Let’s take a small social experiment. We’ve visited the Resident Advisor website, collect several dozen profiles of producers and DJs of the global techno, tech house, deep house scene – those whose tracks are included in the current Top 50 – we add to the company the most actively touring in 2021 and a few of those who are called “new wave”, that is, novice stars and the discoveries of 2022 — so, for the quality of the sample. Now we open their biographies and start reading one by one — until there comes a complete feeling that you are reading the same text over and over again (well, or different texts about the same person).
What is similar? All these artists work with music that can be called the most minimalistic and monotonous (without value judgments, just a fact) of all the variants of dance electronics; with music that can only really be understood by dancing in a club for several hours on end; with music that has a minimum of events, emotions, sharp angles, unexpected turns and, most importantly, with music in which there is no irony at all.
Everyone who has chosen such a sound for themselves should logically come to the end now. The question is simple: are you talking about the melody or the sound? Answer is: “We’re about the sound.” Okay! So, you have to bring your sound to the absolute and deliberately abandon melodies and expressiveness. That’s the only way how techno becomes techno. This is the only way to approach this trippy ligature, mysticism and depth appear in the deep house. Actually, that’s how this music was made. Several generations ago. All the further identity of techno or tech-house producers developed naturally: a minimum of words, a lot of black and gray, sound-sound-sound, cult, isolation and all that. It’s natural.
In a biography of himself, any producer tries to focus on the best that is in him. What does this sample of 50 artists focus on? 42 — on his musical omnivore. A formal listing of the publishing labels and a detailed story about how all these guys were influenced by hip-hop, funk, soul, psychedelic rock, Eastern and African ethnics, Prince, Sun Ra, Fela Kuti, krautrock bands Sap, Neu and so on – until you finish reading, saliva begins to drip on the table. But not only that, they still skillfully combine electronic and live instruments in their sound, play drums from the age of three, blow Miles Davis on the trumpet from five, and by the end of school they have local success with their punk band. Then you finally turn on their music and the question hangs in the air: “What kind of tech house do they choose? With such a track record and baggage of knowledge and skills”! On closer examination you realize that their work in tech house, deep house or techno in their understanding is a sign of growing up. Having played enough of the silly, naive music of living people, they eventually pull themselves together, are shackled by a grimace of meaningful thoughtfulness and produce-produce-produce endless copies of the same track. After all, no one will suspect — copies are released on different labels, and their logos are hung like orders on a tunic. This is what an ideal career looks like. This is the scene that looks more and more like a novel Flying over the cuckoo’s nest.
The listener also begins to suspect something: the words diverge from the deed; once again he is so beautifully invited, promised eclecticism, a riot of colors and musical surprises. But in fact, it’s the same bland, dull, monotonous glue that binds together people who are rushing, flipping through the tape in a smartphone, not drinking (rather drinking) cocktails with an excess of free time and money. It’s easier that way. Not about the melody and not about the sound. And frankly, it’s about the basic level of creating beats in Ableton, a random set of quotes and the desire to earn good money, of course, doing extremely useful things: creating a synergy of visual art and audio forms, or, even more difficult, promoting the exceptionally relevant high-quality intellectual side of house sound.