And “Easy Lee,” with its processed vocal hook and stripped-back percussive sway, caught the mood perfectly. Looking back, that afternoon foretold much in the way techno music would evolve over the next 10 years, creating an almost visible demarcation between what had come before-high-octane ‘90s raving and its early millennial backlash (i.e., electroclash)-and the first strides toward something groovier that is today’s mid-tempo chart-topping techno and house. “There, in the sweltering heat of the small dance room, a new remix was born.” “Within a few bars, Hawtin had sampled the live vocal and looped it into an effects-laden mantra while Villalobos quickly culled his own set of massaging beats off another laptop,” I wrote at the time. In a scene I described as “melting,” one clear moment still managed to stand out-when a then-local DJ and vocalist named Cassy began to sing the refrain from Villalobos’ recently pressed underground hit, “Easy Lee,” to a crammed dancefloor of no more than 200 revelers well into their second (and third, and fourth) winds. In a 2004 cover story in URB Magazine about the Berlin techno scene, the author (a much younger version of yours truly) describes a party where fresh-off-Lufthansa expat Richie Hawtin and the newly crowned prince of minimal Ricardo Villalobos played a 10-hour back-to-back Sunday afternoon set at what was effectively a glorified loft party named Beat Street. Through our From the Crate series, we’ll be breaking out both seminal and obscure cuts alike, imparting some knowledge in the process. STAMMHEIM KASSEL FOTOS CRACKAnd with that came a burning desire to crack open our collection and dust off the classic records we couldn’t live without. The birth of our underground brand Factory 93 not only brought on an adrenaline rush reminiscent of the renegade warehouse era of raving-on which Insomniac was founded-but it also had us thinking back to all the people, places and parties that made this whole operation possible.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |