Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

History of Techno

beatportal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 332 posts

Re: History of Techno

#41

Post by jjgreen »

cpach wrote: post #18
kristopolous wrote: post #13

This is about as conventional a narrative as you can get. I've never been happy with it though, it's way too much of a tidy, linear, clean through-line. For instance, this narrative always leave out free-style and electro like Hashim (example: 1983, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykK0uEjSsqY ), Newcleus, etc. Soulsonic Force (1982: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHQ11l4uiM4 ) predated Atkins Cybotron project and At…

Just out of curiosity: What do you mean by New Wave in this context? When I hear new wave I think of acts such as Adam and the Ants and Duran Duran. But are they related to techno?

In the UK in the late 70's, New Wave was just post-punk without the vomit.

Re: History of Techno

#42

Post by kristopolous »

3dee wrote: post #33
kristopolous wrote: post #13

This is about as conventional a narrative as you can get. I've never been happy with it though, it's way too much of a tidy, linear, clean through-line. For instance, this narrative always leave out free-style and electro like Hashim (example: 1983, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykK0uEjSsqY ), Newcleus, etc. Soulsonic Force (1982: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHQ11l4uiM4 ) predated Atkins Cybotron project and At…

No music style appeared out of nowhere. So it will always be hard to pinpoint where things started. Maybe it is even impossible. I always have a mixed feeling about music style classifications. It shifts focus from the music to discussions about what style a piece of music is. Maybe techno originated from rhytmic tribe music. Who knows. Personally I don't care.

The classification limits the perception like the Himbu color experiment.

That's why these early pre-language explorations are great.

Luckily there's a lot of independent artists these days that are exploring things and refusing to label them with an abstract genre.

We need our modern John Cages to feel empowered. I think it's important.

Re: History of Techno

#43

Post by jasondoty »

ahurmazda wrote: post #19
the-dude wrote: post #10

Classic history tree of electronic music : http://music.ishkur.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26212706

Its easy to miss but descriptions of the different genres are the true mvp. Some of the saltiest things I have read, true hilarity. E.g `Eurotrance`: > "The rank repugnance of the self-fellating culture of DJ worship is at the forefront of this many-headed hydra of rapacious rot. Overbearing anthems, boring breakdowns, and tasteless DJ vanity have combined into one monstrous, obnoxious, pompous, unlistenable Babyloni…

The descriptions are salty at every genre that is even somewhat popular. God forbid people actually enjoying the music without being under influence of several drugs

Re: History of Techno

#44

Post by Jiocus »

8bitsrule wrote: post #9

Juan Atkins (Cybotron) interview (Bleep43, 2009). Long, deep. http://www.bleep43.com/bleep43/2009/10/4/juan-atkins-intervi... 'Alleys of Your Mind' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMHNhJJnve4

Juan Atkins as “Model 500”

“The Flow”, here as an original MTV music video,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZJt0XlhEoQ

Re: History of Techno

#45

Post by monocasa »

tern wrote: post #23
andruby wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you happen to know if the old version of "Ishkur's guide to electronic music" is still available somewhere? IIRC it was a flash site with mostly music bubbles. It opened me up to fringe music genre's like Italo, Acid Jazz and Ghetto Tech.

I believe it's here, but of course you need Flash http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/ Another favorite is Ishkur's "trancecracker" comic, which you can find here: https://modwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=245900

That comic is the funniest fucking thing I've seen in a long time.

I was literally just making the argument with my friends who were going "oh, I wish Tiesto was still playing trance; he turned his back on the trance scene" to which I responded "Tiesto was never a trance DJ, he was a mainstage DJ. He's still a mainstage DJ, and you don't get on the mainstage playing trance anymore".

