1978: techno did NOT begin in 1992 with LA STYLE's commercial cop-out "james brown is dead;" nor in 1991 with LFO and their bleepy sound; nor in 1990 with ROBERT ARMANI's minimal-trax masterwork "circus bells;" nor in 1987 with the silky detroit-souled "strings of life" of RHYTHIM IS RHYTHIM (featuring DERRICK MAY); nor with 808 STATE'S 1988 single, "cubik;" nor in 1984 with NEW ORDER's coldwave 12" epic "blue monday;" nor with AFRIKA BAMBAATAA's spacey 1982 single "planet rock" (and all subsequent 'breakdance' music, now called 'electro'); nor in 1982 with CYBOTRON (featuring JUAN ATKINS), and their darker, leaner, detroit-style 'techno bass' music (such as the 1983 single "sounds clear"); or THE HUMAN LEAGUE's glam/technopop masterpiece album "dare;" or even 1981 with KRAFTWERK's bleepy techno-bible, "computer world" (KRAFTWERK's own history goes even further back, to "trans-europe express" from 1977, "autobahn" from 1975, and experiments as far back as the late '60s!). although each of these were very important benchmarks in recent techno history, there has been a lot of other music which could easily be called 'techno,' including: the recent 'pop techno' of MOBY, ORBITAL, DEEP FOREST, THE ORB, THE MOVEMENT, ENIGMA, BLACK BOX, INNER CITY, THE KLF, and many others... the early '90s the 'new beat' music of NITZER EBB, FRONT 242, and LORDS OF ACID...
the harder 'euro' techno of late '80s-early '90s UNDERGROUND RESISTANCE, JOEY BELTRAM, CYBERSONIK (featuring RICHIE HAWTIN and DAN BELL), belgium's R&S label, and german labels such as DISKO-B, HARTHOUSE, and PCP... the seeds of jungle, in the music of MEAT BEAT MANIFESTO and the 'hardcore' of SHUT UP AND DANCE and REINFORCED...the '80s industrial-dance music of PSYCHIC TV, COIL, and CHRIS & COSEY (all ex-members of the seminal '70s industrial group/cult called THROBBING GRISTLE)...the hi-nrg music of '80s gay dance clubs (whose more 'poppy' contingent included BRONSKI BEAT, THE COMMUNARDS, ERASURE, and belgium's ZYX label)...the early-mid '80s chicago-style 'acid house' and 'acid trax' music of FRANKIE KNUCKLES, PHUTURE, FARLEY, ARMANDO, ADONIS, and chicago's TRAX & DANCEMANIA labels...the innovative sampled music of the mid '80s band ART OF NOISE (named after RUSSOLO's 'art of noises'), which is still hard to categorize: some of it was techno/electro, some of it was pop, some was R&B, some was ambient...

