What were you into?
Me—shoegaze. years and years. that and anything instrumental that struck me.
Sonic Youth-y overblown guitar wobble.
a hell of a lot of singer-songwriters
and lots of hardcore and some variations of punk rock and local indie bands that didn’t suck (then)
same plus death/doom/... metal
you and me both John Cameron Octigan.
well not consumed with shoegaze, maybe not consumed by that, but I definitely considered it my favourite genre, and then a lot of IDM too.
do you guys think this is the last stop?
I’ve come out the other end, it’s no big deal. Took me forever to figure out!
bowie, eno, kraftwerk
Nothing. When I started getting really interested in music back in my early teens I was already digging techno/house/trance/hardcore, though back then I was also heavily into Eurodance. By my late teens “serious” electronic music (that’s how I thought about it back then) had totally won over any other type of music, and I started to think Eurodance was a bit silly. But that was just youthful hipsterism, which thankfully went away. Later on other genres caught my attention, and these days I listen more to rap and jazz than techno.
I once started a thread in ILE about how my generation was probably the first one (in Europe) to have electronic dance music around ever since we were kids, which meant we had no need for rock.
postpunk, african music, folk, krautrock
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Yeah, it’s funny. My generation was the first (in America) to have punk rock, which meant we had no need for classical music. Or African people banging on stuff. Plus ça change, you know?
I listened to lots of British electronic “dance” music (as in the stuff you can’t dance to), some indie rock (and I was in an indie rock band), krautrock, some hardcore and metal stuff (I was obssessed with the Dillinger Escape Plan, my email address is a lyric from their song 43% burnt), some Brazilian and Latin American music (Caetano, Gil, Joao Gilberto, Andean folk, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico).
I still listen to all those types of music but now I’m much deepr into techno and I’m starting to get into jazz. Ornette Coleman’s Sound Grammar was one of my albums of the year and I’m getting crazy play out of this Charlie Parker comp with “Lover man” and other Dial session stuff on it that I found for £2 a few months ago.
Alcachofa was the album that got me into techno.
do you guys think this is the last stop?
no. but it’ll be a couple of years, at least.
I always feel like some kind of veteran when people say some microhouse album got them into techno!
I’m not sure techno has entirely consumed my life/listening habits, not quite anyhow, not to “becoming a dj” levels...
I suppose I was into a bunch of different artists, the usual indie & rock younguns would have been into in 1991 (Ride, Nirvana, PJ Harvey etc).
Well I think the barrier for me getting into any sort of 4/4 dance music was the fact that prog-house and trance were the dance musics du jour during my adolescence and they fucking repulsed me.
otm
(though i was shocked to find an 808 state 12“, Pacific, in my records from early high school. still sounds good.)
Heh. Well I’ve certainly been more into techno since 2001–3 (ish) though I’ve never for one reason or other been a very regular clubber... But yeah, I had a few Techno comps, stuff like The Black Dog, Orbital, Underworld and (lots of) Björk remixes way back, enjoyed drum’n’bass etc. My music interest in general took kind of a dip around the prog-house/trance era but I don’t think there was a cause & connection to that. The whole microhouse thing has ended up giving me a better (if somewhat patchy) appreciation of House though so it all evens out in the end.
Pacific State always sounds great!
Techno has yet to consume my life.
Suggestions?
let it eat your feet first
thanks for the warning!
techno consumed my waffles, and i’ve never forgiven it.
grady:
underground resistance—world 2 world
this is a pretty classicvaried detroit techno 12“, so if you don’t like any of the stuff on it, you probably will never love techno.
i listened to lots of noise, drony psych shit, soul and what i like to call embarassing music. like the saloonatics or olivia newton-john.
i really like carl craig’s recent stuff and the few villalobos things ive heard. and i like the parts of mixes by optimo, tim sweeny etc that move towards techno, but i haven’t found an all-techno mix i really like. i like old acid stuff.
i didnt like the ellen alien LP, but i’ll give it a few more listens.
and i’ll look for the underground resistance record.
also, though, techno hasn’t consumed my life. i just like it better than other musics.
get the old villalobos stuff. it is better than anything of recent.
where to start with older villalobos?
i liked the erotic discourse 12“.
oh, and i was referring to the apparat collab, wrt ellen alien. i listened to this 12” in the store and remember liking at least two of the tracks, but not enough to buy it i guess.
try ‘heike,’ ’808 the bassqueen’ and so on. that’ll give ya an idea whether you’ll like villalobos.
Yeah, it’s funny. My generation was the first (in America) to have punk rock, which meant we had no need for classical music. Or African people banging on stuff. Plus ça change, you know?
