Birmingham sound | |
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Stylistic origins | Techno |
Cultural origins | Early 1990s, Birmingham, England |
The Birmingham sound is a subgenre of techno that emerged in Birmingham, England in the early 1990s. [1] It is most commonly associated with the city's House of God club night, [2] the Downwards Records label, [3] and the local DJs and producers Regis, Surgeon and Female. [4] It is characterised by a hard, fast and uncompromising style [1] that strips the music of the bassline funk that characterised the techno of Detroit and Berlin, [5] leaving only "huge slabs of unrelentingly unchanging minimalism". [6]
The Birmingham sound marked a turning point in the development of techno and its influence can be heard throughout the Berlin techno of the Berghain and Ostgut Ton. [6] It also formed the starting point for Regis and Female's later Sandwell District project. [7]
West Midlands is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the larger West Midlands region of England. A landlocked county, it is bordered by Staffordshire to the north and west, Worcestershire to the south, and is surrounded by Warwickshire to the east. The largest settlement is the city of Birmingham.
Sandwell is a metropolitan borough of the West Midlands county in England. The borough is named after the Sandwell Priory, and spans a densely populated part of the West Midlands conurbation. Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council defines the borough as the six amalgamated towns of Oldbury, Rowley Regis, Smethwick, Tipton, Wednesbury and West Bromwich. Rowley Regis includes the towns of Blackheath and Cradley Heath.
Oldbury is a market town in the metropolitan borough of Sandwell, in the county of the West Midlands, England. It is the administrative centre of the borough. At the 2011 census, the town had a population of 13,606, while the 2017 population of the wider built-up area was estimated at 25,488. Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, which defines Oldbury Town as consisting of the wards of Bristnall, Langley, Oldbury, and Old Warley, gave the population as 50,641 in 2011.
Rowley Regis is a town and former municipal borough in Sandwell in the county of the West Midlands, England. It forms part of the area immediately west of Birmingham known as the Black Country and encompasses the three Sandwell council wards of Blackheath, Cradley Heath and Old Hill, and Rowley. At the 2011 census, the combined population of these wards was 50,257.
Blackheath is a town in the Sandwell Metropolitan Borough, in the county of West Midlands, England.
Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, or Sandwell Council, is the local authority of the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell in the West Midlands, England. It is a metropolitan borough council and provides the majority of local government services in the borough. The council has been a member of the West Midlands Combined Authority since 2016.
Cradley Heath is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, West Midlands, England. It is in the Black Country, 8 miles (13 km) west of Birmingham. The town was known for the manufacture of chains in the first half of the twentieth century.
Minimal techno is a subgenre of techno music. It is characterized by a stripped-down aesthetic that exploits the use of repetition and understated development. Minimal techno is thought to have been originally developed in the early 1990s by Detroit-based producers Robert Hood and Daniel Bell.
Industrial techno is a subgenre of techno and industrial dance music that originated in the 1990s. Characteristically, it incorporates influences from the bleak, noisy sound and aesthetics of early industrial music acts, particularly Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle. American industrial music label Wax Trax! also had a profound influence over the genre's development.
Moritz von Oswald is a German record producer and percussionist from Hamburg and based in Berlin. He is a co-founder of the production duo and record label Basic Channel. He has collaborated with Juan Atkins, Carl Craig, and Nils Petter Molvær. He also leads the Moritz von Oswald Trio, which has featured musicians such as Vladislav Delay, Tony Allen, and Laurel Halo. The Stranger called him "one of the master architects of dub techno".
Anthony Child, better known as Surgeon, is an English electronic musician and DJ. Child releases music on his own labels Counterbalance and Dynamic Tension. Established imprints, such as Tresor, Soma, and Harthouse, have also released Surgeon's original material and remixes. He has also been recognized as one of the first wave of DJs to use Ableton Live and Final Scratch to supplement his DJ sets.
Karl O'Connor, known professionally as Regis, is an Irish-born British techno musician and record label owner.
Techno is a genre of electronic dance music which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempos being in the range from 120 to 150 beats per minute (BPM). The central rhythm is typically in common time (4/4) and often characterized by a repetitive four on the floor beat. Artists may use electronic instruments such as drum machines, sequencers, and synthesizers, as well as digital audio workstations. Drum machines from the 1980s such as Roland's TR-808 and TR-909 are highly prized, and software emulations of such retro instruments are popular.
Downwards Records is a record label founded by the techno DJs and producers Regis and Female in Birmingham, England in 1993. The label was initially established to release the set of tracks that fellow Birmingham DJ and producer Surgeon had recorded in the small studio that ex-Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris had built in his downstairs toilet.
David Charles Sumner, who records as Function, is an American techno DJ and producer.
John Juan Mendez, who recorded as Silent Servant, was an American techno DJ and music producer.
Sandwell District was a record label and multinational collective of techno DJs and producers that operated between 2002 and 2011. Their sound has been highly influential across the following generation of techno musicians, and has informed a major shift in world techno. By the time the collective announced its "glorious death" in 2012, the American Billboard magazine wrote that "Sandwell District's influence on underground techno can hardly be overstated."
Birmingham's culture of popular music first developed in the mid-1950s. By the early 1960s the city's music scene had emerged as one of the largest and most vibrant in the country; a "seething cauldron of musical activity", with over 500 bands constantly exchanging members and performing regularly across a well-developed network of venues and promoters. By 1963 the city's music was also already becoming recognised for what would become its defining characteristic: the refusal of its musicians to conform to any single style or genre. Birmingham's tradition of combining a highly collaborative culture with an open acceptance of individualism and experimentation dates back as far back as the 18th century, and musically this has expressed itself in the wide variety of music produced within the city, often by closely related groups of musicians, from the "rampant eclecticism" of the Brum beat era, to the city's "infamously fragmented" post-punk scene, to the "astonishing range" of distinctive and radical electronic music produced in the city from the 1980s to the early 21st century.
Jamie Roberts, better known by his stage name Blawan, is an English DJ and record producer from South Yorkshire. He is best known for his track "Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage?" and his remix of the Radiohead track "Bloom", which appeared on their album TKOL RMX 1234567 (2011). He came to prominence with his debut release Fram on the label Hessle Audio and signed to R&S Records. He also started a hardware-only project Karenn, with fellow R&S producer Pariah.
Dust is the third album by Berlin-based American electronic music artist Laurel Halo. It was released on June 23, 2017 by Hyperdub. The album features contributions from Eli Keszler, Julia Holter, Michael Salu, and Max D among others, and was preceded by the single "Jelly", featuring Klein and Lafawndah.