J U A N . A T K I N S

1989: the first 'real' techno (so named) by detroiters DERRICK MAY & his TRANSMAT label, KEVIN SAUNDERSON & KMS, and JUAN ATKINS & METROPLEX (all starting around 1985-87); a music informed both by ALVIN TOFFLER's 'future theory' and a crumbling city of faded glories and broken dreams...the 'technopop' of the late '70s-mid '80s: PET SHOP BOYS, FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD, NEW ORDER, OMD, DAF, SECTION 25, HEAVEN 17, ULTRAVOX, YELLO, GARY NUMAN, DAVID BOWIE, YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA, and many others...and a lot of other music comes awfully close to 'techno' (stylistically or conceptually), including the whole 'new age' movement (whose more prominent music-makers include ROBERT RICH, STEVE ROACH, MARK ISHAM, and the WINDHAM HILL label, among many others), THE B-52's (check out "whammy!" if you dont believe it), MANUEL GOTTSCHING (his 60-minute techno-epic "e2-e4," from 1981, is essential), JOY DIVISION, MARTIN CIRCUS, LIASONS DANGEREUSES, 'synth disco' (like GIORGIO MORODER and SPACE's keyboard-driven disco anthems), disco itself (it was the first dance music to be beatmixed, after all), jamaican dub (with LEE PERRY's pioneering studio experimentation), and the electronic doodlings of euro 'space rock' (such as CAN, POPOL VUH, CLUSTER, and TANGERINE DREAM). if you haven't heard any of these, seek them out to understand! But the roots of techno go much deeper; into areas outside of music altogether...to issues of race (believe me, it DOES matter), gender (why aren't more women really involved in the scene?), economics (capitalism, commercialization, and the economic marginalization of entire cultures--which, ironically, is often the catalyst for new musical forms), technology (SOMEBODY had to design all those keyboards and gadgets!), movement, images, mathematics, space travel, psychedelics, academics (and the politics of today's 'classical music' which favors formula and stagnation over innovation and experimentation), anthropology, sociology, psychology, human ingenuity, and so on...a complex web of concerns, attitudes, ideologies, cultures, and experiences. these things are all essential towards a deeper understanding of techno (and all music!)...but for simplicity's sake, let's get back to the music: to the music cultures, inventions, and people who brought us here... to dance history and dance cultures such as the club/rave scene of late '80s england ('88's 'summer of love'); the mid '80s club scene in chicago (esp FRANKIE KNUCKLES' club THE WAREHOUSE, from which 'house' got its name); the mid '70s-early '80s breakdance/hip-hop scene in new york (perhaps the first underground scene to accept a totally electronic music), the '70s 'discotheque' and the beginnings of club culture (in the lounged-out '50s-'60s); the 'sound-systems' of '50s-'60s jamaica ('proto-raves' with turntables, djs, and toasters/rappers); and any number of other dance gatherings from formal ballet to ceremonial rituals...

1980s: to the 'industrial' scenes of late '70s-'90s europe and north america, whose apocalyptic, cybernetic visions seemed to signal the end of 'progress,' and whose music utilized both the primitive and the hyper-technological as important compositional tools (see THE YOUNG GODS, SKINNY PUPPY, THROBBING GRISTLE, early CABARET VOLTAIRE, and EINSTUERZENDE NEUBAUTEN--among others--for creative uses of electronics, found noise, sampling, etc...) to the japanese keyboard company ROLAND, whose little 'music boxes' (which came out from 1978-1986 and are called the 101, 202, 303, 505, 606, 707, 808, and 909) are still being figured out and tweaked, way beyond the original intent of the designers... to LAURIE ANDERSON (late '70s-present), whose extravagant multimedia performances in the late '70s-early '80s (such as the epic 1983 work, "united states") truly expanded the vocabulary available to electronic composition...

G E O R G E . C L I N T O N

1980s: to GEORGE CLINTON (early '70s-present), whose 'space funk' ideas from the early '70s-present (which influenced later technophile PRINCE and gave birth to electronic R & B) were the continuation of the long african-american association with space and science-fiction imagery ('the mothership connection'), which serves both as a psychological escape from the reality of a marginalized black existence, as well as a literal 'place' (mental or otherwise) free from the dominant white society, where innovation can flourish (and he doesn't mind being one of the most sampled artists on the planet, either)...

B R I A N . E N O

early '80s: to BRIAN ENO (early '70s-present), who coined the term 'ambient music' in 1978 (bedridden and unable to raise the volume on a barely-audible turntable across the room), and who explored the possibilities of almost totally passive & environmental music in albums such as "ambient 1: music for airports" and "music for films" (both 1978), not to mention his 'subversive' production skills (check the JAMES album "wah wah" and DAVID BOWIE's "outside")... STEVE HILLAGE/MIQUETTE GIRAUDY (late '60s-present, now called SYSTEM 7 or 777), who created ambient soundscapes for art installations, including the most influential one which was released as "rainbow dome musick" in 1979... the japanese synthesizer virtuoso ISAO TOMITA (early '70s-present), whose electronic versions of classical compositions put the older works in a totally new and exciting context ("snowflakes are dancing" from 1974 features all DEBUSSY stuff and it kicks)...

