#90's electro

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Elements Of Life by The Advent Internal 1995 Techno / Electro

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Today’s compilation:

Electric Kingdom: Episode One 1999 Nu Skool Breaks / Breakbeat / Electro

Allow me to start this post off with this one extended thought that was rattling around in my head as I was listening to this comp: literally no one knows what they're talking about when it comes to defining the terms breakbeat, breakbeat hardcore, and breaks, and that includes yours truly. You go on different websites that consider themselves to be authorities on the definitions of electronic music genres and they all happen to differ from each other. As it turns out, the consensus is that there really is no consensus and it's something that happens to be really annoying and frustrating.

And websites like Discogs contradict themselves internally, too. Like, they define breakbeat as a specific type of jungle-adjacent rave music that was popular between 1990 and 1993, but then you look at Discogs' top releases for that style and a lot of them don't match the website's own definition of breakbeat at all.

So, I've come up with a way to delineate all of this. And I know I'm just someone on tumblr whose case to be made only ends up adding even more to all of the convolution, but I think I have a logically foolproof method for categorizing all of this stuff. But it takes some pained explaining, so strap in.

Let's start with where most of the confusion is probably derived from in the first place: the musical term, "break," which is also referred to as a "breakbeat" or a "drum break." The break is the foundational element of a song that unites all of these styles of music that I'm about to try and describe to you all. It's a sampled piece of music, usually from a 60s or 70s funk, soul, jazz, or R&B record, that acts as the rhythmic base for the entirety of a track or at least a significant portion of it. In this context, a "break" and a "breakbeat" mean pretty much the same exact thing, but a "drum break" is a more specific type of break, in that it consists of either only drums or mostly drums. Some of the most famous drum breaks are the "Amen" break, the "Funky Drummer" break, and the "Apache" break.

The genres of breakbeat, breakbeat hardcore, and breaks all use a break in their music. But here's how I see these three genres differing from each other:

Breakbeat is the umbrella term for any form of electronic dance music that uses a break as a foundational rhythmic element. But it differs from jungle and drum n bass in that the break in a breakbeat song isn't necessarily the focal point of the production. Jungle and dnb like to tinker around with, combine, and layer drum breaks as their main draw, but breakbeat isn't so much concerned with that.

Within breakbeat then are a bunch of subgenres, the two most prominent of which are breakbeat hardcore and big beat. I would classify breakbeat hardcore as being that early 90s jungle-adjacent rave music that Discogs simply just wants to call breakbeat instead. Big beat, on the other hand, is a form of breakbeat that broke through to the mainstream in the late 90s and early aughts with acts like Fatboy Slim and the Chemical Brothers. It sounds poppier than traditional breakbeat and it uses a lot more rock samples, too.

Another confusing thing here is that The Prodigy are both one of the biggest and greatest breakbeat hardcore and big beat acts of all time. The way you differentiate them though is between their early work, like their Experience album, which is breakbeat hardcore, and their later material, like The Fat of the Land, which is big beat.

And that leaves us with one genre left to define, which is breaks. Discogs defines breaks as all forms of break-driven electronic music that isn’t jungle or drum n bass and also doesn't meet their definition of breakbeat, which again, is that early 90s jungle-adjacent rave stuff. Contrarily, Rate Your Music considers breaks to be a word that's merely interchangeable with breakbeat.

But I see breaks as a whole other thing entirely, which is a style of music that actually falls under the hip hop umbrella. To me, breaks is a style of music that gained popularity between the mid-90s and early aughts that simply cuts and pastes and splices together numerous breaks and samples in order to create one, continuous track. And it doesn't really use much in the way of synthesizers or drum machines; it's just a well-put-together string of old samples. And I don't mean The Avalanches, who use literally thousands of samples in their records; I mean those hip hop-minded breakdance-types of DJs and producers who were trying to find a way to make the cardboard-mat-mentality of the 70s and 80s relevant again. A lot of people already call this kind of music breaks, but they tend not to differentiate it from big beat or breakbeat, and it's really different from both of those things. You can find breaks songs  in things like Fatboy Slim's own DJ mixes from the late 90s and early aughts, for example, as he alternates between breaks and big beat tunes, and you can also find them in a fantastic compilation called Revenge of the B-Boy.

*deep breath*

Now, here's where all of what I just carefully laid out gets fucking torpedoed, and it's because of one guy named Rennie Pilgrem. Rennie Pilgrem is a British dude who heralded in a new type of breakbeat in the late 90s. This style fuses drum breaks with elements of electro, it tends to be more technical and minimal, and it's much less loud than other forms of historically popular breakbeat. And what'd Pilgrem decide to call his new subgenre? Fucking nu skool breaks, of course. And because he coined this style of music that he happened to pioneer himself, the name is universally accepted. This motherfucker. I was trying to make this all less complicated and he made it even more complicated. Whatever. Nu skool breaks is breakbeat and it's not related to breaks. There, problem solved.

