TRASHFUTURE - *Unlocked* EDM: Sonic Gentrification feat. Aloiso Wilmoth

Episode Date: October 9, 2018

Well, here it is. You've been promised this for ages and now you're getting it: a discussion on techno as praxis. But, it's not as lame as that might sound, because Riley speaks with musician and producer Aloiso Wilmoth ( @HE_VALENCIA) about the history of techno, its DIY ethos, its Midwest American roots, and how's it's been repackaged and sold as EDM. You can find Aloiso's music on SoundCloud here: https://soundcloud.com/he_valencian This episode originally appeared as a bonus for our Patreon subscribers. If you're interested in more TF episodes each week, sign up on the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/21916656 Don’t forget that you can commodify your dissent with a t-shirt from http://www.lilcomrade.com/ — support our comrade's business and get some extremely soft gear.    

So the inciting incident for this episode of the podcast happened this July and I've kind of been thinking about it more or less ever since, not on a daily basis, but quite a bit. It's one of those tweets that you just see and you don't really forget because it sort of crawls into your skin and makes you furious all the time. So John McTernan, a former political strategist, Tony Blair, and a famous airhead who's claimed to political fame involved being questioned for selling knighthoods to private equity goons tweeted,

I am literally in favour of liberal democracy. It created the welfare state, smartphones, the minimum wage, supersonic travel, human rights and equality, the fourth industrial revolution, paid holidays, craft beer, rising living standards, and techno and so on, plus it defeated communism. This tweet, you can hear a derisive laugh in the background because this tweet made me so fucking angry, not only because, I mean, I don't know, it's not as though the organised labour movement delivered us paid holidays, which literally is not liberal democracy, but techno is specifically, it's specifically anti-capitalist music, and John McTernan is

just showing himself to be, Kel Suprize, a complete fucking idiot. Aloysia, what do you think of that? Just the overall tone of the tweet is kind of insane, but I mean, the one, I guess like the one percent of that was right, I guess technically, techno was born from that kind of realm, especially, I guess just being from the Midwest, there's definitely like very specific class things that could only cause the birth of the specific genre in terms of just like poverty, people just being bored and kind of wanting to see them, seeing themselves like not in a really good position and wanting to see further into the future, but I don't

know about the rest of that description, sounds like a load of bollocks. Oh, my goodness, you're getting British English over here. Aloysia Wilmoth, he Valencia, techno DJ, world traveller, record spinner, and trash future guest, hello. Hi, how you doing? I'm good, I'm good, especially because we've actually highlighted what I think is the fundamental point of John McTernan's tweet that almost as ever, he's right for totally the wrong reasons because yes, techno was created by capitalism, but only in the sense that it

was created by the dialectics imposed by capitalism. We can't exactly credit it. Yes, that's right everybody, I've done what I've been threatening to do for a long time and I'm making you all listen to this techno episode because I'm going to explain to you why it's good and guitar music is boring. I wholeheartedly agree. Hello and once again and welcome back to Trash Future, the podcast of How the Future is Trash. That's right, I said the intro again, I haven't for like eight months, but I felt like it

today. I'm Riley, this is a special one-to-one episode, I'm here, like I said, with Aloysio Wilmoth, he Valencia on Twitter, he underscore Valencia on Twitter. You can find him on SoundCloud, you can find him on Resident Advisor, or you can find him in the DJ booth. Aloysio, how are you doing? Doing pretty good, nice and healthy, happy, today's actually my birthday, so just got back from the EU, went to Berlin in Amsterdam in Iceland, so I had a pretty good taste of

European interpretation of techno, so I can't complain. Yeah, because that's one of the things I find so interesting is that a lot of people, even like Europeans, think of techno as sort of European music, but it's sort of not quite right because it has such sort of deep roots in America, but we sort of, I feel like we've kind of almost forgotten that and it's sort of really tense history from sort of the 80s in Detroit as it sort of expanded through America and then after electronic music sort of fell out of favor in America among sort of the mainstream anyway, sort of was kept alive in Europe before sort of being returned.

Yeah, exactly. I think part of the reason why people think that techno is a very European thing is because even back to the foundations of house music, the Europeans, they were like the first people to really embrace and actually bring over a lot of Midwest artists. So for example, probably like, I kind of like one of the most important clubs in the history of techno, a trissur, they actually brought over all the Detroit guys like underground resistance, UR, Jeff Mills, Matt, Mike Banks, Robert Hood, etc. in the early 90s and when they brought over those guys that kind of established this kind of transatlantic relationship

with techno because they were the first ones to just kind of book them put out the records and they created this whole thing. So I guess throughout the years just seeing, I guess the whole industry remain pretty solid and strong over there. People tend to kind of think that techno is this very kind of European thing. I mean, I have a lot of theories. And then another theory I have is because electronic music, it doesn't have a face. So compared to like other styles of music like hip hop, rock or whatever, you tend to

have like rock stars or rappers as the forefront. There's this image you can see, whereas with electronic music, you don't really have a person. You see it's more of like this thing where the DJ is kind of like taking a step back and it's more about the music. It's this sort of very unique thing where when you see a DJ perform, only some percentage of the songs they're performing will be songs they've actually made. So it's partly curatorial and partly sort of production. Precisely.

I think before we leap into that, I kind of want to almost start from the very beginning because look, I could get very annoyed with people in my socials, people in my day to day life, just relentlessly misunderstanding what techno is. And a lot of them are like, oh, it's just repetitive beats. How can you listen to that? It's so boring, et cetera, et cetera. And it's like, very, very, very wrong. You're so fucking wrong.

Exactly. In fact, this entire episode is just a sub-tweet of the entire British left. But in one sense, techno is quite simple sort of to define as a set of generic conventions. It's like four kick drum beats in every quarter note, a snare hit in the back of every second quarter note, and the strike of an open high hat every second eighth note. But one of the things I really like, there's a book I enjoy that I've read called Techno Rebels by Dan Sicko, and he says that trying to define techno, which like this, just on the basis of how you arrange the notes, is sort of quite wrong.

It doesn't really capture the essence of what it really is, or if it does, it does it in the least important way. So I think with that, it's very true. Whenever I actually would try to explain techno to people, they'd be like, yeah, this sounds repetitive, and it is the same. It is repetitive, but I think that's where the context of a club comes into play. So to actually, I mean, because for me, before I even started going to the news clubs, warehouses, et cetera, I would just always listen to stuff in my room.

But to actually physically hear and feel these records in that kind of space, the way you interact with it, your body just takes it on a whole other level. A lot of it has to do with just the sheer amount of beats per minute. I mean, a lot of dance music ranges from around 125 to 140 beats per minute, and these are ranges that the body naturally moves on to, whether it be like the heart or just overall physical rhythm. It's almost tribalistic, almost animalistic. It's very primordial, very ancient.

One of the things that I also enjoyed was, yeah, it's this sense that you can, in the right context, in the right mix, I've heard Ben Clarke mix old funk songs in between what you might consider much more traditional down the line techno tracks, and it sort of works. You're right, that environmental piece is so important to it. But also, I feel like techno, and this is sort of where we might get to the politics of it a bit, it expresses a sort of pent-up feeling for me. Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned DJs playing funk or disco, because with techno, it's essentially

just a natural evolution of those styles, people trying to replicate or recreate that kind of, not necessarily live band, but the feeling that you would get from these old styles of dance, like that whole funk, trying to recreate this humanistic quality with inside a machine. Because I think it's no coincidence that techno was born when sort of Detroit, in fact, black teenagers in Detroit tried to sort of reinterpret funk to sort of deal, to sort of fit with and deal with their environment, where Detroit was beginning to slip. Yeah, it's just a natural evolution of that whole Midwest sound, like the Motown.

It's just like that whole legacy of black music coming out of oppression, just trying to make something out of nothing. I guess to me, it's almost like then this whole kind of Afrofuturist interpretation of what their forefathers came before them, it's just like, OK, how can we take this and push it to the future or to modern day? Yeah, so I think this is kind of where almost where I want to sort of start the story is with Kevin Saundersen, Juan Atkins, Derek May, Jeff Mills, these guys, they're in Chicago. It's the 1980s.

And what are they kind of doing? What's their scene like? What's going on there? So those guys like the Belleville three and also a lot of people don't know, but technically he's the fourth member. It's not really talked about a lot because he wasn't from Belleville, but Eddie folks was also a part of their group. So a lot of these guys, they were actually going back and forth to Chicago and also interacting

with Chicago DJs like Ron Hardy, just about when house music was being birthed. So I'm thinking if I'm not mistaken, they were here in Chicago style and they were like, OK, we need to come back and make our own interpretation. And so I guess their interpretation was to, I don't know, just take like this really like brash, like militant, kind of like futuristic vibe and just go with that. Because I mean, Detroit around that time was definitely like not the greatest place. You know, people were still recovering from the whole riots, automotive industry, the whole industrialization was kind of falling down and people were getting slipping back

into poverty and just trying to find like alternative ways to kind of survive in Detroit. Also to with Detroit, there's another thing, Detroit also has a long legacy of house music that tends to kind of gets overlooked. The main DJ that was his name was Ken Collier, and he actually used to DJ in a gay club called Heaven. And a lot of those DJs actually learn how to DJ from Ken Collier like Delano Smith, Derek May, etc. He's definitely another important figure.

But I think it can't be also it can't be overstated the importance of this music as a way for sort of almost like a subaltern group like definitely usually not like not well off like young young men mostly and not all not exclusively, but that's where it started to sort of to come together and to sort of have a celebration that works for them. And I almost wonder like can we I often think like and incorrect me if I'm wrong, but like that that's where sort of so much of the militancy arises, because it must have been just so pressurizing to be living in the sort of managed decay of Detroit in the 80s and 90s as as like as like, yeah, definitely.