1980s: LA MONTE YOUNG (late '50s-present), whose minimalist, droning compositions set the stage for much of the work of PHILIP GLASS, TERRY RILEY, STEVE REICH, and MEREDITH MONK (all early '60s- present); later, JOHN ADAMS and INGRAM MARSHALL (both '70s-present); establishing repetition as a key compositional motif (sound familiar? and don't forget APHEX TWIN's "icct hedral," a collaboration with GLASS); and YOUNG's wife, MARIAN ZAZEELA , who creates ambient light shows that accompany many of his performances... JAMES BROWN (late 50s-present), 'the hardest working man in show business;' whose raw, driving funk of the '60s was the catalyst for early breakdancing (among other things) and was the major influence on KRAFTWERK (as well as a billion others), and who as a result is probably the most-sampled artist ever... SUN RA and his ARKESTRA (mid '50s-'90s), whose spaced-out jazz was some of the most innovative and experimental music ever made; whose space get-ups and claim of saturnian origins were a metaphor for the 'otherness' of african-american identity--an escape to the 'outer realms' of white domination, and a strategy questioning the very nature of 'reality;' and who was also one of the earliest artists (in any field) to use a synthesizer, (the first recorded was a solovox, in 1953!)...

M I L E S . D A V I S

1970s: MILES DAVIS (late '60s-early '90s), whose seamless incorporation of electronic elements into the older, improvisatory art form of jazz was surprisingly organic, showing that electronic sounds could be just as soulful as 'real' ones (check "bitches brew" from 1969)...

early '70s: WENDY CARLOS/ROBERT MOOG (early '60s-present), whose composer/keyboard-designer collaboration produced deliberately 'synthetic' versions of BACH and BEETHOVEN (see "a clockwork orange" from 1971 or "switched-on bach" from 1968), proving that electronic music could be accepted by the general public (look in thrift stores for "switched"!)... VLADIMIR USSACHEVSKY & OTTO LUENING (early '50s-early '90s), who were the two pioneer US electronic composers of the early '50s (using mainly tapes), and who later established the COLUMBIA-PRINCETON ELECTRONIC MUSIC CENTER in 1958 (with MILTON BABBITT); a crucial nexus for the acceptance of 'serious' electronic music in the academic/composing world, whose well-equipped studio continued to be an important focal point for electronic experimentation for many years... KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN (early '50s-present), whose large-scale, multimedia events from the late '60s-present are still among the most challenging works ever presented (including a recent performance for violin players and helicopters), and whose radical works of the '50s (including 'pure' sinewave compositions such as "electronic study no.1" and the harsh and chaotic "mikrophonie I," for percussion & microphone noise) were among the first to exploit the nearly limitless possibilities of the new music...

E D G A R D . V A R E S E

late '50s: EDGARD VARESE ('10s-early '60s), whose "poeme electronique" (a 1958 tape manipulation which was the culmination of the composer's entire 40-year career) changed the face of academic music forever, and who throughout the '20s-'30s composed some of the most influential works of the 20th century; such as 1931's "ionisation" scored solely for percussion, which had never been done before in western music (er, jungle, anyone?); and who had also long predicted the 'liberation of sound' through technology... IANNIS XENAKIS (early '50s-present), whose harsh, forbidding works are an attempt to fully integrate music with mathematical concepts such as calculus and probability, and who turned the entire process of composition itself on its head by utilizing computers to calculate his compositions... MUSIQUE CONCRETE (late '40s-'50s), a movement begun by PIERRE SCHAEFFER and PIERRE HENRY, in which natural sounds were recorded, then manipulated and arranged into compositions, resulting in a collage of the 'real' (and as applied today, strongly reminiscent of sampling and the possiblities of today's digital technology)...

J O H N . C A G E

1950s: JOHN CAGE ('30s-early '90s), whose influence is hard to underestimate, who opened composition to zen ideals such as arbitrariness and chance (such as 1953Õs "4.33," which is 'performed' by a pianist who simply sits silently at a closed piano for 4 minutes, 33 seconds...so the ambient noise of the audience IS the composition), whose 'prepared' pianos--created by placing unusual objects under the mallets of a normal piano--allowed one keyboard to have many different, percussive sounds ('proto-samplers,' in a way), and who experimented in the '30s and '40s with variable-speed tape players and amplification...not to mention his many other unusual musical ventures (often in the spirit of dada and 'serious' fun); such as the use of ordinary objects as instruments: flowerpots, electric buzzers, blenders, radios, spoons, etc (inspired in turn by RUSSOLO's futurist "art of noises" and ANTHEIL's 'junk' compositions of the '10s-'20s)... MAURICE MARTENOT ('20s-'70s), whose eerie-sounding electronic instrument (called the ondes martenot) was the most widely accepted early electronic instrument, and now has vast repertoire of compositions (including several important pieces by OLIVIER MESSIAEN)...

