It’s been great being able to share music with people on Instagram, but I wanted to expand the project a bit to go beyond that platform. Who knows how long Instagram will even be around (it’s been slipping for a while), and I don’t want my ability to share music with people to be tied to that channel alone.
With Substack, I’ll be able to share the same music I share to my Instagram page (each Substack post will include the 5-6 most recent songs I’ve posted), but it’s easier to embed links to full tracks and the text-driven format will allow me to write a bit more about old tracks and broader musical topics more easily.
So, for this first post, I thought I’d share some thoughts on why I started this project in the first place. It’s something I’ve talked a lot about with people who tune into the page regularly, so this feels like a good opportunity to talk about my intentions for the project more broadly.
ESCAPING THE ALGORITHM
Music blogs were an incredible cultural resource to me growing up. I’m from a small town in Pennsylvania, and after a friend showed me my first “electro” track (what we called it at the time), I was eager to connect to the world of electronic music and learn all I could. I would spend hours scouring blogs for weird edits and electro tracks with cool synth lines to try and recreate in Garageband. These blogs I grew up on were not just a great way to discover tracks, they were a great way to discover what someone else thought about tracks too. Context is important, and a short blurb was a helpful nudge to dive into a track’s sounds, layers, or history.
But today, all of this is gone.
It’s been replaced, for the most part, by recommended Spotify or YouTube algorithms meant to foster “discovery.” And it’s sad, because this pattern of algorithms replacing outlets for a human being’s choice or curation has played out in nearly every aspect of our lives. It sounds corny but it’s actually an interesting mental exercise——name a decision you’ve made recently that wasn’t influenced by an algorithm in some way. That show you just watched? Fed to you by a content algorithm. That recipe you just cooked? Shown to you in a social media post dictated by an algorithm. That dish soap you just bought? Even that was shown to you on a website where the product list was dictated by a data-driven algorithm (and advertising dollars).
The algorithm has infiltrated nearly every aspect of our waking lives, and there’s something about it that seems inhuman. We are not machines.
Our instincts, intuitions, tastes, and preferences are core to what makes each of us an individual. We need to find ways to escape the algorithm and it’s ever-present grip on our existence. That’s where activities like digging for records comes in——whether in a physical store or through 57 open Discogs tabs. It’s important to get beyond what the data thinks we might want and instead allow taste or human curation to guide us. That’s the job of a record label: their vinyl catalog stands as a permanent, immutable record of an aesthetic vision transmitted directly from a fixed period in time.
I started the 90s Techno Redux project as a way to get back to that human curation while building a resource like the blogs I grew up with.
I wanted to build a place for people to discover old tracks and see them in a new context, all while talking with people who might share similar ideas or appreciation for older techno. It’s a small act of rebellion against our data-driven times, but it’s an important one to me. Personally, I want to live in a world where we all do more of this. We need to find subtle ways to escape the algorithm every day, and share what we find. Because things will be more interesting for everyone that way. I mean, look no further than Netflix or the latest A24 movie pretending to be an “indie” film and you’ll see that the algorithm is slowly killing our culture and our collective imagination.
YOU HAVE TO GO BACK TO GO FORWARD
This page also plays an important role in how I work and make new tracks as a musician.
Techno is about futurism: striving to create a sound that sounds like the future is the point of the genre. This was established by Kraftwerk and the genre’s forefathers in Detroit. And what makes techno infinitely interesting to me is that it strives for something new and intangible——using new technologies and techniques——while having a very clear, embodied goal: making people dance. Few other art forms can claim this type of aesthetic aspiration matched with such a grounded, tangible application. It’s great and I love it.
But I’m a firm believer that in order to go forward, to move the genre in a new direction, you need to know where the genre has been. What’s the current context? How does that context fit into the past 5 years? The past 20 years? Many of the great techno producers or DJs understand this deeply and it’s core to their artistry. Look no further than greats like Marcel Dettmann or Shed——they literally used to work at Hard Wax, and have a first hand, encyclopedic knowledge of techno history that they regularly bring to bear in their productions.
90s Techno Redux is something that plays an extremely critical role in the music I’m making——it’s a research tool, a moodboard of records, textures, or sonic trends from the past that are inspiring me and giving me new ideas in the studio.
In short, with my music, the aim is definitely to push the genre forward. I hope that doesn’t sound conceited or lofty, it’s just how I believe techno should be, and the old records I’m sharing are extremely important to me in looking at ideas from the past, building on them, and making something new.
THE 90S WERE A SPECIAL TIME
Taking into account everything I’ve said above about history and its importance, there is a reason I wanted to focus on the 90s. It was such a special time. Yes, for techno of course (most people refer to the 90s as the golden era of techno, sure) but for culture in general. Maybe it has something to do with the fact I was born in the 90s and I’m still trying to figure it all out, but there was something in the air back then that I miss.
So far I think my best hypothesis for what was going on really boils down to technology and the role it played in people’s lives around the late 90s into the turn of the millennium. Technology was there as a tool, a way to augment our human abilities in life——from the early internet augmenting our communication capabilities to new music technologies that enabled teenagers to record and produce incredible records with nothing more than a synthesizer, a sampler, and a drum machine. Early technology had a place, a good place, in people’s lives.
It worked for us, not the other way around. It wasn’t the entire way of life and way of being in the world. Not everyone had a cell phone. You turned on the radio with possibility of hearing something new. You waved to your neighbor because you existed in a physical community. People still fell in love out in the real world. Most aspects of life were things that technology enhanced, but in so many cases, it then took them over entirely.
To be clear, I’m not trying to be cloyingly nostalgic about the past. But there was something in the 90s——a certain touch, a certain modern minimalism, a certain romance and embrace of subtlety——that few other decades got right. Whether its film, fashion, or music, I believe the 90s possess a timeless, truly soulful spirit, one where humanity and technology coexisted in a complementary way.
So, here’s a few tracks that I shared recently and why I like them. Hope you enjoy.
—Holden
Lysander Pearson - Belaté
Timeless riff on this one: the swing on those descending synth notes ending in a high-pitched, detuned synth hit feels right at home next to some of the groove stuff being made today. 1997.
Eddie Fiola - Binary Cycle
Stealth grooves on this one from Eddie Fiola aka Paul Mac. This one simmers perfectly, the touch is great, never loses focus. 1997.
Abelde - Untitled (Incidents A1)
Relentless and ominous, very tightly wound track from Abelde. Digging the high-pitched chord sound/sample that comes in to disorient the groove a bit, but it’s the high shaker in this one that’s really doing it in my view. Really unique pattern and just the right touch of delay processing, unexpected and funky. 2001.
Richard Lahaine - Untitled (Balum A1)
Rhythmic, percussive funk from Richard Lahaine—lots of interesting patterns in the hi-hats and a relentless low end groove. The subtle tonal samples keep it unsettling but locked-in. 2001.
Abelde - Untitled (Incidents B2)
B2 from the Abelde “Incidents” EP. The A-side brings the drama with the apocalyptic chords, but this one has a really nice, loopy, sneaking feel with tons of hat-driven groove. 2001.
DJ Bold - Small Town Blues
Deft synth work from DJ Bold——lots of overlapping, disorienting riffs with really nice filter work on this one. Also digging the restrained use of tambourine with a 303 line, kind of an unexpected pairing but works great here. 1999.