Well, this wasn’t what I meant. What I was trying to say is that before late eighties / early nineties rock (with all of its variants) had been the biggest, almost monolithic option for white teenagers to get into, whereas my generation was the first who could get into electronic music en masse without having to deal with rock at all.
trees is right about heike and 808 the bassqueen... i would add N-DRA for a nice even three but it’s pretty rare so you’ll have to really look for it on slsk. those are his best pre-alcachofa/pre-album length works.
but if you really want to be consumed you need to start listening to basic channel. that was when i realized i had crossed the point of no return and i put my heart and soul (and bank account) into the boom boom boom boom.
and to think how quickly time has passed
grady, try the erlend oye dj kicks. there are undeniable hot-assed moments on there, and it’s very accesible.
I still remember the excitement of new types of music being born seemingly out of the blue, the feeling that we we’re on the edge of the future, that we were witnessing the birth of something totally new as opposed to the boring rock stuff of the older generation. Of course it was kinda naive, and, as you say, every generation has probably felt the same way.
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i remember really liking the erland oye Dj Kicks when i heard it about a year ago! i’ll go back and listen to it.
it has the same jollymusic track as the first rub n tug mix i think.
yes (and great)
The next question might be “After techno consumed your life.” I feel like techno is less and less the vital sonic laboratory everyone steals from. Maybe it’s just my mood today.
i was trying to think of how i first heard the term but it’s very hard. possibly not until 1990 in the end (by contrast House was a familiar term to me from ’87 onwards because of all the chart hits, media ‘frenzy’ over acid house parties etc.).
I’m not sure if it was the same in Britain, but at least in Finland in the early nineties “techno” was used as an umbrella term for all electronic dance music, until it was replaced by a better term (“konemusiikki”, “machine music” in English). Of course those of us in the know tried to tell people it’s just one genre, but I think there are some folks who still use the word in the wider sense.
In fact, the first (or so it claims) non-fiction book on the new electronic dance music was released in Finland in 1994, and it was titled “Tekno”.
there was a ‘when did techno become the catch-all term for dance/electronic music?’ thread on old-ILM. i think it involved lots of HEATED ARGUING.
I think that book would be a wonderfully nostalgic read today... If I remember correctly, alongside the more academic texts it had, for example, a poem written in praise of KLF.
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The worst part is that house then became the catch-all term for techno.
but house is so soulful and grown up, the best of all dance music genres really. how could anyone lump it in with manufactured trash like techno?
there was a thread on olde-ILM on “what non-techno music do techno dudes listen to” or something but i cant find it now.
but house is so soulful and grown up, the best of all dance music genres really. how could anyone lump it in with manufactured trash like techno?
roffles
i think that once i realized that more that 90% of my itunes was dance music (i include disco and funk) was when i realized there was no turning back and that i love this shit.
after techno consumed my life? i bought a set of decks and started spending my money on records instead of druks.
“Well, this wasn’t what I meant.
—Tuomas
Yeah, I know.
do any of you guys who buy vinyl keep a discogs profile?
grady, one thing to try is looking through the ilx group on last.fm. i’ve found ilxors whose taste i know i like, and have gotten lots of tips that way
grady, teh lfam keeps a discogs profile. ‘auxroot.’
mine is ‘goodnessgreatness’ but it needs updating.
i also have a few records for sale on discogs... buy them!! please!
mint copies of basic channel! give your life to techno and your cash to me! ‘_`
even though you could get it cheaper from forced exposure...
YOU DO NOT SAY THAT LEO
listening to underground resistance right now. i like it!
played it last night at a DJ gig, worked like a charm. I had three people walk up to me and ask me about Jupiter Jazz. That record will never date.
yeah, i played ‘Octagon’ at the last DJing i did at school and people were all bout-it bout-it. it kind of freaked me out.
ALSO, a story: it’s about three in the morning (cue jeezy....uh no), and the party needs to end cuz the hostesses need to sleep. i’ve been playing shit for three hours. all the people left on the dance floor are gettin nasty with each other’s tongues and whatnot. so i play ‘Ride’ as the last song. and people are LOVING IT AND CAN NEVER GET ENOUGH. some girl even came up to me on the street two weeks later and asked me what the fuck that song was, and told me she had wanted to take me home. i be like damn.
WHERE I FIND THIS MAGIC SONG?
that whole record is pretty sexy
simply the sexiest. hypnotic.
Hip-Hip(80s), i actually got into shoegazing after techno
Stevie Wonder, the Boredoms, Stereolab, Spacemen 3, the Rolling Stones, Slayer, D.R.I., Voice of the Beehive
Hazel Dickens, Guy and Candie Carawan, Kich Kirby, Tommy Bledsoe, Si Kahn, De La Soul, Minutemen, Jean-Paul Sartre Experience, Galaxie 500, Iron Maiden, Michael Jackson, Pat Benatar, The Runaways, Pete Seeger, Smokin Dave and the Premo Dopes