And then to with like, especially with like all the, I guess, like with the state sanctioned violence of just like, you know, discrimination and like police violence. And then on top of that, I'm pretty sure they probably had like teenagers whatnot who are also dealing with the whole AIDS crisis. You try to you get like this whole just just like a whole soup of just frustration, you know, just everything just thrown in the mix. Absolutely. And so like what kind of the so what what kind of songs coming out of this period sort

of could people listen to? And what should they listen for in them? So at this time, I mean, there are a lot of people they're playing like the classics like Motown, like the funk, Parliament, and also to of Detroit, they have a long standing relationship with consuming European music. So a lot of people in Detroit, they were listening to like a tall disco rock and stuff like craft work. And I mean, to them, even though they probably didn't know what these people look like, it

was just like funky and just good music. So you were getting like a pretty good mixture. It was just right when house music was being birthed. So it was like the tail end of the disco era. So you was getting like New Wave, Audifunk classics, a little bit of crock rock, a tall disco, you know, generally stuff you would hear in like a space like Studio 54 or whatnot. And then they're and they take all this and they sort of put it all together. And then what comes out is just this sort of really interesting, measured, rational,

balanced form of like it was. I read it was referred to as if Parliament Funkadelic got into a lift with with craft work. Yeah. It's funny you mentioned that. So I have this theory that, OK, so around that time, hip hop was also being birthed and it was like pretty, pretty booming with like the whole electro stuff coming out of New York City.

So one of my friends, we talked about this a lot. His name is Maxwell Cavaseno. He's a pretty cool music journalist. So we were saying that pretty much that, I mean, I guess like the basis of hip hop is electro and also the basis of techno is electro. The one main thing that makes these two different is where they split off as hip hop or electro. It had a face to it. So you know, if hip hop people, they dance or dress a certain way, whereas techno, it

took the same roots and approach, except it took a more brashly, scientific and more militant direction and people didn't necessarily want to put a face to it. They were behind the music. And so that's where you tend to get like this split off from them, even though being from the same family tree. So for example, you have like stuff like Africa, Bambada, Egyptian lover. I mean, though this is stuff that people would play in sets with techno or whatever. It has the same basis.

Well, it's but it just it just splits off because people took, I guess, a more darker approach with techno. Yeah, well, it's the and that's what I find so interesting in one of the sort of tensions and in techno is that it's it is much darker. It shares roots with hip hop. It's much but it's much darker than hip hop. And I was reading that what was it? Mike Banks was saying that hip hop was the sound of the now while techno was concerned

with the problems of the future, which was its own kind of agitation. And exactly this. But it's it's even though it is extremely dark and I think it's much when it jumps over to Europe, it gets much darker in sound. It is ultimately, I think, a very optimistic kind of music. Yeah. So I think one thing when it hit Europe, the reason why you tend to get like the I guess more like industrial or darker kind of warehouse tones.

So I think because once it's because I mean, the Berlin Wall has not been down for that long. Pretty young. So I say the early nineties once the people from Detroit got over to Berlin. I think people's Germans interpretation because around that time, like this like industrial music, like punk, post-punk, this stuff is like super popular in Berlin, even before the wall was even knocked down. So when they saw darker aspects of Detroit techno interacting with it, I think they

took that little thing and went all the way with it and created their own styles. And I think through that, maybe something might have been lost in translation is why you tend to get more things that are more, I guess, quote unquote whitewashed. Or it just keeps they're more obsessed with like that whole like darkness industrial thing, because it's just that aspect of their music culture interacting with like the tail end of what they were first exposed to from Detroit. It's it's pretty interesting just seeing how like, I guess, even though like certain specific styles of techno would be born in Detroit, how people they were interpreted

in different countries and just like keep going and going and going and going with different aspects and keep going for 36 hours at a time. Yeah, because I think it's in both of its iterations and sort of in well, not but it's had many iterations, but in sort of the two iterations that sort of I'm concerned with because we're talking about sort of the history in Detroit. And I personally like I'm a massive and sort of just sort of helpless devotee of the sort of more European style of the Berlin style. But both of those manifestations, I see their roots as specifically like

reacting to capitalism as we've discussed, like it comes out of like the the sort of of the places in between the sort of the where the market produces buyers and sellers, its kids tinkering in their bedrooms in the case of the Belleville three, it's it's guys just opening a club in the in the basement of a of an old department store that people just squatting. Yeah, the department store just forgot about they were like, we're just going to open a club here. And they're like, yeah, fine, whatever. And that was Trasaur.

But in that it sort of grew up in this environment. And that but that ultimately what Techno offers us is is an escape from the sort of fitting neatly into the market as a producer or a buyer. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes too, I often think about like if it I wonder if it's it's just sheer coincidence, because just going to Berlin and like seeing just how the structure of the city is because like, I would always be just baffled by when people they will always compare Berlin to Detroit in terms of just architecture,

but to actually go there and see it. I'm like, oh, this makes sense. Like the whole like post industrial just, I mean, even just the amount of space like in Berlin, there's like certain parts of Berlin that's straight up remind me of Detroit, where I could be walking for a couple blocks and not see a person for 30 minutes. You see like old buildings just all cracked and blown out from like mortars or I don't know, just completely abandoned.

Very much reminds me of the Midwest also that whole like post industrial vibe. Yeah, I think then it comes down to the fact that the sort of there was a deindustrialization was handled in two different ways. And, you know, in the US and in Europe and in Europe, we created welfare states. And I feel like Berlin does have that feeling of being kind of spaced out, of being sort of post industrial, but it feels very sort of happy and sort of communitarian. And that's where I get the feeling sort of of of techno music being sort of such

I guess positive thing. Yeah. Yeah. But one thing I want to go back to this is sort of this is something we sort of touched on is this idea that of techno dealing with the problems, the future and of it specifically being a black vision of the future, sort of Afrofuturism being the word. You go into that a little more. Yeah. So I guess Afrofuturism.

