[jahsonic.com] - [Next >>]

Tech house

Definition

Tech house is a fusion of house and techno music. Although it uses the same basic structure as house, elements of the house 'sound' such as funky jazz loops and booming kick drums are replaced with elements from techno such as shorter, often distorted kicks, smaller hi-hats, noisier snares and more synthetic or acid sounding synth lines.

Quote: "Tech House is what girls call techno and boys call house." —Layo Paskin --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_house [Oct 2005]

Brian Dillard

Tech-house, minimal house, micro-house, dad house - in a cheap bit of alliteration, ubiquitous music writer Simon Reynolds even tried to label it "heroin house." Whatever you call it, though, the subtle, experimental side of the global house scene has been chugging along for nearly a decade now, always just underneath the mainstream radar. --Brian Dillard

Allmusic.com

Tech-House is used to describe a variety of rangy, mostly European producers who culled many of the rhythms and effects of acid and progressive house yet with a clean, simplistic production style suggestive of Detroit and British techno. The style came to cover a wide variety of names including Herbert, Daniel Ibbotson, Terry Lee Brown Jr., Funk D'Void, and Ian O'Brien, among others.

Some Important Albums: Moodymann: Mahogany Brown [1998]
Damon Wild: Somewhere in Time [1999]
Herbert: Around the House [1998]
Glenn Underground Presents SJU Project: Future Parables [1997]
Dan Curtin: Pregenesis [1999]
John Acquaviva: Skills [1998]
DJ Q: Face the Music [1997]

Comments by jahsonic: I believe Swayzak comes closest to tech-house

Swayzak

Himawari (Medecine)
Almost defying comment (especially as I know nothing about the outfit), this is simply very very good dance music somewhere at the intersection of house, techno (it's definitely not tech-house though---house-tech?) and also electro. Great balance between light and dark, sensuousness and brutality, filter-spangly grooves and almost-mentasmic riffs. Track after killer track, including one featuring dub-poet and All Souls fellow Benjamin Zephaniah. Highly recommended. --Simon Reynolds, faves 2000

1997

tech-house is the most redundantly refined, cheese-less and subtlety-riddled blend of Detroit-pietism and UK house connoisseurism yet heard, the deadest of deadening ends. --Simon Reynolds, faves 1997

Layo @ Bushwacka

‘Tech House is what girls call techno and boys call house. Nowadays, you could call early Detroit and Chicago tracks tech-house’ (Layo Paskin) -- http://www.burntblue.com/music/DJArtist.asp?DJ=122

End Recordings

End Recordings has reached its 50th single release and to celebrate they are bringing you something very special indeed. END050 showcases twenty of the best tracks released on End Recordings since its inception in December 1995. Many of the cuts are deleted but all of them faves at the club and on dancefloors around the world.

The first release on End Recordings, Killer Loop’s Black Label was released in 1995, the same week as the London's award-winning The End club opened. Both founded and A&Rd by Layo Paskin (of Layo & Bushwacka! fame) and (ex-Shamen frontman) Mr. C, the club and the label have both grown side-by-side exponentially. The same impeccable musical taste driving both to ever increasing levels of acclaim.The End Recordings’s output can be broadly defined as representing the new hybrid sounds, which mould together techno, house and breakbeat. Opening with the classic cut “Deep South” by Layo and Bushwacka!, End050 charges along with Mr. C, Derrick Carter’s Tone Theory, Circulation, The Producers, Echomen, and Mr. C and Layo’s Killer Loop outfit all getting involved in the festivities.

Tech Step

The most common modern drum and bass sound, industrial breakbeats and terrorist basslines. Created by Trace and Ed Rush (well, they coined the term at least) BAD COMPANY, DOM AND ROLAND, etc --http://www.galanta.net/genres.html

Tech House, Definition

A completely ambivalent genre that basically describes any non trance 4/4 music that is neither pure house nor pure techno. Could mean many things...from deep to bangin. EXAMPLES: the End label, Cari Lekebusch, early Svek releases, Samuel Sessions, the Plastic City label, etc etc...The term is relatively new as is the growing movement behind it, but the sound has always existed to some degree...there's just a lot more of it lately. --http://www.galanta.net/genres.html

Disco House

Virtually pioneered by Dj Sneak, original Disco House actually started around in 1991, and consisted of looped disco samples with more upfront "Chicago" style beats. The term "disco-house" became more popular around 1994, and has since been taken on by the French scene by the likes of Bob Sinclar and Daft Punk. Also see the live Disco sound pioneered the Idjut Boys, Crispin Glover, Faze Action and early releases on Nuphonic Records. --http://www.galanta.net/genres.html

CDs

  1. Himawari (2000) - Swayzak [1CD, Amazon US]
    Any techno outfit worth its weight can move a room, but only the few and the proud, such as Swayzak's James Taylor and David Brown, can create one. Shimmering washes of keyboards buckle and waver like heat-choked air. The wail of an alien patrol car weaves its way around an apoplectic hi-hat. Melodies squelch like mud between the toes one minute, then twitter and hum like insects the next. While there are some fine Motor City minimalist moments to be had, Himawari is a deeper affair than its predecessor, Snowboarding in Argentina. Another notable aspect of this sophomore effort is its dabbling with vocals. Poet Benjamin Zephaniah presides over the dubbed-out skank of "Illegal." J.B. Rose's house-diva shenanigans on "Caught in This Affair" are serviceable, if a bit predictable. It's Kirsty Hawkshaw, however, who steals the show. The woman responsible for the blissed-out coo on Orbital's "Halcyon and On and On" lends some divinity to "State of Grace," the best Yaz song Vince Clarke never wrote. --Bob Michaels for amazon.com
  2. Vocal City - Luomo [1 CD, Amazon US]
    Luomo is the newest alias of the artist known best as Vladislav Delay, whose austerely minimalist dub-influenced tech-house is the stock in trade of the Chain Reaction and (to a lesser extent) Mille Plateaux labels. The extent to which fans of that sound are interested in this release should be partly the extent to which their tastes extend to the application of that aesthetic to vocal house-music tracks, which is what Mille Plateaux's Force Tracks imprint was created to explore. Although the more abstract house producers have often treated singers as source material hardly different from the electronic elements of the mix, the notion that vocals represent a "human" element, or at least a connection to the world of song, is hard to shake. Luomo may indeed shake you of that idea, as the vocals are just another one of the many layers on these dense tracks, often not appearing until after many minutes of slow accretion of sounds, at which time a few words or phrases are electronically processed and looped endlessly. All of which makes the track "Tessio" even more startling, when a full-fledged multi-voiced R&B song worthy of the Paradise Garage suddenly appears. Even from a musician who has been heading in a half-dozen directions at once over the past year, this is quite a surprising release. -Bob Bannister [...]

your Amazon recommendations - Jahsonic - early adopter products

Managed Hosting by NG Communications