Sequence #07, goes Crazy Einstellungen

[K]

SEQUENCE #7 goes Crazy !

Lineup:
LUKE SLATER (nova mute/london)
FELIPE (essence/wien)
CRAZY SONIC (con:verse/wien)

visuals by C27 (graz)


Location:
Flex
Donaukanal




LUKE SLATER - nova mute/london

Luke Slater is dead. Long live Luke Slater. For ten years now anyone with an advanced ear and a taste for things dark and long has recognised the enigmatic Slater as one of the most graceful composers and forward thinking inventors within techno. On decks around the world, and within his deepest south London studio, Slater has proved himself a genius sculptor of kinetics, squeezing magic from the tight parameters of post-electro underground dance.


Five albums, including two pivotal releases on novamute, and a slew of projects under pseudonyms have confirmed his status as a brilliant sound system expressionist. Yet for all the stylistic twists and jump cuts within his decade of geometrically dissected frontier funk noir, nobody really could have predicted the leap taken with his rocket-boosted new album.

Slater's opening salvo for the 21st Century "Alright On Top" sees him accelerate into a parallel universe of hyperdramatic songcraft. Former Aloof singer Ricky Barrow joins Slater and his longstanding tech-head collaborator Alan Sage to create a warmer humanised machine music. This is no longer Luke the abstractionist, the subtle pulse manipulator, vying with Hawtin or Wink for command of a Berlin basement. This is Luke Slater, the dramatic, the hydraulic, the lyrically specific, hook wielding, extrovert electronic blues band.

Ten tracks of pure liberation are about to blast Luke into an entirely new orbit. It's Slater's first release on parent label Mute. Now all they need is the intergalactic tour bus. "I've wanted to do an album with songs for some time. It's just that nothing's ever been all right at the same time," states Slater. "With the albums on novamute I didn't have a singer and I'm not really that open to working with people just off the cuff. I have to get on some kind of wavelength with someone to work with them and it just never seemed right before. It never seemed the right time, but all the time I was writing bits for songs and storing them up and I thought yeah, I'll do them one day."

The immediate predecessor to vocal phase Slater - 1999's "Wireless" - had been hailed as an inspired millennial edge redesign of '80s electro, bringing live percussion and industrial rock into its domain. There were even moments where it sounded as if the machines were straining to sing, digi-ennunciating phrases in 'Body Freefall, Electronic Inform' and 'All Exhale'.

When it came time to record the next album, however, Slater had resolved to go all the way and bring in a vocalist to fully flesh out the ideas. While Luke was down south in Crawley, casting around for the right voice, and struggling through audition tapes encompassing full on soul dudes and synth pop impersonators, Ricky Barrow was on the other side of the city, recovering from his experiences in The Aloof. Label problems had left The Aloof adrift, and despite widespread warm feelings towards the Dean Thatcher founded dance fusioners, the band had split up.

Within The Aloof, Ricky had found a way of breaking with a natural tendency to head in the stylistic direction of a Horace Andy or Marvin Gaye. He was working on some ideas with Richard Thair from Red Snapper. By chance, however, someone at Luke's label knew Ricky was seeking collaborators and the two were introduced to see where the combination of Ricky's open grained voice and Luke's intrepid songtronica would lead.

"It just came together really well," says Ricky. "I always wanted to do something different, not go down the normal path, because when I wanted to do stuff on my own I went into this soul mode and a reggae sort of thing, and I needed someone else to say 'try something different'."

"It was really weird because Ricky just came in and wrote a few words and just did it really," recalls Luke. "I think if something's going to work, it just kind of flows, and we tried not to look at anything too complicated, just use the principle that if it's working it's working and 'do I like it myself?'."

Starting work in Slater's own Space Station studio in south London at the start of 2001, the threesome got the songs down swiftly. Slater was, however, determined to keep a strong dance edge to the production and many months were given over to crafting the dynamics. "Alright On Top" sacrifices none of its energy in the bid to bridge the dancefloor and the radio. Despite lyrics which explore the many facets of human (and robotic) relationships, there's an underlying optimism to the whole work. The cerebral, obsessive edge of Slater's earlier output is kept, but now with a voice to speak through and melodies to surf on, there's a sense of joyous release.

"I did feel liberated being able to do songs," says Luke. "I wanted to be able to play these songs live and have a lot of energy in it rather than making something mellow which would've been cool, but wouldn't have had a lot of impact live."

While "Alright On Top" is clearly in love with electronic music and its history, it has none of the dourness of some parts of the genre. It's wise, referring in areas to golden eras of early synthesiser music, but not remotely egghead. There's brazen fun there, as well as sweet poignance and streaks of the unhinged.

Against the knowingly futurist movie set of Luke's hurtling tunes, Ricky explores the spectrum of feelings. 'Nothing At All' mixes emotional anaesthesia with the thrill of supersequenced tech-pop. 'Stars And Heroes' locates its star-crossed lovers within an awesome future retro synth anthem. 'I Can Complete You' invents an entire new genre of operatic sing along tragi-robotica. 'Only You' diverts into lover's space jazz.

