Franz Schubert - Heidenröslein

Depeche Mode - Goodnight Lovers

Bhakti Experience - Dealului (1994 Goa sunset)

Sven Vath Retrospective What I Used To Play

For this uniquely personal retrospective spread over twelve vinyl discs, Sven Väth takes us back to the early days of his DJ career. On What I Used To Play we meet great pioneers of electronic music, gifted percussionists, obscure wave bands, and innovative producers of a bygone ‘new electronic’ era. Rough beats and irresistible grooves from the identification stage of house, techno, and acid remind us not just how far electronic music has evolved over the past four decades, but how great it was to dance to EBM, techno, and house for the very first time.

If there is one protagonist of the electronic music scene who has remained curious, innovative and at the very cutting edge of music for over four decades, it‘s Sven Väth. His multi-layered artist albums and Sound of the Season mix compilations have been defining the genre for over two decades, and even today, he is constantly on the lookout for the next top tune to add to the highlights of his next set. At least, that’s the case when he’s not producing them himself as an artist or remixer. "Actually, it's always been part of my DNA to think ahead," and nothing had been further from his mind than looking back at his past, but when in spring of 2020 the international DJ circuit had to be scaled down to virtually zero, the ‘restless traveler’ suddenly had time. Time to stop and reflect on "how it actually was back then, at the very beginning of my career..."

"It was a great trip and with every track, beautiful memories came flooding back".

In the London apartment, he had just moved into, Sven has set up a "little music room", where he cocooned himself for several days, "to look way back for the first time and review my musical journey through the eighties, so to speak."

The interim result was six thematically oriented playlists with a grand total of 120 tracks from ‘early 80s’ to ‘Balearic late 80s’, together with excursions into afrobeat, European new wave, and EBM sounds and a few epochal techno/house tracks from the USA in between. From these ‘Best of Sven Väth's favorites’, the project What I Used To Play crystallized. Sven remembers how the Cocoon team reacted to his proposal: "They found the idea of making a compilation out of it MEGA from the beginning and everyone said 'Sven, go for it', but then, of course, the work really started, namely, to clear the rights and to get clean sounding masters of the up to 40-year-old tracks. There was also disappointment, of course. We couldn't clear certain titles because the rights holders in the USA had fallen out with each other or simply disappeared from the scene. In short, it wasn't easy, but now I can safely say we got the most important tracks."

Finally, after two years of research, curation, design, and administrative fine-tuning, the "little retrospective" from 1981 to 1990 is available. The exquisitely packaged, and three-kilo heavy box set is not only physically impressive, WIUTP is also the definitive record of Sven Väth's musical development. On each of the twenty-four sides of vinyl, you can trace track by track, what influenced him during which phase, and how he took off as a DJ from his parents' Queen's Pub straight into the spotlight at Dorian Gray. There and at Vogue (later OMEN), Sven became the style-defining player in the DJ booth that he still is today.

https://svenvaeth.bandcamp.com/album/what-i-used-to-play

credits
released February 3, 2023

Orbital - Halcyon

Hassan Hakmoun: Gnawa Trance Music

Brian Eno - There Were Bells

Laurent Garnier - Coloured City

The 7th Plain - Astra-Naut-E (In The Shadow)

Giorgio Moroder - The chase (Jam & Spoon mix)

 

Red Snapper - The Sleepless

Dave Clarke - Archive One 1995

Orbital - Halcyon And On And On

25 Years Massive Attack

RIP ‪Mark Bell

I-f - Superman

The Future Sound of London

When Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans adopted the name The Future Sound Of London in 1992, there were those in the local dance community who considered it an impertinent choice. Yet as the infinite loop of time has gyroscoped, the open mindedness embodied in their early work has been adopted as standard in many forms of electronica and from Ibiza to indiedom, the pursuit of the beatific, which they explored in their earliest days, is an ongoing musical concern.