Re: History of Techno

#46

Post by DanBC »

kristopolous wrote: post #13

This is about as conventional a narrative as you can get. I've never been happy with it though, it's way too much of a tidy, linear, clean through-line. For instance, this narrative always leave out free-style and electro like Hashim (example: 1983, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykK0uEjSsqY ), Newcleus, etc. Soulsonic Force (1982: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHQ11l4uiM4 ) predated Atkins Cybotron project and At…

> Hashim (example: 1983, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykK0uEjSsqY)

From the YT description:

"As stated below by Jerry Calliste Jr., this video is not and original version of Hashim - Al Naafiysh (The Soul). Probably it was made for the purposes of one of the UK television programs, like " The Tube", during the early 80's. This recording is one of the first hip hop stories to be seen and published on the British Television. The track "Al Naafiysh (The Soul), was originally used for this video, added by unknown author or crew which worked on the video, as the only thing that was known so far, was Geoff Stern, the director."

One clue to this is that there isn't anyone smoking in the video, and the tube windows have a "no smoking" roundel. The smoking ban on the London Underground came in on the 9th July 1984.

Re: History of Techno

#47

Post by kristopolous »

jim-jim-jim wrote: post #40
kristopolous wrote: post #13

This is about as conventional a narrative as you can get. I've never been happy with it though, it's way too much of a tidy, linear, clean through-line. For instance, this narrative always leave out free-style and electro like Hashim (example: 1983, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykK0uEjSsqY ), Newcleus, etc. Soulsonic Force (1982: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHQ11l4uiM4 ) predated Atkins Cybotron project and At…

I was really confused when I bought a Cybotron record in the 2010s expecting to hear canonical techno. It's totally just electro! Newcleus is fully sick though. I dunno if people overlook them as a gimmick or what, but the first album is just track after absolute track.

To be honest I think after the rise of gangsta rap and miami bass, the whole era kinda got discarded: whodini, mantronix, man parrish, egyptian lover, grandmaster flash. Actually you could probably say the writing was on the wall after the decline of the party rockers in 1983-84 (epitomized by the Busy Bee Starski/Kool Moe D battle from 1981). Afrika Bambaataa is still occasionally releasing btw. 2017: https://youtu.be/sOx7VeHPIJY - if you were hoping for a more faithful traditional electro, check out this label instead https://dominanceelectricity.bandcamp.com/

The current narrative still discards it as if big hits like Freeez's IOU and Alexander Robotnick's Problèmes d'amour wasn't influential when that style mutated just a tad a year or two later and called itself techno.

Speaking of Cybotron and electro check out Nitro Delux "Journey to Cybotron Transform" off Cutting Records (1986)

Re: History of Techno

#48

Post by kristopolous »

DanBC wrote: post #46
kristopolous wrote: post #13

This is about as conventional a narrative as you can get. I've never been happy with it though, it's way too much of a tidy, linear, clean through-line. For instance, this narrative always leave out free-style and electro like Hashim (example: 1983, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykK0uEjSsqY ), Newcleus, etc. Soulsonic Force (1982: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHQ11l4uiM4 ) predated Atkins Cybotron project and At…

> Hashim (example: 1983, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykK0uEjSsqY ) From the YT description: "As stated below by Jerry Calliste Jr., this video is not and original version of Hashim - Al Naafiysh (The Soul). Probably it was made for the purposes of one of the UK television programs, like " The Tube", during the early 80's. This recording is one of the first hip hop stories to be seen and published on the British T…

Yep. Not an original video at all. It's still great.

These days sometimes the artist makes a video for an old song. For instance, Earlene Bentley made a video for "Caught In The Act" 23 years after she released it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55KOBCgv7f4

It's not exactly common, but it's interesting to see it what it happens. (her "big" hit btw, in the early 80s, in specifically gay clubs was "The Boys Come To Town" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl0fBil_4dU) ... it has that 80s hard driving orchestration ... pretty nice. The instrumentals are occasionally sampled on this one, about as much as Two Tons o' Fun are. It's always nice to overhear the latest pop song and be like "oh look, there's Barbara Roy's instrumentals from If you want me still living on". (https://youtu.be/lOCMRk8Nex4?t=272 for the uninitiated)

Re: History of Techno

#50

Post by mradmin »

disgu wrote: post #5

That has got to be the worst scrolling behavior I've ever seen on a website in my entire life.

There's also some wacky code in the HTML. Check out the body tag:
If it's not clear, all that code is within the class attribute!
Post reply on HN