There's a dance rooted confidence at work which allows them to take on melodrama without losing the plot. 'Take Us Apart' rushes ahead with four to the floor uber-cyber-pop. 'Searchin For A Dream' is in equal parts brutal, cosmic and epic. 'Twisted Kind Of Girl' supplies an overdose worth of lust and psycho-beats. 'Doctor Of Divinity' completes the loop with its update on surreal pulse-scapes.

"Alright On Top" creates a unique world, but at the same time it could only have been made right now, when much tech-based 'underground' dance music has decided it's OK to infiltrate pop, and at a point when Luke's imagination has found a way of setting his vast experience free.

"At one point I was thinking 'Yeah, so we're doing songs about love and breaking up and feelings, and Ricky's voice is quite bluesy at times, and that's over the hard techno rhythm... this is a bit different'," says Luke. "But then I was like, yeah, it is different and I like it."

"We wanted to think up loads of plays on lust, on a woman that's just playing you around and leading you astray. So some songs are really up and then some are quite sad. I think 'I Can Complete You' is probably the saddest, it's a vocoder track, so it has that robotic thing in it. That song brings a tear to my eye, it really does. It's kind of the sadness of being a machine."

A surface supposition about the roots of Luke's fascination with computer music might point to Kraftwerk as his starting point, but Slater is keen to point out that his entry into electronics came via Afrika Bambaataa and Soul Sonic Force rather than the German camp.

Born in Reading, Luke's parents moved to Horley in Sussex, where the embryonic producer started to play with his dad's old reel to reel tape recorder. After drumming with 'progressive rock' type bands as an early teen he started working in record shops - Mi Price in Croydon and Jelly Jam in Brighton - where he was able to load up on late '80s electro and incoming house and techno. By 1988 he was DJing jack tracks within the early acid house micro-scene, notably spinning at a London club called Troll. With his record shop buddy Al Sage he put together his first tune 'Freebase' in '89, released through the Jelly Jam shops offshoot label.

For the next decade Slater would hover above the underground as one of the most distinguished producers of pan-genre bunker vinyl. He moved at pace through styles, picking up and warping strands as diverse as Detroit inflexions, old school influenced ambience, noise barrage and electro. By 1997 he'd been prominent on DJax, Irdial, Peacefrong and GPR, using the pseudonyms Clementine, Morganistic, Planetary Assault Systems and 7th Plain.

Leaving behind the assumed names and a trio of collectable albums - "X Tront Volume Two" (1993, Peacefrong), "The Four Cornered Room" (1994, GPR), "My Yellow Wise Rug" (1994, GPR) - he teamed up with novamute in 1997 and issued his acclaimed mindbender dance album "Freek Funk". The latter was simultaneously sexy and avant-garde. His next major emission, '99s "Wireless" continued to mess elegantly with the codes, re-sculpting electro to his own ends and previewing his fondness for the odd cyberdisco synth by sampling Cerrone's 'In The Pocket'. Described in the press as "gangster boogie for the new millennium". In a way, the bold step into song writing was inevitable.

"It'd just be boring if you did the same thing all the time," says Luke. "I've never believed in all that underground V's overground stuff. I think it's a pile of shite, all that 'if you're underground you're cool, if you're overground you're not'. Especially now there's such a merging of every type of music. I don't think anyone really knows where its all at, and I think that's a healthy thing."

"I think you can write songs and have quality to them, it just doesn't have to sound the same as everything in the charts. You used to get a lot of records that were capable of being energetic but had some drama to them, but they were still pop tracks. I think that's missing at the moment."

It's been a long run up for Slater, Barrow and Sage but it's glaringly obvious that their leap into the swirling gas cloud of melody, lyrics and video-able persona has paid off. They sound like nobody else. They sound like 2002's definitive fused dance moment. When the live show goes on the road in 2002, complete with 'jumping up and down' and full electronic band set up; the metamorphis will be complete. It's not Luke Slater as we know him, Jim. But it is very definitely Luke Slater as we'll come to love him.

"I wanted to get away from the seriousness of the way you're sometimes seen in techno," he reflects. "I'm serious about what I do, but its not all the theory of relativity, know what I mean, so I wanted to try and steer a bit away from that. I wanted the album to be emotional. And I didn't want it to be totally dry and scientific. Because you need a bit of light in things these days."

"Alright On Top"?. Actually, it's iridescent up there.

[Jerry99]

@_K_
Respekt - Wahnsinns Aufsatz über Lucky Luke *fg*

Bist Du am 13.08. im Flex auch dabei!?
 /tup/  

[K]

naja Strg+C und Strg+V ist schnell gedrückt (IMG:http://www.technoboard.at/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

nein bin leider nicht dabei, werd wahrscheinlich irgendwo in den Bergen Snowboarden sein !!