Techno has turned ordinary record buyers into badly informed
technology-obsessives.
Sorry to put a spanner in your kraftwerks but Techno, in case you hadn’t
noticed, has got fuck all to do with technology. The original
sounds of Detroit ( which spotters are still trying to
carbon copy ten years down the line) were made with
cheap boxes with less complex wiring in them than the average
pocket calculator. Derrick, and his Gary Numan
obsessed mates couldn’t afford anything else at the
time. Yet over zealous fan boys insist on making
simple music signifying a vague futurist agenda.
into an ideology. Little wonder then that the now
antiquated and outmoded equipment used by the early
pioneers of techno (and house too) has become over-
valued, over-priced and overworked in back bedrooms
and studios across the land. Can’t keep up with the
counter bores at your local specialist record store?
Find yourself wondering just what knobs the Chemical
Brothers are twisting so furiously during those
apocalyptic drum rolls? Feel like a girl when the lads
are talking techno-twaddle? Then read on for an
instant guide to the machines they all want for
Christmas.
If you need a reason why you can’t have a
decent conversation with any DJ who has been inside a
twenty-mile radius of a recording studio, then you
need to speak to Roland. Not Ro-land with the glasses
on from Grange Hill, but a Japanese electronic musical
instrument manufacturer who, opening for business in
1972, couldn’t have foreseen the influence its
percussive gadgets would have on a whole genre of
music. Roland’s first products were square-bear
synthesisers and pianos. Sales of their cheap and
cheerful Dr Rhythm Drum Machine in 1979 convinced
them however, that there was a demand for unrealistic
bongs, clicks and clonks.
Before the DR55, drum machines had looked like your mum's dressing
tables with flashing lights and sounded like the entire contents of
a knife
draw been thrown down the stairs. And you couldn’t
program them either. Roland technology had invented
the future. Oh dear. Next stop, Depeche Mode.
If the DR 55 was a rhythmic Lada, the TR 808 was recognised
as a percussive Rolls Royce of its day. By the time
it had really started to make its mark around 1987, it
was almost a decade old and the cabaret pianists who
had originally bought it had also forgotten about it. It’s
sad to say that despite its quaint charms, the 808’s
familiarity has bred contempt. Although it can be
heard used in an almost inspirational manner on
Rhythim Is Rhythim’s ‘It Is What It Is’ and it’s
distinctive bass drum boom is still sworn by, it never
really had the punch to power house like the TR 909.
Still, Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing is built around it
and many mid-eighties soul records would be largely
empty had it not been made available. Add to this the
fact that, even now, you can’t make an Electro record
without sampling the endearingly crap cowbell sound,
and it’s clear that the TR 808 will go down in
rhythmic history.
The cream coloured horror box
referred to as the TR 909 might have gone down in
history too had a load of UK deadheads with ideas
buzzing around their empty heads like lonely wasps not
got their hands on this now creatively unsalvageable
machine. It got off to a good start in the hands of,
Farley, Armando, Mike Dunn and Steve Poindexter as the
essential jacking box. The 909 was house music and we
loved it dearly until some English burk found out you
could multiply the snare drum sound until it became a
kind of sonic blur, ever increasing in volume. Hey
Presto! A house DJ with the musical intelligence of a
Toto fan had invented the infamous drum roll- Saturday
night nightmare of every discerning dancer. Now its
sad subtlety- free thump plots the course of a million
double-pack remixes and, as a result of its popularity
with the under-educated, should you want to buy one,
you won't get much change from a grand. Cheaper say,
to sample yourself running a stick along the school
railings and far more original. If you still have a
909 and are feeling a bit of a herb by now, why not,
like Derrick May and Aphex Twin, pretend to your mates
that you have taken the top off yours and fiddled
around with it to make it sound better then everyone
else’s.
The Roland TR 303, smallest and most
influential box of them all, began life as an
impenetrable automated bass player. Only people with
heads as big as Brian Eno's could figure out how to work the
303. A commercial flop for Roland until...
The great Marshall Jefferson once told me that nobody in Chicago
could get anything out of this silver machine so
someone came up with the solution of taking the
batteries out, putting them back in, switching the 303
on and seeing what happened. That could explain a lot
of the nonsensical, impossible genius of early acid.
The batteries story is probably bollocks but, then
again, pre- 1987, you'd have died of shock had you
heard someone strolling down the street whistling
Acid Tracks. As a result of records like this, the 303
became known as the acid machine. Acid, put simply,
is the sound made by a constantly repeating pattern
modulated with the little knobs on the top of the
machine so it becomes bassier, then more extreme or
squelchy and distorted. Most of the great acid records
consist of a drum pattern and someone twisting these
knobs round for an hour or two. Boring now, I know,
but it sounded like all hell was being let loose back
then. The fact that the 303 died a creative death
several years back did not however stop Josh Wink from
making a career out of shaking his fake dreads around,
hunched over a 303 while treating us to the house equivalent
of a sad metal guitar solo. Add to this the fact that
lads with no shirts on, in the time-honoured fashion
of air guitarists at rawk shows across middle America,
now twist their thumbs and fingers around in mid-air
during the acid sections of progressive house records,
and it’s clear much damage has been done.
Yet, the simple aims of the faceless men from Osaka- to provide
the drummer-less with drums; the bass-less with bass,
have inadvertently provided us with a lot of great
music. Even so, the great house/techno dustbin is so
full of mindless nonsense, I suggest that, rather than
joining in when the lads start talking Roland
numbers, you should declare the conversation bollocks
and start talking about Moogs and Theremins like the
proper little clever dick I know you are.
____________________________________________________________
|
links coming soon........
Links to other pages........
-
10
years of house
-
Patrick
Adams
-
Bluffers
Guide to Dub
-
David
Bowie review
-
Bristol
Rising
-
British
Films
-
Dawn
of Detroit Techno
-
Depeche
Mode
-
Drawn
Slippy - 70's British comics
-
Bruce
Forrest
-
Guide
to 808,909,303
-
Hacienda
club
-
Jane's
Addiction
-
Marshall
Jefferson
-
Chaka
Kahn
-
Kingbee
Records
-
KLF
-
Kraftwerk
-
Krautrock
-
The
La's
-
Manic
Street Preachers
-
Massive
Attack
-
Joe
Meek
-
Miami
Bass
-
Moog
Synthesizer
-
Northern
Heroes
-
Paradise
Garage
-
The
Pet Shop Boys
-
Punk-Funk
-
Scallies
rally to Pink Floyd
-
Yes
-
Kenneth
Williams
|
