Hawtin announces Plasticman: Arkives

Richie Hawtin has announced details regarding a comprehensive box set that will seek to tell the entire story of his alter ego, Plasticman, thus far.

The release, collectively entitled Arkives, will come in four formats: Reference, Analog, Digital and Collection. Arkives Reference will be an 11 disc CD/DVD/book set that will contain remastered versions of all six of Plastikman's previous albums as well as five CDs of rare and unreleased material. Those additional discs are set to contain Plastikman remixes of other artists, specially commissioned remixes by other artists of Plastikman (including takes by soundtrack composer Cliff Martinez, Francois K, Chris & Cosey, Daniel Miller & Gareth Jones and more) and things like the complete "Spastik" sessions. There will also be a new Plastikman single buried in there as well, a track called "Slinky." The DVD will showcase videos from Plastikman's previous work, and also include footage from two festival shows: Glastonbury 1995 and Mutek 2003. Those opting for the Reference package will also receive a digital download code for even more material that didn't make it onto the physical edition of the box set. Last, but not least, RA scribe Philip Sherburne has penned a portion of the 64 page book that will be included in Reference, detailing the impact that Plastikman and Hawtin have had on the electronic music scene over the past 17 years.

Arkives Analog, meanwhile, will be composed six pieces of vinyl that collect "exclusive tracks and a limited edition poster, presented in a deluxe custom box."Arkives Digital will be a limited online-only version of both Reference and Analog, and Arkives Collection will be the super-sized combination of both Reference andAnalog. Orders for the box sets are set to begin on October 10th and will be taken though the end of the year. But, if you want one, be sure to get in during that time. Hawtin has promised this will be a strictly made-to-order edition.

Silent Servants Sandwell District radio DJ Mix - The modern and the old come togeather

The Sandwell District radio Mix brings you a nice experimntal mix of modern sounds and the old experimentalism from US producer Silent Servant.

Download Link

http://www.mediafire.com/?wohctk89gnn93en

Here more mixes at the Techno Music News Blog

DJ Surgeon Plays a pisstake Jingle Bells Re Edit of Jeff Mills "The Bells"

Bit of a classic from a few years ago. Surgeon @ Alcatraz / Aztec club in Liverpool on Boxing Day 2006.

Just Shows Tony Surgeon has a good sense of humour :)

DJ Heftys “Death Techno Mix” – Dark Ass Minimal Techno Mix

Here at techno music news we like to try and push up and coming talent so when I came across DJ Heftys "Death Techno Mix" I had to re post it here for our readers. Its got a nice mix of the deep and dark along with some straight up minimal techno sounds and a dash of the movie soundtrack about it. Check it out I don't think you'll be disappointed.

 

 

Track Listing:

 

Intro: Lo Pan's Domain - John Carpenter, Alan Howarth - Big Trouble In Little China Soundtrack

1 – No Escape – Hefty – Unsigned

2 – Parasitic Organism – Hefty – Unsigned

3 – Blind – Logotech – Naked Lunch

4 – Hazakura (Alex Bau Remix) – SIDE B – Hysterical

5 – Tonkass (Rene Walther Remix) – Plankton, Alejandro Trebor - Amazone Records

6 – Third Eye (Fallhead Remix) – Adrenalinoman - Enter

7 – Archlekt – Subfractal – Sleaze Records

8 – Prehistoric – Hugo Palxao, Jason Fernandes – Nutempo

9 – Mask The Expression – Jason Fernandes - Dont Look Productions

10 – Effekthascher – Flinsch ‘n’ Nielson – Kiddazfm

Outro: Lo Pan's Domain - John Carpenter, Alan Howarth - Big Trouble In Little China Soundtrack

 

DJ Heftys Bio:

 

Hefty has always had a passion for music and has always had an eclectic taste. His love for music didn’t manifest itself in the form of  djing/producing until a few years back when he was introduced by a  university friend to the London underground party scene. Blown away by  the exciting venues, amazing music and incredible atmosphere he was  drawn in to the underground and never left. After a years of parties it  dawned on him, this is what he wanted to do.

 

 He left university  and bought his decks and never looked back. He owes a lot to the now legendary “PICKLE” parties which defined his bass fuelled dark Hefty style.  Priding himself on not playing the obvious and keeping to his  own style he managed to carve a name for himself playing evil electrobotic electro and hefty tek breaks, his sets known for their dark  sounds, hefty bass and varied track selection.

 

Over the years  he has built up a collection of many genres of electronic music from dubstep to techno and is more than happy spinning a set of a variety of  genres.  He has had the opportunity to warm up for Marco V at Turnmills, he has played at The Gallery also at Turnmills and has also played at  many other London clubs including Heaven, Hidden, 414, Electrowerkz, The  Telegraph, The Coronet and 333.

 

 Currently Hefty is venturing into new territory with druggy bass driven dark minimal tek and techno, incorporating aspects of the various genres he enjoys. Spending a year  working hard in his studio he has learned the art of production and has created his own unique style of dark abstract bass fuelled hypnotic  minimal, which is receiving interest in the minimal scene. With requests for remixes and collaborations flooding in and with various tracks  being released soon Hefty is determined to unleash his dark sounds on  the public and continue to explore the realms of minimal and techno.

