David W’s Top 20 Techno Traxxx of 2007 (Part One: 11–20)

Though I know basi­cally nothing about dance music, it seems that I’m the one who ends up posting about it most here at Gig­glepants. Sure, most of it is indie-safe elec­tronic (cf. Junior Boys, DJ Mehdi, Booka Shade) and ever-so-played out poppy IDM (Aark­tica, Hrvatski). Some­times we ven­ture a little bit closer to the big, scary world of legit­i­mate techno (Ellen Allien & Apparat, Burial), but even those are P4k-approved. I don’t think that many of the tracks dis­cussed in this post, on the other hand, will ever grace Schreiber’s pages.

Of course, all of this is just a talky way to declare my status as a hope­less kiddie pool floater in the world of techno music (water wings and all). Hell, I prob­ably made sev­eral faux pas in that opening para­graph alone. Luckily for those who yearn for some kind of author­i­ta­tive voice in the matter, there are plenty of dudes who make techno their raison d’être. One such dude is my fellow Hip­inion poster David W. (“Mego” to the hpn kids), who’s been busy doing arm­stand back double som­er­saults into the deep end of the olympic-sized pool of dancefloor-ready tracks. (Remember, there’s a dif­fer­ence between indie club dancefloor-ready and real club dancefloor-ready.)

David’s here this week as a spe­cial GPants guest, coming all the way from Chiba, Japan to present his Top 20 Techno tracks of 2007 (so far). Sure, we’re only 1/6 of the way through, but this has been a great year for music on all fronts. And hey, that just means we’ll have five times as much to look for­ward to. So if you’ve been wanting to dip a big toe, this is your chance. These tracks should entice even the most inert of asses to move. I’ll let David take it away. –Ben

20. Pig & Dan — “Cured“
“Quite a few bootleg remixes come out every year and most of them sound fairly cheap and generic, with little regard or respect given to the source mate­rial. So when I saw this one (a remix of The Cure’s “Lul­laby”), I really wasn’t all that opti­mistic. I can pic­ture it now: rising, string-drenched crescendos and hor­ribly cheesy use of the guitar riff. Come to think of it, I’m sur­prised there hasn’t been an awfully cheesy trance cover made already, as it vir­tu­ally writes itself.

But the track is sur­pris­ingly tasteful. The original’s main melody is what the track is based on, while the strings and guitar are sped up a little and used inter­mit­tently just to remind you what you are lis­tening to. It’s a little on the proggy side, espe­cially when the strings come in midway, but it shows enough restraint to stay sweet without going sour.”

19. Massi DL — “Barba­bi­etola E Spinas“
“There’s a lot of buzz around this guy right now, prob­ably because he’s only 18 years old and has put out two very good EPs already. This one is from his 1UP EP and I really could have chosen any of its four tracks as they are all very impres­sive, but I’m going with this one.

Barba­bi­etola is very deep but with a tougher tech sound than a lot of the deep min­imal tracks that came out in 2006. That seems to be the theme of 2007 thus far: a tougher, more beefed up sound. How­ever, the ele­ments that made min­imal so good in the first place are being retained. In many cases, such as on this track, the reverb is removed to give a drier sound and more space for the bigger sounds to breathe. Plus, this more spa­cious struc­ture makes the sounds hit you harder due to the jux­ta­po­si­tion of min­imal arrange­ment and max­imal sound.

This is very much like an acid techno track at heart, only with the acid removed and replaced by the typ­ical min­imal bub­bling ping-pong riff. The bouncy hook is accom­pa­nied by a suit­ably loose yet pen­e­trating bass kick that jumps and darts around enough to keep kinetic what is really a pretty simple tune. Simple but dev­as­tating. Def­i­nitely a guy to look out for in 2007.”

