Roots of Techno recommendations

swears

preppy-kei
I'm curious to hear a few more of the late seventies to mid eighties electropop/EBM/italo acts like Kraftwerk (natch), DAF, Liaisons Dangereuses, etc, that influenced early techno and house pioneers like Derrick May and Juan Atkins. Are there any compilations/mixes I could check out? It's fun to be suprised by stuff that sounds a few years ahead of it's time.
 

Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
I'm curious to hear a few more of the late seventies to mid eighties electropop/EBM/italo acts like Kraftwerk (natch), DAF, Liaisons Dangereuses, etc, that influenced early techno and house pioneers like Derrick May and Juan Atkins. Are there any compilations/mixes I could check out? It's fun to be suprised by stuff that sounds a few years ahead of it's time.

Do a search for mixes by Greg Wilson or check out:
http://www.electrofunkroots.co.uk
 

Gabba Flamenco Crossover

High Sierra Skullfuck
For an overview of what was being played in clubs & on radio back in the day, you can't do much better than deep house pages. They have mixes going back to the late 70s. Unfortunately it's real player.

I find the dont-give-a-fuckness of the early chicago sets inspiring... Ron Hardy mashing the soppiest, girliest disco into unltra-minimal acid trax into brit synth pop. Check the early Mills mixes out too - lethel skills.
 

swears

preppy-kei
Martin Dust: Yeah, I've been on there, the essays are brilliant. I only recently found out that Malcolm McClaren was an early importer of US electro hip hop to the UK, odd.

Gabba: I'll check this out, I'm particularly interested in 80-85 and what differentiates "electro" from "techno". When did the switch occur? What are the differences?

Gutterbreakz: That comp is ace, I especially like the Alexander Robotnik tune, I remember they played the McCartney track on The Blue Room introducing it like "Guess who this is..." Depeche? The first three albums are classic.
 
I'm particularly interested in 80-85 and what differentiates "electro" from "techno". When did the switch occur? What are the differences?

The switch? If it can be isolated to a specific moment/track, then surely its Juan's 'No UFO's' from '85. The electro element is still there...but more like a certain state of mind has been achieved (or state of independence?). Mind you, his earlier outfit Cybotron did a track called Techno City a couple years before so who knows? Whatever, I'm convinced that Juan Atkins is the fulcrum upon which it all hinges...though maybe Derek's tracks fro '87 onwards were the one's that jettisoned the last electro influences...

hasn't someone written a book about this yet?!

where's Woebot? - I'm sure he could explain it all perfectly...

Edit: Of course, what differentiates electro from Techno is the same thing that differntiates NYC from Detroit!!

From 'Energy Flash':
Atkins and May both attribute the dreaminess of detroit techno to the desolation of the city, which May descibes in terms of a sort of sensory-cultural deprivation. 'It's the emptiness of the city that puts the wholeness in the music.'
 
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hamarplazt

100% No Soul Guaranteed
Edit: Of course, what differentiates electro from Techno is the same thing that differntiates NYC from Detroit!! [/I]

Please not this again. A definition of techno that makes it all about what detroit put into it it, also makes it one of the smallest, least innovative and most boring and inhibited genres of music that have ever existed. Detroit is just another piece of the puzzle that lead to the 90s explosion of electronic dance music (what I'd call "techno"), and not even the most important one. I think Simon Reynolds said it best:

"The thing about Detroit's centrality is that it was only constructed after the event. At the time, it was considered an adjunct to and subset of Chicago house. You only had people going on about Detroit as this lost origin and founding set of principles when hardcore took over in 91-92. It was a defensive, reactive, and literally reactionary myth. The fact is that without Detroit, the whole rave thing would have happened much the same way because it was really build on acid house, deep house, and then the Italian piano tunes. Without Chicago, nothing would have happened. If there had only ever been Detroit techno... there'd be no rave scene. There'd just be this network of small, hipster scenes in various cities around the world. Probably not even that."

As I've said here before, EBM was just as important a part of it all as detroit. In germany (and other parts of continental europe) there was, during the eighties, a dance scene built around it called "techno", and that evolved into the european rave scene when acid arrived. Why is this less important than a detroit scene that only became trendy much later, when snobs needed some authentic root music to believe in?