Check out all our Techno Mixes & other DJ Mixes

"Being a Dickhead's Cool" Could this be the best anti hipster video ever?

Could this be the best anti hipster video ever? 

Speedy J: Something for your mind

In advance of his appearance at Time Warp Holland, RA catches up with the head of Electric Deluxe to talk about his lengthy career in the world of techno.

"I was never really into that culture, and I didn't have a name for myself, and they were annoyed that I didn't. They said, 'You're a good DJ, and your fast on the decks, and we need to give you a name that we can use in our lyrics. We can't use DJ Jochem because that's rubbish... Can we call you Speedy J?' So I said, 'Yeah, sure. Why not?" 

In retrospect, the innocuous story of how Rotterdam resident Jochem Paap came to be known as Speedy J is fascinating. Because, more than two decades later, you'd be hard-pressed to find a producer in the techno scene that has made fewer compromises in his career. For a man so self-assured to end up with a name so strange... Well, as Paap himself laughs, "The reason I did that first official release as Speedy J was because I didn't think it was going anywhere." 

Techno fans, of course, know the punchline: It did go somewhere. Somewhere pretty big. Jochem Paap became one of the most important names in the genre in the early '90s, a visionary producer that found himself crafting dance floor bombs and futuristic art in equal measure. Before even that, however, Paap was caught by the sound of hip-hop and electro, making music in his bedroom with tape recorders and a turntable. Luckily for him, just as he was getting into the music, "everyone was dumping their drum machines and synths. They were going out of fashion, [so] we all bought them for really cheap prices." Soon, though, those same record shops where he was buying hip-hop began to stock records from Chicago and Detroit that "was completely alien."

Paap was so fascinated by the music that he heard that he knew he had to get in touch with the people making it: "I had a couple of friends who ran a radio station just outside of Rotterdam, and they were calling labels all over the world. Someone else was paying for the call..." he laughs, remembering. "They were speaking to people from Transmat, KMS and Underground Resistance to get promos. The reactions they got were always like, 'Hey man, people from Holland actually listen to our records!' They were really freaked out by it. One day they called John Acquaviva after the first States of Mind release came out, and he had the same reaction. He said that he was interested in finding out what we were doing. So I sent him two cassette tapes with forty tracks or something. When it arrived, he called me two days later: 'There are at least three singles in here that we want to release.'"

As a result, Paap became the unlikely Dutch arm of techno's second wave, his work just as curious and alien to his friends in Detroit and Chicago as theirs was to him. When Acquaviva saw him play live in Berlin for the first time in 1991, Detroit producers such as Blake Baxter were "blown away" according to an account in Simon Reynolds' electronic music history Energy Flash. "It spurred his track 'Pullover' into the huge success that it was....Speedy is as much Detroit and Chicago as anyone, and he set the tone in Europe," recalls the Plus 8 boss. Says Paap , "I had some pretty good contacts with publishing in Holland, and they didn't know anything about it. So I was sort of like their European connection for a while." He pauses. Then laughs. "In hindsight, I hooked them up with some really bad publishing deals!"

Nonetheless, the connection was strong, with Acquaviva and fellow Plus 8 owner Richie Hawtin coming over to Europe and Paap playing "weird places in Canada." On one trip, the aforementioned hit "Pullover" was presented as a candidate for inclusion on an upcoming compilation for the label. They loved it. Paap wasn't so sure. "I told them, 'If we're going to do this track, then I need to record it again because it sounds really shit.' So I re-recorded it in Richie's basement in his parent's house, but by the time I had to leave it was still five minutes too long, so he said 'I'll do an edit on my reel-to-reel.' He basically just cut off the first or last five minutes, but he made a mistake. It was recorded without Dolby but he played it back with Dolby, and it sounded really bad. By the time that record came out, I thought it was horrible. And before I knew it everyone was playing it, saying how good it was.

"I was listening to things like Armando and Mike Dunn and Steve Pointdexter at the time, and I just wanted to do a tool basically, something that you could mix into another record and have going for like two minutes and then go on—something like a break or an interlude. But people took it as a song and apparently it was really catchy. People could sing along with it, and it blew up beyond proportion…Looking back, it opened a lot of doors for me, but if I had had the choice of which track would become the big track that everybody loved, 'Pullover' would not have been that one because it just didn't represent what I was doing at the time."

Paap had numerous names under which he was releasing at the time, forgotten aliases like The Second Wave, Public Energy, Aq and DCC. But he was lucky enough to be snapped up by Warp Records for their initial Artificial Intelligence compilation under his own name, which led to an eventual album deal with the UK imprint. Both Richie Hawtin and Paap felt a kinship with Warp's interest in finding a way to push techno via the album format. Both Hawtin's effort (as FUSE) and Paap 's Ginger were released through Plus 8 and licensed for Warp's Artificial Intelligence series of albums, which also included classics such as Autechre's Incunabula and Polygon Window'sSurfing on Sine Waves.

