Origins of Trance, Techno, Elektro and various genres

[pau]

Wow, I had no idea this category was its own genre. But I bumped into Tangerine Dream's Phaedra a few years ago and never, until now, knew it was from the mid-70's, and still being perfomed. I still play it regularly, especially when I have a long, boring drive to do. I hear new things every time I play it.

Phaedra

That said, I have recently developed an affinity for Claus Zundel's B-Tribe (aka The Barcelona Tribe of Soulsters....maybe it could be called ambient-psy-hop-flamenco? In any case, as a former very successful producer, he seems to know a few things about incorporating gorgeous melodies and exotic trancy beats into tunes that transport.

B-Tribe, "Hablame"

Last but not least, there's Byron Metcalf's Wachuma's Wave...and no Trichocereus necessary to appreciate that collaboration with German Transpersonal therapist-shaman-musician Mark Seelig.

Wachuma's Wave

 

[nen888]

..thanks cyb...that is an interesting new hybrid/mutation
and thanks again Ufostrahlen..
Jess...i do think some of the new music that emerged in the early-mid 90s was looking towards new 'electronic icaros', though i think with much dance music (especially things like UR) what it's closer to is 'voudou' 'possession trance' drumming...which is also tied in with and can evoke altered states of consciousness..
there's still a place for straight vocal music..for me personally the chant was the only place left to go after all this techno and the like...

and pau...yes i guess Tangerine Dream is kind of it's own genre (not really dance music as such)..though there are others in that 'sequencer music' era..Klaus Schultze for instance..another good example of that synth 'ostinato/delay' thing that they really pioneered (about 5 mins in) is Rubycon Part 2:
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last up, a very inspirational interview and highly relevant to this topic, looking to past and future, and philosophy, is this one with the legendary 'Mad' Mike Banks (of Underground Resistance)..a hero to me
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happy new year, all, and long live the future!

 

[soulfood]

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and a bit different and probably not to most peoples tastes, but this was my favourite band when I was a kid as a result of having a really cool cousin

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[hug46]

^..you know hug46 (& thanks again for input), i think the beauty of these genres (electro, trance etc) is that they are a cross-breeding of the best of African/European/Asian (etc) innovations...more successful than any of the original donor genes..
a Hybrid for the future, and beyond...as we hopefully evolve further and survive and look after things and eachother..

Nen you wont get any argument from me about the beeauty of hybridised styles but my previous post (which was probably put a bit flippantly) was to point out the bitter sweet irony that the roots, quality and landscape of modern pop music is largely down to the subjugation of Africans by Europeans.

Would John lee Hooker, Blind Lemon Jefferson have picked up the guitar or had the blues if their ancestors been left to their own devices in Africa. There was an enforced cultural exchange between black and white.

Modern dance music doesnt usually come across as political. It is mostly percieved as a hedonistic medium. I think that this is mainly down to the lack of lyrics. But as an example of Afro/American culture being affected by oppresion Drexciya made their point in an ethereally beautiful and understated way with their underwater country populated by the unborn children of pregnant African women who were thrown off of slave ships.

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Another example of this (initially enforced) exchange was gospel music. African soul mixed with traditional christianity.

Repetition and "call and response" are accepted elements in African music, designed to achieve an altered state of consciousness we sometimes refer to as "trance", and strengthen communal bonds.

Most of the churches relied on hand clapping and foot stomping as rhythmic accompaniment

For us not to acknowledge the power of God is just a tragedy

Gospel>soul>funk>disco>hip/hop>techno/house etc etc.....

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The tune below would blow the roof off of any dance floor, past or present.

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I feel like a bit of a party pooper by bringing this kind of a discussion in a thread that is dedicated to the celebration of music but if we are discussing the roots of modern dance music (or any popular western music from the latter half of the 20th century) i feel that these points are important. And i do think that music can help us to evolve together to higher mental plane of existence and morality.

To cheer everyone up will leave with a wonderful bit of music from a band that was comprised of "the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners" stax house band Booker T and the mgs

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@ Soulfood you wont get any complaints from me about sheep on drugs

 

[DoingKermit]

So even though I am not the biggest fan of Darkpsy... I bought this album on vinyl when it came out many years ago and I feel like it helped form the genre

I also feel like Etnica definitely helped develop the psy scene in the 90's. I met Max and Maurizio when I first got into psy when living in Italy. One of them gave me my first ever hit of acid, which strangely had no effect at the time.

Hallucinogen (Simon Posford), Juno Reactor, Space Tribe (Olli Wisdom), Astral Projection, MWNN (Martin Freeland), Green Nuns of the Revolution (Dick Trevor), Infected Mushroom, Alien Project... I could go on. They all (along with many others) seemed to have formed and created what is considered Psytrance today. I actually don't really like much of what's coming out of the scene these days. I prefer Progressive psy a bit more compared to the new full-on stuff. I also prefer to go to shows like "Ott and the All Seeing I".

BTW, if anyone wants to see Ott live, who is in the UK, they are playing again in Camden in May

 

[Sandgrease]

Seeing Ott do a sunrise set in Miami in March

I want a new Vibrasphere album soooooo bad too.

 

[Sandgrease]

 

[hug46]

I am gonna chuck a bit of TG, chris and cosey and coil into the mix.

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[Chan]

You want origins?!

I'd been trying to figure out how to link to this, as it doesn't appear anywhere on the Net, before I realised I could attach it as an mp3, so here it is. Play only on big speakers!

