Anything goes

I came across this very interesting list on the Internet today. I must admit I have no idea who Robert Dimery is, but I figure anyone who can make a selection of 1001 albums from the ’50s through to the 2000s must know a thing or two about music.

I haven’t had the chance to go through the whole list yet, but because I don’t generally focus on buying and listening to full albums, I doubt I have listened to even a fraction of those listed there. You will notice, though, that Goldie’s Timeless is in there. Also, from the electronic scene, we can find:

• Afrika Bambaataa & the Soul Sonic Force: Planet Rock: The Album (interesting because it is considered as both a very good old school hip-hop album and as the first of the electronic genre known as electro, which is the initial style for breakdance - the sound is very distinct, but also very recognizable today, because some songs of this style have entered the mainstream)
• 808 State: 808:90
• Coldcut : What’s That Noise?
• Jungle Brothers: Done by the Forces of Nature
• Massive Attack: Blue Lines; Protection
• Shamen: En-Tact
• Aphex Twin (this one really is unexpected but totally justified, I think): Selected Ambient Works 85-92
• Orbital: Orbital [aka Brown Album]; Snivilisation
• William Orbit (hm… I feel like Water from a Vine Leaf…): Strange Cargo: III
• Chemical Brothers: Exit Planet Dust; Dig Your Own Hole
• Fatboy Slim: Better Living Through Chemistry; You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby
• LTJ Bukem (again, very unexpected but totally justified): Logical Progression
• Prodigy: Music for the Jilted Generation; Fat of the Land
• Daft Punk: Homework
• Roni Size feat Reprazent: New Forms (Brown Paper Bag from this album is really great)
• Moby: Play
• Basement Jaxx: Remedy
• Röyksopp: Melody AM

Here’s an interesting thing: from the entries above, the first 4 artists are from the ’80s. Then, all the rest except the very last one are from the ’90s. So there is only one from the years 2000. I must say I agree with this and there has been little innovation during the past years. I am hoping things will change.

And why do I say about some of them they are unexpected? Well, simply because they are very far from the mainstream. Why do I think they are justified, though? Because they really innovate. LTJ’s Logical Progression is considered by some as the start of Intelligent DnB (although the artist himself doesn’t like the name because it brings the implication that other DnB styles are stupid - Atmospheric DnB is another name for this) and Aphex Twin… well, his style is difficult to name. All the more reason he should be on such a list.

Now, about 808state… remember acid? They are considered pioneers of acid house. This album was not quite there yet, but they certainly were on the right track. Here is an example:

You can hear what sounds like a TB303 in the background, although the characteristic squelching sounds of acid house are not present (yet). By the way: they offer many of their songs as well as demos and other stuff for free download on their web page.

Anyways, it is an interesting list and would make for a challenging project to try and listen to the albums listed there. I wonder if it is possible…

Who knows? Perhaps, some day…

I was writing about Higher States of Consciousness , and it was this very song that made me investigate the history of acid house. I want to post here some of what I have found, although I imagine that anyone who wants to know all this stuff already knows it and the people who don’t know it wouldn’t want to read about it anyway. But hey, I gotta blog about something, right?

Basically, everything revolves around a small piece of electronic equipment called the Roland TB303. This was a synthesizer created by Roland in 1982 with the intention of marketing it as a replacement of the bass guitar to members of the rock and punk scene. Here is a picture of it (source):

But it never caught on. For one thing, it was hard to use, difficult to program and didn’t even sound like a bass guitar. So Roland built about 10.000 units and then stopped. All these pieces that were manufactured ended up forgotten in some basement or attic.

Occasionally, they were used, however, although I was only able to find references to one song that used the TB303 for its intended purpose. It was a band called Heaven 17, with their song Let Me Go (year as yet unknown - early ’80s however). Here it is:


You can distinctively tell the bass line in this song is made by some weird, repetitive machine and it evidently sounds nothing like the bass guitar, but does have a catchy feeling even here.

From early on, there were those who foresaw the potential that the tool had in making dance music. Probably the main feature that made it fit for this task was the fact that the TB303 is programmed like a sequencer. So once you put the pattern in, set the BPM and place the knobs how you want them, it will repeat that pattern over and over, so it was perfect for the 4×4 patterns we hear nowadays all over the dance scene. An early pioneer from this point of view was Alexander Robotnik, with his song Problemes d’Amour. Here it is:


I hear this was quite a hit worldwide in 1983! And I think it’s not hard to understand why: the song is quite catchy even now, don’t you think? Again, we can distinctively tell the bassline is made by the TB303.

But the real breakthrough came in 1987, rather by accident. That year, a group from Chicago called Phuture started playing in their studio with the knobs on a TB303 they had and noticed that the squelching sounds it made were very catchy. So, whereas previously these sounds were considered flaws of the TB303, the guys from Phuture had the intuition to notice that they provided the basis for a new sound. From their experiments with the knobs came out what is considered the first acid house track: Acid Trax. Youtube helps here too:


(Psychedelic, isn’t it?)

We can already see in there the basics for acid house, minimal, techno, trance and other subgenres in between. I don’t mean to say here that all these genres originated in this song, because most of them were starting to take shape before acid house. But it is considered to have had the single most important influence on the future development of almost all electronic music. Acid is considered to have changed them forever, both in terms of content and in terms of perception. Another thing was that, because the TB303 was so small and easy to experiment with, pretty much anyone could use it to make music, so it created a boom in the output of electronic music of all kinds. What followed is history.

So how is it used? Here is a guy demoing it all on Youtube (together with the TR606 drum machine, which was especially built to be used with the 303 this way):


So you can see how easy it is.

And the TB303? Well, with only 10.000 pieces around and everyone wanting to use it, its price rose to some 1000 euros in the mid ’90s and is probably even more now. Roland refused to bring it into production again, contributing even more to the high price. They eventually released some replacements, but they just didn’t have the same sound and feel. Of course, emulators and software replacements started showing up from everywhere, with various levels of success. A relatively new project claims to have recreated the original version of the 303 and sells kits which everyone can build at home. The kit costs something like 300 dollars.

So there we have it! History of acid. More details can be found in various sources:

• Acid House on Wikipedia
• Roland TB303 on Wikipedia
• Roland TB303 at vintagesynth
• Booking page of Phuture (now Phuture 303)

but I wanted to try a small multimedia compilation of it all.

Update: Please see this post for even more information on the history of the 303.

I want my first post to be about music. I will be writing quite a bit about it in my posts, because it is important to me.

When it comes to the music I listen to, this is pretty much what got it all started:


It’s Josh Wink’s Higher States of Consciousness.

It’s not necessarily the first piece of electronic music I’ve ever heard, nor is it my all time favorite (not that I have one), but it IS the tune I definitely remember most when I think abut my first days of going out, back in ‘96.

I never really had a sense of how well known this song was around the world (I guess it wasn’t), but in my home town it had become quite a hit around that time. This may seem strange now and we can hardly imagine the original version of Higher States playing in a regular club today, but I guess 7 years late was not TOO late to catch up with a phenomenon which had not been accessible to us when it happened elsewhere. I think people were more open-minded than now and were enjoying this tune and, although they hadn’t even heard of the second summer of love, were feeling some of the sensations that had made the whole rave movement such a hit years ahead. So I guess this is a good demonstration of the intrinsic power that the whole movement had.

For me, it was one of the tunes that forever got me hooked on electronic music. And when I say electronic music, I mean anything from ambient to gabber, from funky house to drum and bass or from minimal to goa. Depending on my mood, I like listening to all of them and try to keep up with what’s going on, although there’s so much happening in all these styles that it is hard to manage. But I never called myself a fanatic of any of the electronic genres and I can’t say I am an expert on any single one. Nor do I make a point of listening to the very latest and trendiest of artists or songs. All I care about is listening to and enjoying the music, be it new or old, famous or not. For the most part, though, I try to explore music and always find something new. I usually make a point of staying away from stuff that is blatantly commercial, even though the line is sometimes blurry. I try to set my own standards here and not to go to the extremes and NOT like a tune just because it has become famous (like Higher States had become in Cluj-Napoca), or like it because it is unknown and/or belongs to some genre or another. I try not to be manichaeist about music.

Nowadays, I have found the best way to satisfy my musical needs is via online radio. Here are some of my best sources:

• Soma FM
• Digitally Imported
• ETN.FM

Mainly, I listen Soma to experiment and try some new styles, not necessarily electronic. I especially have a soft spot for Illinois Street Lounge.

ETN is my main destination for trance and progressive and DI is for pretty much everything else. I especially use DI to listen to house. The funky house channel is really great.

So there you have it! The basics of how I feel about music.