Despite his dedication to the dance floor, Paap simply lets things happen in the studio. And figures out what to do with it later. "Some people make records where they have these fixed rules like, 'it has to have a thirty two bar intro or else you can't even mix it.' That's the stuff I don't care about. With the music that I really love to make, it just had to have a certain sound. There isn't any criterion explainable in words, it's just a feeling I have. It needs to have something that I really, really like. Every other criterion—being able to play it or tempo or even levels of how instruments relate to each other—I don't really care about as long as it makes me happy."

"It was a sound design ego trip."

Listen to some of his work from the '90s, and you'll hear exactly what he means. By the time that Paap hooked up with Novamute for his 1997 album, Public Energy #1, he felt "pretty disconnected from the dance floor." After a number of years making music to jack to, 12-inches were getting rare. "I was more into sound design and sonic weirdness and stuff like that. I had so many modular synths and things that you could get really deep into. [I wanted to do] the weirdest sounds and fuck things up really bad," he laughs. "I was really fascinated by using computers in the most extreme ways that they could be used for music… It was just a sound design ego trip I guess."

This one-man-in-the-studio-with-his-machines vibe has never been an all-consuming presence in Paap 's working methods. But it no doubt had something to do with why he embraced the idea of collaboration so wholeheartedly around the turn of the century. Novamute allowed him the platform to get together in an official capacity with a number of artists: Adam Beyer, Literon, Chris Liebing, George Issakidis. Each pairing has made for radically different results. Issakidis, Paap says, "always finds the most amazing music I've never come across. When we get together we basically bring out the wild sides out of each other, we have like our fucked up ideas, the ideas are already there, but for some reason we do crazier things then we would do by ourselves. That's just the chemistry."

When working with Liebing, however, Paap finds himself "try[ing] to piss him off a little bit. Chris is very effective and structured…so the end result usually works. It's very playable and club functional, but there's always a little twist in there that makes it more interesting." The collaboration with Liebing extends further than simply the studio: In the mid-'00s they began to play together. Paap was still solely playing live at the time and Liebing was still using vinyl, but they quickly jettisoned their set-ups when Ableton and Traktor became stable enough to use in a performance context. From there, things took off. 

"It gave us an opportunity to experiment with our styles, because we could always blame the other one if something went wrong," Paap laughs. "I was starting to get bored of playing all my material. I had a track selection of 40 tracks, and that was it, you know? But I think approaching it from my live background has helped. I never play one record straight out, it's always mangling and looping stuff and using it as an instrument…. People adopted it as a digital version of whatever they were used to, but I always try to see what else it can do—to forget what it's about and see the possibilities. I could never DJ as a traditional DJ…I don't think I could make a different doing it that way… We've been able to mix house, deep house and all kinds of weird things that didn't really belong to the genre."

Paap has never delved into house too far past marrying it to techno's relentless chug, but he has nonetheless been instrumental in slowing the genre down to a place where the two are more often compatible. When everything became hard and fast in the '90s, he was thinking things might "groove a bit better when things were pitched down eight percent." You can hear that influence in the music that has been released on Paap 's post-Nova Mute project, Electric Deluxe, where things rarely reach above 128 BPM. "I hate talking about music in terms of BPM," he says, "but it's kind of like another groove that people are looking for now."

The label has been an interesting study in contrasts. On one hand, there is the functional side. On each release, there are DJ tools that even Paap describes as "musically not that interesting" but that can be used in sets to "make other stuff more interesting." And then there are the tracks that don't bother to take the dance floor into consideration at all. With sales continuing to decline in the techno world, it certainly makes more sense than standing still—hoping that record buyers will magically return to shops. 

The label's freewheeling approach is illustrated through its varied podcast series, which features DJs playing the tracks that have influenced them through the years. It's a series which can accommodate ambient legend Pete Namlook as easily as Singapore's new techno star Xhin playing things like old school hip-hop, modern classical and indie. "For me, as a musician, I don't see much difference in the process of creation of any kind of music," says Paap . 

When asked about where he thinks techno is at the moment, he further proves the point by comparing it to an unlikely referent, "I think right now techno is completely back to its essence. It would be just like a singer/songwriter, a guitar and an amazing voice. It's very simple, very effective and true to its form. Stripped down to its essence. It's accepted to be faceless again." 

 

Reposted form residentadvisor.com via techno music news

Terence Fixmers "Comedy of Menace" albume due for relase on 27th September

Terence Fixmers "Comedy of Menace" album is a fantastically dark & raw slice of modern techno.

Comedy of Menace’ is Fixmers fourth Album. He already released two solo albums on DJ Hell’s Gigolo, the seminal “Muscle Machine” helped creat a masterful fusion between old style industrial/EBM music and techno (perhaps “Techno Body Music”?) As many will know Fixmer to this day has a side project Douglas McCarthy the legendary voice of seminal EBM band Nitzer Ebb (The Between The Devil album is a great chunk of dark aggressive techno tinged industrial). Terences third album, “Fiction Fiction” released on his own ‘Planete Rouge’ imprint in 2009 and veered far more towards deep ambience, emotive and cinematic by turns.

http://technomusicnews.com/terence-fixmer-album-comedy-of-menace-release-set-for-27th-sept/