1950s: LEON TERMEN ('10s-'90s), whose own electronic instrument, invented around 1919, (called the theremin, controlled by subtle hand motions in the air), was the first electronic instrument to be readily used by composers (remember spooky space & horror movie sounds? thatÕs the theremin). CLARA ROCKMORE ('30s-'80s) kicked it out and became the first theremin virtuoso (ie, she rocks), and LOUIS & BEBE BARRON composed the first all-electronic film score with it (for "forbidden planet," in 1956)...

1910s: LUIGI RUSSOLO (1910s), the italian futurist painter who wrote "the art of noises" in 1913, calling for the musical use of all sounds heard in our increasingly-industrialized and noisy world...ERIK SATIE (1880s-1920s), whose eccentricities and sense of humor were intended to mock the seriousness of academic music (with titles such as "disagreeable impressions" and "flabby preludes"), and whose later 1920 pieces, collectively titled "furniture music," were intended to be ignored (predating ENO's 'ambient music' by 58 years)...ARNOLD SCHOENBERG (1890s-1950s), who didn't use electronics at all but who turned to the do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do of the diatonic scale inside-out (it had been used, without much expansion, for over 250 years), replacing it with a 12-tone system which still sounds harsh to western ears, thereby opening the door for the exploration of non-western scales and true atonality... FERUCCIO BUSONI (1890s-1920s), a visionary who predicted the whole thing, writing in 1907: "exhaustion surely waits at the end of a course the longest lap of which has already been covered [ie, traditional tonality & instrumentation]...in what direction does the next step lead? to abstract sound, to unhampered technique, to unlimited tonal material." hmmm...

1900s: CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1880s-1910s), who didn't use electronics either, but whose use of arbitrary key changes, impressionism, and dissonance, unchained music from traditional european tonality and set the stage for all the shit after him, and whose work still sounds surprisingly phresh today... THADDEUS CAHILL (1890s-1910s), who built some of the world's first electronic instruments, including the telharmonium in 1906, which took up several railroad cars (this was before amplification!); whose experiments were essentially failures in a practical sense, but whose ideas were returned to time and time again as the technology developed to bust them out (such as muzak!)...

1995: so find out about the new composers (mine are biased...find your own!): DAN BELL (DBX), ROBERT HOOD (M-PLANT), JEFF MILLS, "MAD" MIKE/UNDERGROUND RESISTANCE, MISS DJAX, DAN CURTIN, MORGAN GEIST, TODD SINES (.XTRAK/ENHANCED), PAUL JOHNSO N, GOLDIE, REINFORCED RECORDS, A GUY CALLED GERALD, JOSH WINK, JOEY BELTRAM, JUAN ATKINS, TITONTON DUVANTE, KELLI HAND, MORITZ VON OSWALD (BASIC CHANNEL), RICH RATVASKY (IHANNOA), RELIEF RECORDS, CLAUDE YOUNG, RICHIE HAWTIN, HIMADRI, DJ RAP, CHARLES NOEL (MONOCHROME), STEPHEN HINDMAN (KINGsIZE), JAMIE MYERSON (JLM), DAC CROWELL, THE BLACK DOG, SHAKE, GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS, RICHARD BARTZ, CARL CRAIG, EDDIE FOWLKES, OCTAVE ONE, MYUNGHO CHOI (ELLIPTICAL), PLAID, DAVE ANGEL, KENNY LARKIN, ALAN OLDHAM, INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH RECORDS, WOODY McBRIDE, CHRIS SATTINGER, AUTECHRE, JAMIE HODGE, ROB WILLIAMS (TEMPEST), etc etc and so on and so on...too many to mention! explore their works, even if only on a mixtape...(and several of these people are like us, too...out i n the scene! so find them, say hi...).

'we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dream...'

email:eluna@coil.com