Cobain and Dougans were too holistic and too curious about the wide horizon to be just Londoners, but as they morph into a whole new phase of organic dynamism, letting the tide wash over their technological footprints, and embracing wild new sound hybrids, it's clear that they really did know a lot about the future - even if it wasn't the hard, digital one many people imagined.

FSOL have had a consistently accelerated evolution. At the point when Cobain and Dougans borrowed US techno legend Derrick May's title for his Future Sound Of Detroit project they had already served an apprenticeship in sample sonics and dance music. Glasgow born Dougans and Bedford rooted Cobain met at Manchester University in the pre house days of 1985.

Electronics student Cobain and nascent sound engineer Dougans were mutually fascinated by the possibilities of the new tech. With Dougans affection for prototypical likes of Cabaret Voltaire and A Certain Ratio as starting points, they set up their own studio and began collaborating on experimental electronic pieces.



The extrovert conceptualiser Cobain and the reserved sound sculptor Dougans fitted together perfectly, but it took the house explosion of ‘88 for their ideas to synch with the times. Dougans created the hard techno classic 'Humanoid' under the name Stakker, crashing into the rave days Top 10. Working together, now in London, they issued a slew of inventive, underground dance tunes using an ever changing lexicon of names including Smart Systems, Indotribe, Yage, Mental Cube, Semi Real, Yoga, Metropolis, Intelligent Communication and Art Science Technology. Their time as explorers on the fringes of dance came to an end in ‘92. Two days in the studio with a sampler had seen them pull down from the ether a beautiful, transportive piece of music, which owed as much to Erik Satie and Debussy as it did to acid house. They called it 'Papua New Guinea', brought in Andrew Weatherall to mix a version, released it through Jumpin’ & Pumpin’ under the FSOL name, and sat back and marvelled as the tune slowly grew from a minor piece of eccentricity to a massive crossover hit, now regarded as one of the last decade's defining musical moments.

1992's debut album 'Accelerator', which included 'Papua New Guinea' formed a kinetic soundscape for an optimistic dystopia and established them as leading lights in the 'head music' zone of dance. Looking back on 'Papua New Guinea' Cobain sees it now as 'a beautiful and naive child', but at the time it helped liberate 'dance' music from the deadend tunnel of hardcore. 'Intelligent techno' and a flourishing 'ambient' scene were both hugely enabled by FSOL's success. In the light of their sudden potential as hit makers, Cobain and Dougans were signed to Virgin Records and given the unusual freedom to record elsewhere under different names.

Resolutely multi-dimensional their first release for Virgin was 93's sonic voyage 'Tales Of Ephidrina' under the name Amorphous Androgynous. Over the next three years they issued two FSOL albums, 94's 'Lifeforms' and 96's 'Dead Cities', which were wilfully, precognitively and often brilliantly placed at the spinning nexus where dark and light ambient, classical, dub, techno, house and rock, meet, fight, fuck, kiss, make up and make patterns in the dust. Pushing at the industry's restrictions they issued a series of 'singles', (beginning with '93's superb 'Cascades') which stretched time limits to 30 and 40 minutes.

As the internet took off and ISDN technology came in, Cobain and Dougans took full advantage, testing entertainment/ rock'n'roll/performance traditions by beaming live gigs from their Earthbeat studio in Dollis Hill. Shows went out in London, New York, Israel. Major telecommunications companies were offering support. Mainstream media were inviting them in. Via Radio One, they played profoundly tripped out DJ sets to vast audiences.

After the release of 'Dead Cities' in 96, FSOL were due to play a high profile 'virtual' show, but Cobain was feeling less and less at ease with his role. He pulled out of the gig and flew to L.A. staying for a month with The Cult's Ian Astbury who he had been planning to collaborate with. This was the first of a series of reappraisals which would lead to FSOL's full reinvention. In the same year Cobain and Dougans indulged their love of hyper-eclectic, mind trip soundclash mixes, spending six weeks in the studio putting together the research document 'A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In The Mind'. An indicator of their current path, the legendary mix was a grade-A meta-cultural stimulus, blending a reverbed out Barbara Streisand into Bill Hicks, Bukowski, Deepak Chopra and The Rolling Stones. Licensing problems prevented an official release but KissFM in London played it, and bootlegs have turned up around the planet.

