Christoph De Babalon

Last updated
Christoph de Babalon
Birth nameChristoph de Babalon
Origin Hamburg, Germany
Genres
Occupation(s) DJ, producer
InstrumentsComputer, synthesizer, sampler
Years active1994–present
LabelsCross Fade Enter Tainment, Digital Hardcore Records, TigerBeat6, Love Love Records, VIS
Associated actsÜbergang

Christoph de Babalon is a German electronic producer, experimental artist and DJ, best known for his work on Alec Empire's label Digital Hardcore Recordings, especially If You're Into It, I'm Out of It (1997). He also is the co-founder of the label Cross Fade Enter Tainment (CFET).

Germans citizens or native-born people of Germany; or people of descent to the ethnic and ethnolinguistic group associated with the German language

Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe, who share a common German ancestry, culture and history. German is the shared mother tongue of a substantial majority of ethnic Germans.

Alec Empire German musician

Alec Empire is a German experimental electronic musician who is best known as a founding member of the band Atari Teenage Riot, as well as a prolific and distinguished solo artist, producer and DJ. He has released many albums, EPs and singles, some under aliases, and remixed over seventy tracks for various artists including Björk. He was also the driving force behind the creation of the digital hardcore genre, and founded the record labels Digital Hardcore Recordings and Eat Your Heart Out.

Digital Hardcore Recordings record label

Digital Hardcore Recordings (DHR) is a record label set up in 1994 by Alec Empire, Joel Amaretto and Pete Lawton. Most of the music is recorded in Berlin, though the label is based in London where the records are mastered and manufactured. The funds for setting up the label came from the payment which Atari Teenage Riot received for their aborted record deal with the major UK record label Phonogram Records.

Contents

Biography

Christoph de Babalon was born in Hamburg, Germany and stayed there for most of his life until 1999 when he moved to Berlin. [1] After releasing a few recordings on smaller record labels in Germany and his own Cross Fade Entertainment Imprint, and being heralded as a favorite on John Peel's radio show in 1994, [2] de Babalon signed to DHR in 1996, [3] releasing a few EPs and later releasing his only full-length album for the label, If You're Into It, I'm Out of It in 1997. [2] De Babalon was signed after he befriended label operator Alec Empire at a rave in 1994. [4]

Hamburg City in Germany

Hamburg is the second-largest city in Germany with a population of over 1.8 million.

Berlin Capital of Germany

Berlin is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3,748,148 (2018) inhabitants make it the second most populous city proper of the European Union after London. The city is one of Germany's 16 federal states. It is surrounded by the state of Brandenburg, and contiguous with its capital, Potsdam. The two cities are at the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg capital region, which is, with about six million inhabitants and an area of more than 30,000 km², Germany's third-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr and Rhine-Main regions.

John Peel English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist

John Robert Parker Ravenscroft,, known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004.

The album was well received and gained mostly positive reviews, with Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke describing it as "the most menacing record [he] owns", [5] but in sound was different to other DHR releases, offering a new vision of electronic music that varied greatly from that of artists such as Atari Teenage Riot and EC8OR, who used industrial sounds with hardcore punk and gabber influences. With the release of If You're Into It, I'm Out of It, de Babalon solidified his signature sound as a combination of extreme complexity in construction and complete experimentation in form. Songs span many electronic genres including noise, soundscapes, dark ambient, drum and bass and breakcore. Some of his tracks are also known for their length, lasting up to 15 minutes.

Radiohead are an English rock band formed in Abingdon-on-Thames in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke, brothers Jonny Greenwood and Colin Greenwood (bass), Ed O'Brien and Philip Selway. They have worked with producer Nigel Godrich and cover artist Stanley Donwood since 1994.

Thom Yorke English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

Thomas Edward Yorke is an English musician best known as the lead singer and main songwriter of the alternative rock band Radiohead. A multi-instrumentalist, he mainly plays the guitar and piano. He is known for his falsetto vocals; in 2008, Rolling Stone ranked him the 66th greatest singer of all time.