Wow, it's like it's such a big term now. It's like so many people interpreting in so many different ways in a good way, though. Yeah. So I'm I'm thinking that. I think because like people, they were like living in such a destitute situation, they had to like just kind of tap into, I don't know, like the deepest realms of their imagination, just to kind of. So just to kind of like get out of.

That is almost like trying to find some kind of soul in a machine. That's it's it's so hard to explain philosophically. Yeah. Well, it's like it's it's that I think it kind of goes back to that. It goes it goes back to that sort of I think imagination and that that that that quote I pulled, which is that that hip hop is dealing with the problems of now and techno is concerned with the future. And that it is I think because it's it's contained within that sort of that militancy. But I think if I was to say of any kind of music now,

that is most structurally similar to classical, I would say it's techno because it is so balanced and rational. Yeah, just like the whole structure of I mean, because like techno, it's really only what like 30 years old now. But I mean, just the whole structure of like this theory of how to build tracks, I've noticed compared to listening to other forms of electronic music, there's definitely like a very by the book way of how to build a track. And it very much reminds me of like classical contemporary music of how,

you know, you would have like all these composers that like, oh, you have to follow this theory by, I don't know, a Tchaikovsky or, you know, some like grand Prussian composer. It's definitely very, very solidly rooted and pretty strong music theory. Yeah. But I guess that's why what I always sort of wondered if that's. And again, I'm sort of speaking out of school here. But if that's what I was trying to think of, what do they mean by Afrofuturism? I was like, maybe that's what that is, where it's it's this sort of sort of

militant expression of like sort of almost utopianism through sort of sort of this through sort of structure and force and so forth. Yeah. So I'm thinking I guess my interpretation of Afrofuturism is looking for this kind of alternative future of how essentially like black people's relationship to culture, like what is, especially being someone who lives in North America, who has that disconnect from Africa due to like the slave trade, whatever, it's essentially trying to fill that that gap that would happen. If what is like, what if the transatlantic slave trade never happened?

What if black people didn't have to suffer through history? Like what would be the implications if we were allowed to develop on our own and create like these various different cultures similar to what people would teach us in school about like European history, you know, like the great composers, the great architects, what not? Like what would happen if that gap was never actually destroyed through transatlantic slave trade, capitalism, what not? You know, just pretty, pretty wild.

It kind of very much reminds me of stuff that was explored in the most recent film Black Panther, you know, if like Wakanda, you get like this just super futuristic city that was never tainted by capitalism that through slavery and what not, they were allowed to like develop technologies on their own. So to me, techno is kind of like trying to interpret that, trying to find that in through the music. Yeah. And I think that's actually the Black Panther comparison is

one I was thinking of. I mean, I'm always sort of wary of doing of sort of doing politics as consumption. But I really do think like that was the sort of the power of that film, was it was like Wakanda answers the question, what if Africa wasn't colonized? What if the slave trade didn't happen? Sort of. Right. And I think that's a very good point. I hadn't actually thought of that yet. That sort of techno has been answering that question for like 30 years. Exactly.

I think sort of jumping back from the theory into the into the history, we sort of see electronic music in general and techno specifically sort of flourish in the in in Europe, sort of throughout the late 90s and the 2000s, but it sort of drops off in America. In fact, you remember that weird, that Eminem lyric, nobody listens to techno. Yeah, it feels weird. It feels weirdly anachronistic like it was right at the time. But now it just seems so hilariously wrong.

It was so ironic considering like Eminem is from Detroit, you would think that somebody from. Yeah, so I'm thinking on a lot of that had to do with just labels not wanting to bank on dance music anymore. So if you look at like the 90s, specifically like the mid 90s up until I want to say maybe like 2002, 2003, you could like like every like major pop, rap, single or what not, would have like a dance remix and like these big labels,

they will actually hire underground producers to kind of remix and make like a club, single or whatever. A pretty notable example is Mark Kinch and AKA AKA MK. Like he would always like remix so many pop singles and what not. And I guess what happened labels, they felt like with their PR teams, they were they were just like, why should we spend our budget on this dance music thing when we can pay something? It put more money into like cultivating another artist's image

because they want something like visual, especially with like the whole MTV music generation when people started consuming music from more of like a visual standpoint. I think after that, it just kind of like fell off. But also there was also the point of view. And I remember this, just I was reading that book last night, a DJ saved my life, right, where dance music for a while in the States was just not considered masculine. It was too gay, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah, almost definitely, especially like when you look at the roots

of it off, like the disco, like the gay clubs and what not, Studio 54. Just like that whole scene. I mean, it's in a sense, and I sort of noticed like what I was like, because I was always listening to dance music. And then I see like I see sort of a lot. But like a lot of people are like, oh, that's dance music is gay. I'm straight. I listen to, you know, the Eminem records from after clean and jump around.