The second half of the ‘90s saw a symbiotic musical and personal overhaul take place within FSOL. While Dougans redrew his musical parameters, continuing to work in the band's new studio in East London, Cobain went looking for a soul, mind and body balance. He had become unhappy with the tendency of technology to promote egotism and aggression. At the same time he was suffering from a series of on-going immune system illnesses. His 'stripping back' process saw him travel widely and investigate Ayurvedic as well as Western medicine, finding answers in the strangest places and discovering techniques for balance, spanning meditation to nutrition.

With their samplers realigned and a loose collective of musicians dropping by the studio to add some awesome performances to the mix, the time was right for FSOL to slowly unveil their new shape. Jumpin’ & Pumpin’ had wanted to re-release 'Papua New Guinea' for some time and Cobain and Dougans finally agreed, partly because only remixed versions had come out originally. "For us we saw it as an opportunity to place 'Papua New Guinea' in a sound field that was completely our creation so we thought why not," says Cobain.

Accordingly, a five mix single of 'Papua New Guinea' emerge, featuring versions by Simian, Satoshi Tomiie, Hybrid and Blue States as well as the original Cobain and Dougans mix. This prefaced the October 1st re-release of their 'Accelerator' album featuring remixed tracks and accompanying bonus CD of the single's five 'Papua' remixes plus six more including Andrew Weatherall's never before issued 1992 ‘Producer's Cut’. With club chart and radio response affirming the timelessness of the tune, FSOL are ideally placed to fade up into the next stage of their evolution.

October 29th 2001 saw the release of new project 'Translations'. Locating 'Papua New Guinea' as the sonic base camp they ascend to a summit of tantric, cosmic, organic fusion which bears little resemblance to the template and then set the controls for beyond the ether.

For those with their heads down, busy with getting and spending the enlightenment at the end of the tunnel is not always easy to see. But that's alright. The Future Sound Of London have come all this odyssean way, avoided all those pitfalls and harvested such know how, to provide a soundtrack which clues you in, raises you up, maybe even opens you out, just as they've been doing, in one magic mutation or another, for the last ten years.

www.futuresoundoflondon.com
www.residentadvisor.net

Stockhausen: "Gesang der Junglinge"

"I heard the piece Aphex Twin of Richard James (sic) carefully: I think it would be very helpful if he listens to my work "Gesang der Junglinge"(Song of the Youth), which is electronic music, and a young boy's voice singing with himself. Because he would then immediately stop with all these post-African repetitions, and he would look for changing tempi and changing rhythms, and he would not allow to repeat any rhythm if it varied to some extent and if it did not have a direction in its sequence of variations.
Gesang der Jünglinge (literally "Song of the Youths") is a noted electronic music work by Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was realized in 1955–56 at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk studio in Cologne and is Work Number 8 in the composer's catalog of works. The vocal parts were supplied by 12-year-old Josef Protschka.

The work, routinely described as "the first masterpiece of electronic music" (Simms 1986, 391; Kohl 1998, 61) and "an opus, in the most emphatic sense of the term" (Decroupet and Ungeheuer 1998, 97), is significant in that it seamlessly integrates electronic sounds with the human voice by means of matching voice resonances with pitch and creating sounds of phonemes electronically. In this way, for the first time ever it successfully brought together the two opposing worlds of the purely electronically generated German elektronische Musik and the French Musique Concrète, which transforms recordings of acoustical events. Gesang der Jünglinge is also noted for its early use of spatiality; it was originally in five-channel sound, which was later reduced to just four channels (mixed to monaural and later to stereo for commercial recording release). Continue reading at wikipedia

The Shamen

Faithless - Insomnia