Congo, forest people, 1952. Stone-cold floor-filler, 2016. More info on request, if anyone's interested?

The more I discover about African music, the richer my life gets...everything else starts to sound 'pixellated' in comparison...:thumb_up:

 

[nen888]

..apologies for the delay, hug46, have been very off the grid lately...
though have been looking at making some of my own old musical efforts avaialable soon

Would John lee Hooker, Blind Lemon Jefferson have picked up the guitar or had the blues if their ancestors been left to their own devices in Africa. There was an enforced cultural exchange between black and white.

...no probably not, and we would not be left with this amazing legacy..though here we enter the realms of parallel realities..what if? etc.. like Terence McKenna had a dmt experience where he was shown a parallel 20th century which had arisien from a meeting and sharing of a more enlightened Roman society (a more gnostic one) with the Incas and the like, in South America in a parallel 2nd Century AD...then there are darker parallel realities like Phil K. Dickian 'Man In the High Castle' scenario in which the nazis had won wwII, had nuked the population of africa and once the radiation dropped would use it as farmland for germany..the brits don't fare well either..But (and Man From Chan Chan's post ties in to this well) in our 'actual' reality (lol, or at least this particular probability bubble) the first european musicologists to take an interest in and appreciate the complexity of African rhythms (polyrhythms etc) were German...a shared love of the drum...so i think, if slavery hadn't happened, we would have eventually had a cross fertilization of these cultures (much like in the 18th/19th century many europeans became interested in Indian culture) ...and we probably would have ended up with something like Kraftwerk anyway
..though perhaps the Blues is really like a collective soul healing for bad times of old, and we needed this uniquely heart opening mode to open the collective union..

thanks also for the Coil/Throbbing Gristle angle...i'd kind of forgotten about all that..

and thanks for the Soul you posted ! ...it reminds me that for me, still, with electronica it's still about the 'soul', if it grabs me..

and yeah Man From Chan Chan...tell me more

DoingKermit, thankyou for the input...good to hear from you...that was a very formative period in psy-trance development, i agree...though, not to be cheeky here, i mentioned Etnica and Green Nuns of the Revolution to an old friend who was back there in the day, and he described them as the 'third wave' of the uptake, when the concept had already been well established....but yeah they tuned it in a particular direction..but when i get more time i'll delve a bit more into some of the 90s more, a lot happened in a very short time back then..

Keep on, all..
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[nen888]

Dj/Producer for 28yrs now.

This track kicked it all off (for me)

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It was the precursor to hip hop and subsequently all electronic dance trax.
(Yeah, I know I'm old)

Right up to today when this track rocks my world.

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And Hug...right there with you with Aceperience, Turnmills' floor shook hard.

great to hear of your production cyb
..yeah is was enjoying Uprock (Rocksteady Crew) in the car the other day..


..i particularly like what Erik Prydz has done under the the names Pryda and Cirez D..very musical

speaking of Sweeden, this is a slightly harder deep dancefloor classic of euro techno 1992-3
The Source Experience (Robert Leiner) - 'Elektra'
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made the whole dancefloor feel like a giant bee hive in the right circumstances i recall..


and if you wanna get into the really psychedelic roots of trance .. [go to 30:40 onwards for preview]
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[cosmic butterfly]

this! prodigy-out of space (1992) seems throughout this thread around this time when techno really coming out

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as far as psy/goa trance this song on an old cassette tape is what started it all for me 15 years ago and still going strong!
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keep on raving!

 

[Praxis.]

Thanks hug46 for providing some historical context. Electronic music was initially very political in nature, and the people who innovated one of the most popular and hedonistic genres of today are very rarely acknowledged or given credit. I'm glad they weren't left out of this discussion.

I want to add some more color to this thread. Not trance, but some VERY early and absolutely crucial techno innovators:

One of Derrick May's most famous tracks--Strings of Life
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My favorite track by Underground Resistance--The Final Frontier
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These guys are great. For people who might not be familiar with the political origins of techno, Underground Resistance set the stage as one of the most militant and provocative acts of the early 90's.

Here's an interesting mini-doc about UR and the Detroit techno scene
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Juan Atkins--Techno City
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And I'm not sure if House music belongs here, but imo no EDM appreciation is complete without a tribute to Frankie Knuckles
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My apologies if any of these have already been shared here. This thread has so many videos it slows down my computer to the point that I'm having trouble navigating through it.

And thanks for this, I'm really digging the tunes y'all are sharing! 8)

 

[ijahdan]

Strings of life! Frankie Knuckles! Takes me back to 89, the greatest year for dance music in the UK. Warehouse raves every weekend. Everyone 'getting on one', all sorts of people, football hooligans, travellers, raggas, inner city youth uniting and going mental to these kind of tunes played on massive rigs all night. Good times. Major cultural turning point.

Dont know if theyve been mentioned already in this thread but Soul to Soul's stuff always used to drop, especially towards the end of the night. 'Yellow is the colour of sun rays' from 'Keep on Moving' when the sun started filtering through the sweaty warehouse with hundreds of people still going strong...had to be there.

Got to also mention Lee Perry, dub pioneer who made some of the first 12" remixes back in the 70's and incorporated early prototype drum machines in some of his tracks. The Prodigy sampled him on 'Outer Space' which comes from 'Disco Devil', the remix of Max Romeo's 'Chase the Devil'.

I tried linking some of these but having technical issues..

The real roots of dance/trance must be African drumming though I think?