And then I think I think what happened is dubstep happened. And then it came over to the United States and Canada. And then everyone's like, oh, this is so hypermasculine. There's no way this could be gay. And now everyone's sort of, yeah. And now everyone's acting as though everyone's acting. But and then sort of it gets sort of dance music just has this sort of terrible renaissance where we end up with kind of this genre EDM

getting sort of invented in America that sort of I think is completely the opposite of everything that sort of techno. Yeah, EDM is such a weird thing because like if you I mean, if you look at the history of dance music, especially I would say about maybe five or six years into when stuff was getting popular, there was always like major labels trying to co-op the sound. Just even like a lot of guys got ripped off trying to sign stuff to those different labels and whatnot.

I mean, to me, EDM is this weird. I think that's what to me, EDM kind of is birthed out of this this void of people not necessarily being educated about dance music. And because of that, that big gap, people, you can pretty much, I don't know, like sonically gentrify or like co-opt and like completely write off a whole form of history. Because to me, EDM is like it's almost like this. I guess it's like this answer to when you completely whitewash

dance music and remove the racial queer origins, those different things. You can kind of it's easier to sell to people because, you know, we don't have to attach these different subcultures that people might not understand or be afraid of to it. You know, you can it's easier to sell to people. It's such a weird thing yet. And like the amount of sort of experimentation that you get in techno, which just doesn't the amount or the extent to which techno is almost designed

to sort of make you feel almost agitated, innervated and a little bit uncomfortable. Just it wouldn't at all make any kind of commercial sense. And I think I think sonic gentrification is absolutely the right idea there. Because if you think of something like like something like DVS-1 or whatever, right? So for listeners, there is a sort of an incredible producer and DJ called DVS-1. He's based in America, but he plays out to the Midwest, Midwest. Midwest techno fam. DVS-1 plays like he's he'll have songs where

the where the sort of the timing of the individual layers of the song is actually different and off. And so what will happen is because the because certain instruments are playing faster than other instruments and other instruments are sort of slowed down. But it's done in sort of such a meticulous way that what will happen is the song will be three different songs over the course of that one song. But it will always be just a little bit off. In fact, Nate, can you drop in a few seconds of the DVS-1 track I'm going to send you?

You know, and it has that and it but it has that thing where it's just where it's like you can see that like even though this is made by a very sort of wealthy white internationally traveling guy and it's played at somewhere like Berghain, which is an incredibly successful business in the sort of at least in a purely sonic sense, you could never make that. Yeah, it's like just too maybe it's like too into the head. I don't know. It like makes people think too much because if you look at that compared to EDM, EDM is very, very, very formulating.

I mean, like I could just throw on a random EDM track and pretty much tell you when a drop is coming or whatever. It's like very predictable in the in a way. Yeah, and it's in that whole thing of the build and drop and so on. I mean, Techno has no need for that kind of sort of cheap trick because it's sort of they're just rushing over you relentlessly. And that is where the excitement comes from, not sort of artificially created. Yeah, and see, I think that's what, in my opinion, makes Techno or other dance

music within that room specifically different from EDM. There's this with EDM, this is lack of avant-garde that doesn't exist within it. So we're still within like Techno and whatnot. You get that experimental aspect of it. But I mean, it's still moving very body music, but you still get that experimentation that people are afraid to do. I don't know if in like big dance music or just doesn't work in that context. Well, when you have to move of because the thing is, I think, look,

a lot of these, the one thing I noticed about these sort of very commercially popular EDM songs, and I think it's important to almost to note at this stage that there is a difference between sort of commercial popularity and something being capitalist, you know, but I so I think we can get into that difference later because again, Techno is full of contradictions because all of these labels are like exploiting labor. All of these clubs are exploiting labor. A lot of them are sort of very exclusive.

Some of them have sort of quite dodgy, especially in Europe. Some of them are a bit dodgy on race and all this. But I just putting putting that aside for a sec. I do want to get to that on this sort of EDM comparison. I think it's like an EDM DJs are basically just creating a product based on things they know will sell. Yeah, they know that people like singing along to songs they know. They know they like, but they also like taking MDMA now.

And they don't even take risks. So like the whole point of DJing is you're curating music. So people are trusting you to play music that they would like, even if they necessarily don't have an idea of what it is. When you look at with like the whole EDM thing, like the sets they play are very formulaic. People know what they're getting. It's it's such a weird thing.

Like the DJs don't even take risks. Like even just the way they play music isn't necessarily even hard or technical. I mean, like a lot of EDM sets are pretty much pre-planned. It's so weird. I'm pretty sure these guys, they probably like opened up like a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or whatever and like playing the DJ set. It's just like, no, that's not what DJ is about. Like DJ is about being on the whim.

You're adjusting yourself every second. It's improvising very much like what people would do in certain forms of jazz and whatnot. You're adjusting yourself to the room. You're giving a part of yourself you're taking. You know, it's like this this weird balance. And at the same time, right? Like that's that's like, like we were saying earlier, like, like someone like Ben Clark will just pop in a funk song in the middle of a set

because it's unexpected, because it's but also because it fits and it's sort of it's building on what else is going on. It's not there for you to necessarily sing along to. But it's it's almost this very like intellectually challenging, even though like, you know, a lot of people are pretty fucked up while they're dancing to it. Yeah, it is at the same time, a sort of intellectually challenging experience to listen to it stimulating. Exactly.