Oh, and the Dan Sicko book is an offensively one-sided take on techno: Techno IS detroit, and Sicko has nothing to offer than the myth.
 

mms

sometimes
in la you had people saying techno and techno bass b4 detroit people were widley using the term, the music sounds a bit different though.
i don't think it matters though really, there was never that 'techno is pure techno is detroit ' thing when it was happening early on, there simply weren't enough good records so new beat, chicago stuff, nyc house and garage, detroit and electro used get a look in alongside british and euro stuff, hip hop was more danceable back then so people used to play hip hop in mixes too, more drum breaks, NYC producers such as masters at work etc produced hip hop tracks alongside instrumentals.
 
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mms

sometimes
Did you ever buy this comp?


A nice selection of across the board...apart from that crappy Macca tune!

Oh and Depeche Mode's greatest hits, too;)

be much better including some early simple minds than that macca tune.
funny how its called secret history, those are all tunes i've had for years and always thought everyone else knew about em (apart from the macca one)
 
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petergunn

plywood violin
plaatimage1123.jpg
 

swears

preppy-kei
Detroit

Those tunes like "Nude Photo" though, they were so cold, so austere, really getting away from previously held ideas of funk and fun you had in disco and electro. I'm sure I heard that pop-ravesters like Adamski and Altern8 were fans of Derrick May. I take the point that a lot of the explosion in dance music's popularity in the early 90s could have happened without the Detroit influence, but still...
 

Woebot

Well-known member
I'm curious to hear a few more of the late seventies to mid eighties electropop/EBM/italo acts like Kraftwerk (natch), DAF, Liaisons Dangereuses, etc, that influenced early techno and house pioneers like Derrick May and Juan Atkins. Are there any compilations/mixes I could check out? It's fun to be suprised by stuff that sounds a few years ahead of it's time.

egads. theres a whole book in there.

the most interesting thing is things that sound way way ahead of their time.

i promised someone a cd of this sort of thing when i was bragging on a post about delia and gavin and i will get round to it and do it properly. gutterbreakz (mutual back-slapping) would also be good on this.

though topically I-F - Mixed Up In The Hague Vol. 1 is apparently great....
 
S

simon silverdollar

Guest
though topically I-F - Mixed Up In The Hague Vol. 1 is apparently great....


finally managed to get a copy of that the other day- it's been repressed and boomkat have got it. it's one of the best mixes i've heard- more than lives up to the hype.
 

mms

sometimes
finally managed to get a copy of that the other day- it's been repressed and boomkat have got it. it's one of the best mixes i've heard- more than lives up to the hype.

yes one is euro and italo electronic disco, the 2nd one is electro funk. they are both stunning.
cheap too, lots of shops have them not just boomkat.:cool:
one is slightly better, it's literally like a dream for me, every good track after every good track, faultless selection, if is funny when he dj's live, he's a big shaven headed guy who you'd never really expect to have a penchant for pretty cheesy in alot of ways electronic music, but he's on it, singing along to every vocoder every cheesy suggestive female vocal.
 
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mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
Sheryl Garratt wrote a book called 'Adventures in Wonderland' which has a couple of great chapters on Chicago and Detroit, she went over there early.

I'd check out anything Vince Clarke wrote between 81 - 83 ( Depeche Mode, Yazoo ) ,Human League, up to the Fascination! EP. Especially 'Dancevision', and the Eurythmics 'Sweet Dreams', 'Touch' and 'Touch' the remix album, especially 'Paint A Rumour'.
 
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noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Book wise, Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton's 'LAST NIGHT A DJ SAVED MY LIFE' is pretty damn good on this, as well as just being an excellent read. Draws out the whole narrative of various dance music strands very well. It's also slyly and hilariously opinionated in places. New '06 edition just out. Just recently prompted me to check out some Daniele Baldelli mixes - early 80s cosmic disco excursions with lots of effects and a ridiculously open-minded track selection policy.
 

henry s

Street Fighting Man
Those tunes like "Nude Photo" though, they were so cold, so austere, really getting away from previously held ideas of funk and fun you had in disco and electro. I'm sure I heard that pop-ravesters like Adamski and Altern8 were fans of Derrick May. I take the point that a lot of the explosion in dance music's popularity in the early 90s could have happened without the Detroit influence, but still...

Altern-8 were most definitely May fans, having both remade May's signature song as "Strings of The Strings Of Life" and composed an "original" tribute entitled "First Of May"...they also had the audacity to transform one of the real touchstones of Bleep (Neal Howard's "Indulge") into the even more blissful and rave-tastic "Re-Indulge"...now that's the spirit!
 
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