18. Lusine — “Flat (Dim­biman feat. Cabanne Remix)” [Ghostly]
“Here we have a very busy track. Often these sort of tunes grate after the nov­elty of all the pro­duc­tion bells & whis­tles wear off, but not when they are well exe­cuted (i.e., when Cabanne is involved). We didn’t hear much from Cabanne in 2006, but he’s one of my favourite pro­ducers. He really seems to have a handle on how to throw as much as he can into a track without it becoming too much. As you can imagine, this ability is essen­tial when it comes to min­imal pro­duc­tion and Cabanne is one of the best in the business.

I’m not all that familiar with the orig­inal, but I bet Dimbiman/Cabanne have messed around with it very heavily. There’s so many dif­ferent sounds and tex­tures going on here–chopped up vocals, bass and melodic riffs, dig­ital squeltches, dis­tor­tion stabs, processed guitar and dubbed out effects. If you gave these sounds to another guy and he could make five tracks out of them easily. It really shouldn’t work but it does.”

17. Soul­rack — “Modul Age (Sleeparchive Remix)” [Cray1 Lab­works]
“I’d say Sleeparchive has the most dis­tinc­tive sound in techno right now. Anyone with even a slight knowl­edge of min­imal could quite easily trainspot one of his tunes. BIG bass, stabs of distortion/glitch, Stut­tered effects, and a really icy pre­ci­sion that gives it a very mechanic sound. There’s also heavy nods towards old detroit, Basic Channel and Pan­sonic. The fact that he hasn’t really changed his approach in 2–3 years should mean his sound is get­ting stale but he always seems to make subtle upgrades to the Sleeparchive sound.

I’ve always found Sleeparchive’s remixes to be more exploratory than his orig­inal works but for Soul­rack he’s deliv­ered a classic Sleeparchive track. Actu­ally, in many ways this is the most straight­for­ward track I’ve heard from him for a while. The sounds are any­thing but typ­ical: super deep sub bass, pan­ning bubbly effects, short sharp bursts of static… but else­where it’s very straight for­ward like the classic techno buildups and kicks, high hats, and use of the hook. This com­bi­na­tion is sure to wreak havoc on the dance­floor, too.”

16. Jorge Savoretti & QIK — “Kasper’s Realm” [Esper­anza]
“Despite the talk of a return to the classic techno sound, there’s still plenty of deep dark min­imal being released. Here we see deep and dark blended with tougher techno. This is one of the rea­sons I love techno so much. In the space of 2–3 months the scene has under­gone a pretty sig­nif­i­cant shift. If this came out in mid-2006, I doubt many would have gotten into it, but in early 2007 it’s got a big buzz behind it.

This tougher stuff is just as min­imal (i.e., amount and struc­ture of sounds used) but they are BIGGER. And in cases like this, they are just down­right rocking. High­light is def­i­nitely when the hook is reverbed to hell which drenches the tune in white noise until the bass is brought back bigger than ever and some extra per­cus­sion is added. Lethal. There’s some serious busi­ness coming from that snare too.”

15. Efdemin — “Just A Track” [Dial]
“Fans of Efdemin and Dial will prob­ably be as sur­prised by this track as i was. The name “Efdemin” brings blissed out melodic techno to mind so when I saw this on a split EP with Casten Jost I was antic­i­pating more of the same. So who would have expected some classic booty shaking house?

“Just A Track” rocks rel­a­tively hard. While other tracks on this list appear to be looking back to old Swedish or Detroit techno for inspi­ra­tion, Efdemin is looking in the direc­tion of Chicago’s classic house. With the likes of Jay Haze also talking up Chicago, I think we can expect a house revival in 2007. Don’t be sur­prised if Dial is using this split con­taining two of his biggest names as a mes­sage of intent to shift its focus in 2007. The bril­liant vocal sample (“If house is a nation, I want to be pres­i­dent!”) does its best to con­vince you of this house love-in. I’m pre­dicting tech-house to make a come­back to fill the void left by min­imal drop­ping the funk and get­ting tougher as the year progresses.

As the synth rises and the preacher says “If you vote for me, I promise I will deliver you even more bass, even more soul, longer hours on the dance­floor, DJs who will believe,” it’s pretty hard to sit still. It’s inter­esting to note that much like the new techno, this house tune is also deliv­ering bigger punchier sounds. Even the echoed synth is quite dry.”