It's not it's not just there to coddle you. Yeah, it's challenging the room. And sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But the fact that I think a DJ can feel comfortable to kind of throw those those curveballs is very much important to DJ culture. Because I mean, if once we get to a point where like people are are actively like getting mad at a DJ for not playing a set they expect is just like, OK, what are we doing?

Why are why are you even at the club? You know, yeah. What's the difference between an artist and a craftsman? Exactly. Really, a craftsman is just there following following a template, whereas an artist, you know, no matter how much sort of the logic of capital has sort of seeped into what they're doing, an artist is still making something that's sort of expressive. Exactly.

There's there's there's a there's this there's this space that people are allowing the artists to to kind of, I guess, not necessarily congregate but occupy. So this is like, OK, we're giving you this space. We trust you to do whatever you want with this. And just like this kind of undying loyalty. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. But sort of moving, moving, almost moving, moving a little bit sort of to what I was sort of alluding to earlier, right? Like that's we I think we should be wary of just saying that for all of it, for all its roots,

for all that it was born in illegal parties and for all it was created as expressing frustration with sort of managed decline under capitalism and so the celebration of the coming together of East and West Berlin and in basements and all this and for even all that it sort of provides that space now, we should be careful of giving almost giving techno a kind of a free pass. Because, I mean, a lot of these a lot of these labels are, you know, have just commodified this thing. And again, on a lot of clubs like have decided to be like, not a welcoming space for everybody, right? Like, like, I think the Bergheim door policy is in some ways great for reasons we can get into. But I've also read that, like, you know, they can sometimes be

I'm glad you brought that up. So I've going there. Yeah, I have like so many conflicting thoughts about it. So generally, my perspective of door policy, I'm not a very big fan. Mostly because it has roots in racism and classism, like the whole origin of door policy literally comes from like, jazz era, people not letting like black people dressed in a certain way, because or even like the musicians, because they know they would play like a certain form of music that wasn't acceptable. And even up until now, like people just stereotyping people, except I'm expecting somebody to be more criminal based on them, I don't know, wearing like a certain kind of hat or pants or whatever. It's like this, it's this way of

policing people through a culture because you're expecting Oh, a certain gang member, he wears this color or whatever, we don't want him in a club. Or even with the whole classes thing, we want you to dress this way because we want you to look like a certain bracket of people high class people or they dress this way. Basically, this whole like assimilation, we want you to assimilate to our space. Yeah, it's total crap, you know. But I think it's in, I think I think in techno door policies are a little bit different, not necessarily less problematic. But like the the Burgheim one, for example, you know, if you if you go if you queue up for Burgheim, like you know, dressed sort of just nicely and looking

like a respectable member of society, there's no chance you're getting in. And I was sort of I was reading about this more and more, I was sort of thinking about it. I even like, once last time I was there, even like was asking some people who worked there is like, so what's the deal with this? And they were like, look, their whole thing is, is they want to use that they want to use their door policy to keep out like gangs of English lads and sort of collared shirts and boat shoes who want to just go in to the most popular club in the world and look at all the crazy shit happening and then, you know, gop at it. Yeah, that whole bro culture. Yeah. And it's yeah. And so in a sense, I think like in the one sense, door policy has been very good

at keeping out sort of some of the more toxic elements of bro culture from from techno spaces. And at the same time, I think it's also open to it also is open to the abuses you're talking about. But that's just another example of how like, how there's this wonderful music and culture and scene is just filled with contradictions. Yeah. And it's an extension of stopping that bro culture. I think that's really been I think people been really vocal about within like the past, I want to say like three or four years is just kind of making sure women fems are pretty comfortable and within a club because obviously, you know, what the whole bro culture Yeah, dudes think that they have to like the whole sexual prowess that having to be like

dominant over a woman and just flirting and, you know, feeling entitled to a woman's space. So I'm I'm definitely definitely pro getting those kind of guys way out of here, you know, like you don't need to be in here is like, why are you even here at the club? Like you're supposed to be listening to music having fun. Like this is not a freaking episode of the pickup artists or something, you know, like they did. That's what's so that's what's so interesting about Burghain, right? Is that is that I'm not I always just think like, like no one in here has ever gone up to someone and asked for a number, you know, I mean, yeah, when I was in there, I did not really get that vibe at all. I mean, I had like people walking up to me in like a respectful

manner and flirting and talking, but they were just initiating like normal combos. But generally, you could tell that people were there for more an enthusiast level, like people were definitely there for the music. And I noticed too, I didn't really see any people that look like they were visually uncomfortable. Like even like when I would be on a dance floor, I would run into people or bump into them and they'd be like, Oh, sorry, like people would move within a way that we're giving people space and respect. So it was pretty cool to be able to see that. Yeah, it's because well, it's because it's and I think this is one of the things where like we talk about sort of that techno is defining value as its intensity. And it's there and so everyone's there sort of getting

hypnotized being sort of in doing their very much doing their own thing, it kind of celebrates that and it's a culture that rewards obsession, I think. But and it doesn't and in that sense, I feel again, like it is, it rewards a sort of almost a singular obsession that doesn't sort of and doesn't pay off in ways that are sort of easily marketable. And again, going back to these sort of tensions and contradictions, unless of course, you're one of the super famous DJs or record label owners. But so I mean, one of the one of the things I think we've been dancing around is how how sort of techno remains. I'm not going to say that sort of, you know, going to Burghain and dancing is praxis. But how it's sort of how it nonetheless, despite, you know, the fact that