***

Electric Kingdom: Episode One is a compilation that encapsulates what was then a new frontier of nu skool breaks in 1999 rather well. It's not really my cup of tea, but some tracks on it are pretty cool, and it has a 4.3 rating on Discogs, meaning nu skool breaks heads like it a lot. The opener comes from Rennie Pilgrem himself and it kind of sounds like the intro music from if that street racing video game series, Midnight Club, came out a few years earlier for N64 and PlayStation. I tend to dig the heavier, darker-sounding kind of stuff with the super fuzzy basslines though, like the back-to-back pairing of "Rocweiller" by Sons of Mecha and "Electro Bitch" by Thomas Krome. Not so much a fan of the lighter fare on here.

Highlights:

Rennie Pilgrem & The Thursday Choir - "Some Place Funky (Back To The Future Mix)" Sons Of Mecha [VR Boy & DJ Erb] - "Rocweiller" Thomas Krome - "Electro Bitch"

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Chroma by ScanX F Communications 1996 Techno / Electro

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Today’s mix:

Techno Methods Vol .02 by DJ Jack De Marseille 1998 Techno / Electro

Listen to the full mix here.

A lotta wild, dystopian, dark, sci-fi kinda beats on this one. An absolute treat.

Highlights:

Jack De Marseille - “Techno Bass” Corrado Izzo - “The Golden Age Interpretations (Part II)” Rue East - “Remove” Oxia - “Phase II” Richard Bartz - “Subway, Pt. 1″ Richard Bartz - “Echo Final” Surgeon - “Basictonal Remake (Version II)” Surgeon - “Learning” Beroshima - “Dee Bee Phunky” T’N’I - “Be Straight” Richard Bartz - “Style Wars” Savas Pascalidis - “Discotheque” The Hacker - “Low Life” Dynamik Bass System - “Electronic” Ron Trent - “Altered States”

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Drexciya - “Hydro Theory” DJ-Kicks by Andrea Parker Song released in 1995. Mix released in 1998. Electro / Techno

The concept of the anonymous artist in music is something that runs counter to basically everything we’ve ever been exposed to. The artist is an individual whose uniqueness is to be highlighted. We have to know who’s responsible for the work. If we don’t, how can we go to their shows, interview them, and possibly sexualize them? How do you market that which has no face? Outside of MF Doom (who, let’s face it, markets himself on the intrigue of his mask, plus we know his identity), facelessness has been a theme adopted by the world of techno. This is for a couple of reasons. One is to remove identity from the music so the listener solely focuses their attention on the tracks and isn’t consumed by who might be behind them. The other reason is to playfully con us into believing that the music is being produced by machine and not man.

But Drexciya, from Detroit, took this idea of unknown identity to a whole different level. We didn’t know who was in Drexciya until one of their members, James Stinson, died at a young age from heart complications. Think about that. This group existed for a decade and was completely anonymous. That’s unheard of. We only found exactly who Drexciya was after a wide-ranging interview with Stinson surfaced soon after his passing. Its other member was Gerald Donald, who since, has found success in another Detroit act called Dopplereffekt.

But what Drexciya lacked in human identity, they more than made up for with an imaginative mythos. Inspired by the afrofuturism of Sun Ra and Parliament / Funkadelic, Stinson and Donald came up with the idea of Drexciya, a place inhabited by the unborn children of pregnant African women who were thrown overboard from slave ships that were on their way to America. Drexciya was underwater. The babies had learned to breathe from developing in their mothers’ wombs. Rather than have to endure the horrific torment of enslavement in the good ol’ U.S. of A., the people of Drexciya resided in a society that resembled something like a black Atlantis or an underwater Wakanda.

The story was fleshed out in explanatory liner notes from certain releases as well as track titles. And although the tracks were instrumental, there was still a story that was being told. It was up to the listener to interpret though. We often think of techno as futuristic music that we praise for dope and unique combinations of sound, and we end it there. Drexciya produced dope sounds, but there was a deeper meaning to be derived from what they made. It went way beyond a sick groove.

Take for instance, “Hydro Theory,” a song originally from their 1995 4-track EP The Journey Home. It served as the final release in a four-part series. Given the title, we are left to figure out the meaning of water as it relates to the Drexciyan universe. Stinson and Donald provide a very ominous, corrugated bassline, a rapidly ticking closed hat, and a series of lo-fi, ringing chimes that naturally sound like they’re submerged in water. They then add in sharp kicks and scratchy snare claps, followed by a melody of clinking and bouncing metallic liquid. With all these sounds in place, Drexciya craft a super dark and dusty tune that moves like electro, but with all the bleak techno feeling that reflects a dystopian Detroit. What it all means is completely left up to our individual interpretations, but it definitely means something, and only Stinson and Donald know the correct answer.

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Mr. X & Mr. Y - “1956″ Essential Selection, Volume One by Fatboy Slim & Paul Oakenfold Song released in 1998. Compilation released in 2000.

Some sample-heavy 90s electro

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(со страницы https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5U7lxBRfJc)

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This track consists of drum n bass, drum glitch core, and 90’s electro

It is a battle of awesome music.