14. Benelli — “Embar­rassing Truth” [Home­town Music]
“The Swiss pro­ducers have been making some noise in min­imal house recently, but here Benelli appears to be more inter­ested in Argen­tinean deep min­imal and Swedish tech-house. I love the old school techno vibe on this tune. The acid synth takes me back to the days of ware­houses packed with 10,000 ravers off their skull on god knows what shuf­fling madly on talcum-powdered floors.

That’s not to say this track is strictly retro though, the droning deep bass and drippy effects are straight out of the min­imal 101 text­book and the acidy hook is given that trade­mark reverb treat­ment on occa­sions for the buildups. Chalk this one up as yet another example of beefed up min­imal. What sets this apart from the others is how well the deep bassline is effec­tively incor­po­rated with what is a fairly busy tune without step­ping on the toes of the other sounds. Classy stuff.”

13. Mathias Lin­zatti — “Quasar” [Illegal Stock­holm]
“Not sur­prising that a return to tougher techno is coin­ciding with a Swedish revival. Sweden has been really big in the techno scene since the late 90s and many of the super­stars from back then (Samual L Ses­sions, Adam Beyer, Carl Lek­ibush, Joel Mull…) are still going strong. But now there’re some fresh Swedes and the Lin­zatti brothers are one of the most promising of the bunch.

Actu­ally, this track is so hard I think you’d have to drop the min­imal tag entirely and just call it straight up techno. But it does borrow a little from min­imal, par­tic­u­larly in its second half where the static comes in and a few clat­tering effects just bring it up to that next level. The main hook is very tight and urgent and the clear cen­ter­piece of the track. The hook is tightly looped and under­goes subtle vari­a­tions throughout. Occa­sion­ally some per­cus­sion shadows the hook to add tex­ture and depth. Tightly done and bril­liantly exe­cuted tune.”

12. Audion — “Mouth To Mouth (Mantap mix by Heart­throb)” [Spec­tral]
“Two of the biggest-hyped releases of 2007 so far have been the remixes of Vonstroke’s “Who’s Afraid Of Detroit?” and Heartthrob’s “Baby Kate,” but I’ve found both quite dis­ap­pointing, which is a shame because both sounded ripe for the remix treat­ment. So when the Mouth To Mouth remix EP dropped last week I wasn’t so sure what to expect. But both Heart­throb cuts are bril­liant! They both rock on dif­ferent levels but this is the one i like the best.

On the Mantap mix Heart­throb has taken that main riff and turned it into a deep acieed bassline. That then paves the way for Heart­throb to do his twitchy para­noid minmal thing which he pre­ceeds to do to great effect. It really is a clever remix as it remains faithful to the source mate­rial to an extent and rocks in a sim­ilar way only with a dif­ferent approach. He also uses that insane siren sound for a kick and even allows for the less processed orig­inal riff for a break­down and some even deeper and nas­tier bass. Class track from a guy who I expect to be the best and most active M_nus artist of 2007.”

11. Stephen Bodzin — “Day­tona Beach” [Spiel-Zeug Schallplatten]
“Still not sure about Bodzin, but this track is HUGE. One of those anthems that’s sure to work like a charm at the clubs. This is mostly because it fol­lows the “Bay Of Figs” for­mula of taking a hook then reverbing the crap out of it before it’s engulfed the track and your brain. It’s def­i­nitely not the most sophis­ti­cated track on here and prob­ably not one that will age all that well, but for the moment it’s just really damn fun. Maybe the most rocking track on the list, actu­ally. So rather than diss it as generic I sug­gest you enjoy some ear candy at its finest.

The hook is catchy yet simple and backed up by more simple beats and bass. It fol­lows a classic techno for­mula with its build then release for the first time, but the secret to this track is that it comes back and smacks you in the face with an even bigger buildup than the first. What more can you say? This guy is clearly a pro!”

Look for Part Two of David’s list coming later this week!