it has in some ways been coopted by capital, how it remains a sort of an at least a semi an anti capitalist or at least somewhat anarchist space. Yeah, I'm thinking, I think it just it just boils down back to it's so unique with this form of music. It's I mean, it's like, just trying to present it in a physical form. It's not like it's, it's not something you can easily grasp. Like it's so fluid. So whenever I mean, people do it, but never they will like try to market within like this kind of capitalist scheme, it always just ends up becoming like super corny and commodified. I'm thinking mostly because even even though I'm very much into like regionalism and making sure people know about like specific forms of techno from different regions, whatever, I think at its heart

techno is very decentralized. Because people can replicate different styles and whatnot. You could literally have like some kid in Japan and make a record that sounds like it was came out in Detroit in like 1994, like this whole idea, like this whole futurism, it definitely seems like very, very stateless and very decentralized, just like knocking down abolishing like all of those laws, you know. Yeah, I think that's that's that's a big part of it that it's it's that it's like at some point, you know, to make music, you needed to own an instrument and you know, someone needed to come and see you with that instrument that you were able to hold in your hand, right? Like I'm I'm playing the fiddle come out come down to the oil operator see me play the fiddle. It's my

fiddle. Yeah. But then sort of as as we get to sort of like material like the technological reproduction, right? We start to be able to make records and all of a sudden, you can sort of see the record when you see the record as an instrument, me playing that record or me playing that that wave file or whatever. My possession sort of transform and transformation of that of that of that piece of information doesn't sort of restrict anyone else's use of it. So it's there it's it's a it is a vision and it was behind this vision. It's like all electronic music is of like creating music that's free of property. Yeah. And I'm glad you bring that up because it reminds me of like how people they fetch size gear and like having making music on hardware like when these guys in

Detroit, Chicago, etc. were making this music, they were making it out on necessity. So like the specific gear that they had, like to them, it wasn't about the gear, it was about them trying to create a specific futuristic sound. I think if those guys were my age now, and they had access to like all the digital computers and stuff, I couldn't even imagine like what kind of stuff they would make now. And so right now, I think with this with with like easy accessibility in terms of technology of like smartphones, laptops, Macs, PCs or whatever. It's, in my opinion, is like more exciting than ever because you can have a kid make a whole record using his iPhone and plenty of people have. So it's it eliminates this whole thing of this whole form of musicianship compared

to other styles of music, say, for example, like rock or whatever, where, oh, you got to have this really expensive guitar made by some guy from like Tennessee, you know, whatever, like that whole that that's all eliminated. It's all decentralized, like everything's a go. It's open season, you can make music on whatever you got, make this record, and I could like send it to a guy in London, and he could play it the same night. You know, to me, I think that that was their interpretation of the future was just completely decentralized and let people anybody have access to things and just, you know, be as creative as you can. Well, it's like, I think that's why like, like, rock music would never work for this kind of thing. A, because it's boring.

Because it's all with because of the central, there's that central focus on the singer and the musicians kind of fade into the background a little bit, where it's like, it's always obvious what's a Led Zeppelin song, what's a Rolling Stones song, whatever, because they have their words and they have their voices and it's about this message. Whereas with a techno song, you know, you might know because you already know the song or you know that producer's style, but it's much less obvious sort of who is responsible for which element of the set. And it's sort of that sort of share and it at its best, that's not currently how it is because everyone just licenses their tracks to beatport. At its best, it is this sort of, it is this vision

of kind of a post market sharing ecosystem. Yeah. And it's because it's literally not even physical, you know, it's like, it's so weird, we're everybody that's into this music, we're, essentially we're obsessed with something that technically doesn't exist. And like, you know, it's like this, it's just like this gray area of just, it's such a strange concept, but it works though. But you can imagine it, well, it's you can imagine it as being sort of unowned and having the concept of ownership not be necessary for it. But of course, because we live in hell world, instead now, people are paying top like top dollar for like a Roland 303 drum machine. So they can try to make music just like Kevin Saunderson did. Yeah, you know,

it's, it's ironic. I remember I tweeted a few days ago how like, you would see guys on music forums, it'd be like, Oh, I want to learn how to make this specific record by, I don't know, some guy from the Hague Netherlands or whatever. And they'd be like, Oh, that's like a specific 909 drum kick. And then this, a person would spend thousands on like a modular synthesizer and a drum machine. And then a few months later, the resident advisor or mix MAGA, whatever will interview this musician. And it'd be like, Oh, yeah. I made that sound just, I recorded a bird outside on my iPhone and just edited and able to, you know, it's just like guys like, come on, I think outside the box, you know, one, one of the things that's one sort of comparison that kind of has been sort of

festering in the back of my mind, festering is not the right word that's been percolating in the back of my mind for, for like sort of, I think for about 20 minutes now is that a lot of kids in the very same situation in London, sort of where they were sort of created a grime music, right? Where they were, they were answering the same question as like the Belleville three and underground resistance were in the 80s in Detroit, where they're responding to like the sort of intense pressurization of, of the sort of new labor is sort of just criminalizing being poor. By sort of retreating into their bedrooms, opening up pirated versions of fruity loops, and then creating again, like really sort of hyper futuristic, technical, almost like you

