having his roots in the EBM, industrial, early techno and BDSM scene of the 1980s, he became a trailblazer during the techno boom of the 90s, only to be elevated to the state of a hardcore superstar.
and we truly mean the *super*-star designation here. He formed the Technohead project together with his wife Lee Newman, and the single release "i wanna be a hippy" (sampling a hippie cult movie from the late 80s for the chorus) is a contender for the best known, most played, and most danced to hardcore-adjacent track of the 1990s. was there any discotheque, city-fest or village party where this track was not played, in between songs by tina turner, backstreet boys, beck, and culture beat?
the heavy rotation of the attached music video on the major music television channels of europe also meant the first acquaintance with gabber styles & clothing for many viewers, including mokum records style hammers (dont ask, just watch the video, dude!).
but this part of his legacy should not overshadow his maybe even more important works.
he is a versatile producer in a variety of styles, from slowcore to extra-speedcore.
never just focusing on the "bang bang bang" of ecstasy inducing gabber tracks, but adding depth and an extra dose of darkness to his tracks - maybe not surprising, as his roots lie in the kinky electronic industrial world of the 90s, as mentioned above.
yet more than that, he was also an activist and agitator for a more sophisticated and experimental sound of hardcore - one of the few people at the top of the scene who realized the unexplored potential of this sound, and envisioned ways that the scene could have taken.
one fall-out of this approach were his "technohead" compilations, which were one of the very few CD compilations featuring deep, deep underground tracks by labels like fischkopf, praxis, riot beats... that were available and exposed at chain stores and similar outlets, introducing a whole generation of hard heads to these soundwaves - for the first time.
but alas, hardcore did not take this route - all of this is history, by now.
or isn't it? because maybe there is still hope - as this sound lives on!
thus let us look at 10 tracks by the very Technohead (and various akas) down below.
1. Church of E*tacy - The Passion
2. Technohead - I Wanna be a Hippy
3. Elvis Jackson - Ahh Soul
4. Signs of Chaos - Killout A2
5. Technohead - Stay Down with the Hardcore
6. Chosen Few - After Hourz (Technohead Remix)
7. Technohead - The Number One Contender
8. Technohead - Accelerator 2
9. Technohead - Heads*x (Nanotech Mix)
10. Signs of Chaos - Killout (One Step From Death)
No comments:
Post a Comment