Cashing in on the current craze of failed 90's techno musicians started by Gary Wicker's
X-Eleven page page, I decided to put up
a brief documentation of my own failure as a techno musician in Dallas in the 90's. I most often labeled my
tapes "Robot Music" so we'll go with that as the name of my band. Not a great name, but oh well. Although
I also called myself Probot and Tree Wave sometimes which were a little better.
I really started screwing with synths and drum machines in the 8th grade, but was more interested
in rock stuff until high school (around 91 or 92). Also coincides with starting to smoke pot...
I had a synth and drum machine, and actually borrowed some of the same gear as
Gary. But the bulk of the stuff I'm going to post here is just
a 486 PC running the Cakewalk 3.0 sequencer driving an Emu EMAX-II sampler:
So I never listened to much electronic music.
I'd heard it around, but owned very little -- mostly listened to noisy shoegazer pop. Some of the earliest stuff I'm going to post here
I found recorded on the backside of a copy of My Bloody Valentine "Loveless". I did regularly go to raves in Dallas from
93-95, although I was usually on a lot of acid. So early on, my view of what House music was supposed to sound like
was a little skewed. Later when I got a better idea of what it was supposed to sound like, my music
got less interesting.
And I really enjoyed no exposure at all. Gary's story sounds like a success story compared to me, haha.
I made a really half-assed effort to send some stuff out to
a few labels and djs (same places Gary talks about), but I guess I was pretty content to
just sit around and smoke pot and program the stuff and then
drive around listening to it. I recently spent an entire
day archiving all the old stuff to my computer, and recorded about 40 songs
(well over 3 hours of music, and I know there are more around somewhere).
I would guess that about a third of those songs have never been listened to by anybody but me. And even of the most
played, probably 15 people at most have heard them. Seems a bit odd thinking about that now.
Around 96 or 97 I mostly stopped doing techo to go back to guitar based stuff.
Also, it's worth mentioning that I was also doing a lofi junk-pop band
called the Sleuths during the same time period, but that band has continued until today (you can hear some of that stuff
here
if you're interested). And about 2 years ago started the electronic band Tree Wave.
So on to the music. My stuff started out weird and unpolished, and evolved into standard House fare. It's characterized by retarded
dancy vocal samples, which I have always thought were hilarious, and Housy organs and weird textures sampled from TV.
About the quality, well, I didn't get a DAT machine until much later. So these are actually mostly dubbed from
crappy cassettes. I do have (and still use) my sampler and the sequencer files, so I may eventually try to re-record some of these.
I gotta say, going through this old stuff was really interesting. I hadn't listened to some of the songs in quite a while, and it
was fascinating to recall how my style evolved and see how it affects my current music. There were some genuinely good musical ideas and tricks
that I'd forgotten about. And I'm amazed by how much work I did vs. how little effort I put toward getting exposure.
I had some desire to get my work heard (with my techno and my other band at the time), but even with small exposure comes stress
as I've learned recently. In some ways I was more content then. Maybe you should post your homemade 90's Dallas techno too?
(and btw: I don't smoke pot or do any of that stuff anymore. my getting tired of that stuff and becoming more successful
strangely coincided, haha)
_
Early Work - This stuff's a little sparse and odd and rough around the edges, but I prefer it to the later stuff
expansion.mp3 ('94) -
This is my fave. Most of the melodic and texture sounds
used were sampled from TV, including that watery sound. And I love the preacher sample: "Spirit of God float out of Jesus!"
I kinda went apeshit with the cymbals, huh?
die_like_jupiter.mp3 ('93) -
The earliest song I've got. This is when I didn't have a sequencer and used my drum machine
to trigger the sampler through MIDI. I actually had a Atari ST with a MIDI sequencer before this and did a couple of (lost) songs on that,
but the sequencer disk went bad. So at this point my equipment setup was totally makeshift. And this was
when I first realized that mediocre gear and sketchy setups spark a lot of creativity, which has definitely carried into my current work.
So anyway, the samples are from a PBS special about Jupiter emitting energy and having the potential to become a star.
right_where_you_are.mp3 ('94) -
This song is definitely the result of listening to the music at raves while taking 'cid.
There are so many layers of drums there that I had polyphony problems. The main repeating samples are from Cops. "Right where you are"
as in "Stop, right where you are!" and the other one is "You're automatic" from "You're automatically going to jail". This
one is minimal and strange, and therefore I really like it.
trian.mp3 ('93) -
This one's really weird and sloppy, and was also done with the makeshift drum machine/sampler setup described above.
I'm not sure if anyone will really want to listen to this, but, well I still like listening to it anyway.
It features a grungy guitar loop and a sample from Gomer Pyle ("how 'bout a little quiet around here fellas?"). The "Trian" sample is me through a pitch shifter. The end
is VERY long and repetitive, but I still like to zone out to it even though I don't smoke pot or drop Black Shield anymore. Audio quality is pretty bad,
but I'm pretty certain I have the original files for this one to re-record later.
Later Work - I got a little more standard with this stuff. Towards the end the silly house vocal riffs got way out of hand (although I refuse
to post the most extreme examples of that).
knight_rider.mp3 ('95) -
In case you're a little fuzzy on the first episode of Knight Rider, police detective Michael Long is
believed dead after an ambushed stakeout, and is revived and given a new identity as a super crime fighter by an eccentric millionaire.
That new identity is Michael Knight. That's what this song is about. Got some samples from said episode of Knight Rider, some Diana Ross samples
(which I used all the time for some reason), and some badass drum programming. I rarely used loops in my songs and this one has none -- that's
all programmed, dude.
When the song builds up and that timbale kicks in, it rulez. Crank it up.
v_tide.mp3 ('95) -
I was getting more into standard minimal house stuff at this point.
This one's built around a couple of short, weird Diana Ross samples. I was
always fascinated with unintelligible cut up vocal bits.
The "Space" sample was a sample of Chad from my other band.
kick_some_ass.mp3 ('96) -
Silly housy stuff. That cranked sax part is cute, and the main sample is funny.
Could have maybe been a club hit had I had more ambition.
Audio quality, not so good. I'll try to find the files and re-record it.
freejuh.mp3 ('97) -
One of my few later attempts at drum & bass, the last real techno song I finished I think.
Pretty typical stuff, but not too bad.
_
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