need to be a nerd to make it. Yeah, it's crazy. But then those guys was like making stuff on PlayStation too. It's like, whoa, you know, hell yeah. Like that's why it's 140 bpm is that or that's why it's usually 140 bpm is that's the default speed on, on three. Yeah, it says and, and, and so it just, it, it's these, these things that just sort of are born by accident, right? Like so the Belleville, the Belleville three, they have access to a relatively limited amount, like range of synthesizers. And so working within sort of creative constraints, they create this incredible kind of music. The same thing, like these guys are working on playstations with pirated versions of fucking whatever, and they create this incredible kind

of music. And then the, and then sort of mainstream radio just finds it so hard to mark it. And so it would be like it's called urban music as the English would call it. Yeah. What do you call it? It's funny that you bring that up because it goes back to the whole idea of Afrofuturism. So when kids in like South London and whatnot were making grime, it's, that's literally just a natural evolution of that whole diaspora of blackness, essentially creating something out of nothing, like necessity. And so like through grime, you can see and hear the origins of like the whole, with like the Jamaican and Caribbean immigration, and even them interacting with like people, us with the Southeast Asians,

like that whole diaspora being so many different people within a tight space, but still having like this kind of diaspora angst. So it's like, okay, we're going to take this and create something out of nothing. It's, yeah, it's super interesting, even just like the, just the origins of like grime and the whole, the whole UK hardcore continuum. You could trace that all the way back to even connect it to like techno. And then if you connect that techno to like stuff from like Jamaica and whatnot, that whole diaspora, it's like, it's basically born within Afrofuturism. It's the same thing being birthed out of two different entire areas of the world, but still having like these little things that connect them

to the bigger picture, you know? And I think that's why John McTernan's a fucking idiot. Yeah, that was such a generalization what he said. It's deeper than that. Absolutely. And I think that's sort of, that's like, that feels sort of nicely kind of, kind of wrapped up to me. But I wanted to ask you further. Again, most of our listeners aren't into techno yet, but maybe now some of them are. What would you say to a guitar music devotee who is, you're trying to convince that sort of techno is actually worthwhile? Again, even though we don't need to because it fucking rules. I would say to them, because most, I've been seeing like this resurgence of people who come from

rock backgrounds, getting more into techno. Honestly, for them, I would show them more like industrial things and how that connects to techno. For example, I guess more like noisier sounding techno stuff made with like, I don't know, guitar pedals and loops and whatnot. Honestly, if I wanted to get a rock person into techno, I would honestly put them onto like post-punk records, stuff like Minimal Wave and whatnot, because with that, it generally pretty much intersects with dance music. So if I were them, I would check out stuff like record label, like Minimal Wave ran by like Veronica Vassica. I would even tell them to check out stuff by the British murder boys like Regis, Surgeon, that whole like UK Birmingham sound. It's pretty much

a direct connection, in my opinion, from rock into dance music. That'd be a really good start. Hell yeah. Although actually, that did bring up one thing I kind of forgot, which is sort of something I think about all the time, that idea of industrial. We sort of imitate the sounds around us, right? And that it's no coincidence that I think that's why techno sounds so industrial, is that it has the factories in its imagination. You know what I mean? It's no coincidence that it's born of places full of factories, because that's the sound that you hear and it's the sound that you sort of know is your economic reality, whether you're working at them or specifically not working at them. Yeah, that's probably why people threw the parties in factories. Even

that's why when I went to Bergen, I was like, okay, this clicks, like actually physically being in that whole architectural space. It's just like, whoa, okay. It was a power station. Yeah, like this makes perfect sense that like infinite connection to the Midwest, you know, people working in factories. I was like, oh, okay, yeah, this makes perfect sense, you know, the whole post industrialization. And I think, but also at the same time, I think that's why a lot of people sort of who might have more anxiety might really sort of enjoy techno, because it is so sort of grounded and connected. And earlier you were saying that this expression of angst, and whether that angst is economic angster, just sort of more generalized, I think it's

absolutely a fabulous way to sort of understand and express it. Exactly. Oh, man. All right. So anything you want to, anything you want to want to promote, I know we have a sound cloud, I've been, I've been checking it out. Anything coming up, any shows in Europe you're going to play in the next couple months? So I'm actually open all autumn and winter. So any promoters, if you would like to have me play your parties in North America, or Europe, ideally, just hit me up at soundcloud.com slash he Valencia, or you could just hit me up at Twitter.com slash he Valencia, it's he underscore Valencia. I'm pretty receptive. I'm like super active on Twitter. Yeah. Other than that, just

shout out to everybody in Europe. Shout out to Daniel, Joe, all of my hosts in the Amsterdam, in Berlin and whatnot. Shout out to charade, my mentor. And other than that, shout out to Twitter fam. And thank you for listening. I hope you all book me. Just book me, please. And at Trash Future, we, of course, would like to thank Jinseng for Here We Go, our theme song. However, I think let's play, let's play them out with something else this time. All right. So Aloysia, thank you very much for coming on today. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. All right. Later, everybody. All right.

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