ghosthunter's 'Experiment 3' on the flip. Finally, watch out for 'Fait Accompli' by new Irish artist Frenchie, a gloriously subtle take on deep Detroit techno/house -  more news and views on new releases next week.

Alex Cortex: Not So Slight Return

The following statement is Alex Cortex's reply to some of the more negative posts made here and elsewhere about his retirement from techno. The reply is unedited (there may be some grammatical / syntax errors, etc), but this is the way he wanted it to be posted. I'd just like to add that these comments were made as part of private conversations we had together. Anyway, this seems to better encapsulate the frustrations and unhappiness he feels about electronic music in 2009:

"Someone forwarded me the Test Industries thread with quotes from my email today. Always nice to get some positive feedback, that's for sure. I usually embrace constructive criticism, too, but some opinions there have been just very negative. That reflects pretty much how I feel about this scene: lots of negativity. At least one comment gets it right - it's just a bit of news. I never pretended to be the best at anything or to have invented anything, never created a buzz around me, just have been doing my thing and that for quite a while now. some opinions clearly show that many people don't have a clue how hard it is to survive in the music business, or they speak from some very comfortable position.

"I couldn't care less for the individuals voicing their opinion there, but as they represent something I met quite often, here's what I think about that: It is hard to survive in this business if you don't live in a techno hotspot but are all on your own; if you don't work at a club, label, distributor, record-store, booking agency, or else affiliated business; if you don't snore coke or share hookers with 'important' people at afterhours; if you don't conform to producing what i call "the sound of the season"; if you don't answer 'yes' to everything; if you don't sell yourself cheaply and in return have to justify yourself for not entering the fee dumping contest so many artists blindly accept; if you don't care more about your haircut or choice of t-shirt than about your music and sound; if you don't get obsessed with squeezing out any penny of this business but rather try to provide other music lovers with a timeless product; if you don't get obsessed with your (imagined) importance, but forget about these vanities and concentrate on the actual work in the studio. artistically (and largely on a personal level too) this scene has been creeping up its own arse.

"What's that about only having one photo of myself, if techno once prospered as a faceless music? What's that about speaking up is nothing but wailing, being lame and desperate? It's rather the other way round, that almost nobody dares to speak up in public out of fear to lose something, whatever that could be, although in fact everybody is complaining in private that everything is stagnating and getting worse by the day. That an artists has to retire from making music because he can't make a living out of it is partly also the consequence of a scene forgetting to respect its artists. Buying their music, booking them for gigs, that's the direct way how to maintain that an artist can keep working in what he's doing best, especially if he does that to have people partake in it in the first place. Maybe my biggest 'fault': I never produced tracks that needed immediate release because otherwise they would sound dated. My stuff usually sits quite a while, any time between one and ten years has been the case so far, until it finds a place somewhere. This way of working means that to buy equipment and to make music is a constant investment of money and time without knowing if you will ever see a cent for what you have been doing. add a string of cancelled gigs and releases and here we are.

"My temporary retirement btw is not something which came up just now. I haven't been producing any new solo tracks for at least half a year, maybe longer. And I still have enough finished material in order to have releases for at least a year, rather longer. If i get gig, remix, or production offers with a fee attached I feel I deserve I will still take that on. but making music just to be in that scene? In THAT scene? If it wasn't suffering from a rocknroll complex and was artistically more challenging - then maybe."