Atari Teenage Riot German digital hardcore band

Atari Teenage Riot is a German band formed in Berlin in 1992. The name was taken from a Portuguese Joe song entitled "Teenage Riot" from the album Teen-age Riot, with the word 'Atari' added as an Atari ST computer was used to create compositions. Highly political, they fused anarchist, anti-fascist and anti-Nazi views with punk vocals and the newly emerging techno sound called digital hardcore, which is a term band member Alec Empire used as the name of his record label.

After the release of If You're Into It, I'm Out of It, de Babalon amicably left Digital Hardcore Records and made a few small releases through a variety of labels before withdrawing from the public eye to work on other projects, including composing for theater. [6] One of his last few releases before his hiatus from production was a split 12" with Miguel Trost De Pedro (better known by his stage name Kid606), with whom he became friends and would later release music through Miguel's label TigerBeat6. In 2001, before his hiatus, de Babalon opened for Radiohead during their Amnesiac tour. [7] [1] For a short period of time during the mid-2000's, he produced music with fellow producer Christian Haudej under the name Übergang. They released a CDEP and a 12" before playing their final announced show in 2007. Christoph would not return to releasing music under his own name again until 2008 with Scylla & Charybdis, a limited edition conceptual 12" about Greek mythology. [4] He revived his Cross Fade Enter Tainment imprint, which had been defunct since 2003, to release it. [4]

Kid606 American musician

Miguel Trost De Pedro, better known by his stage name stage name Kid606, is an electronic musician who was raised in San Diego and later moved to San Francisco. He is most closely associated with the glitch, IDM, hardcore techno, and breakcore scenes.

<i>Amnesiac</i> (album) 2001 studio album by Radiohead

Amnesiac is the fifth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released in June 2001 by Parlophone. Recorded with producer Nigel Godrich during the same sessions as Radiohead's previous album Kid A (2000), Amnesiac incorporates similar influences of electronic music, 20th-century classical music, jazz and krautrock. Only one track was recorded after Kid A: "Life in a Glasshouse", a collaboration with the Humphrey Lyttelton Band.

Greek mythology body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks

Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks. These stories concern the origin and the nature of the world, the lives and activities of deities, heroes, and mythological creatures, and the origins and significance of the ancient Greeks' own cult and ritual practices. Modern scholars study the myths in an attempt to shed light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece and its civilization, and to gain understanding of the nature of myth-making itself.

Since 2008, de Babalon has been releasing music more often, even reissuing rare unreleased tracks as a compilation via his own bandcamp page titled The Haunting Past of Christoph de Babalon, Vol. 1 in 2014. He issued his long awaited follow up studio album to If You're Into It, I'm Out of It, titled A Bond With Sorrow, digitally through Kid606's TigerBeat6 imprint in 2012. His fourth full-length album, Short Eternities, was issued in 2015 through Love Love Records. [8]

Bandcamp is an American online music company founded in 2008 by former Oddpost co-founder Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker, headquartered in Oakland, California.

Discography

Studio albums

<i>If Youre Into It, Im Out of It</i> 1997 studio album by Christoph de Babalon

If You're Into It, I'm Out of It is the second album by electronic producer Christoph de Babalon, initially released on September 15, 1997 through Digital Hardcore Recordings. As a prime record released on the label, it is noted for its dark, heavy atmosphere, as it combines the musical stylings of dark ambient, early breakcore, and drum and bass. Since its release, it has gained a cult following and received much critical praise.

Singles and EPs

Split and Collaborative releases

Live albums

Compilation albums

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References

  1. 1 2 Wilson, Tim. "Introversion and Terror: Christoph de Babalon Talks". theransomnote.com. The Ransom Note. Retrieved 2015-05-31.
  2. 1 2 Andy Kellman. "Christoph De Babalon | Biography". AllMusic . Retrieved 2015-05-31.
  3. ↑ "Mean Grey Value: Christoph de Babalon Interview". straylandings.co.uk. Stray Landings. Retrieved 2015-05-31.
  4. 1 2 3 Empire, Alec. "Alec Empire Talks To Christoph de Babalon About His New Album, Breakcore, And Greek Mythology". eyho-blog.com. Eat Your Heart Out Blog. Retrieved 2008-11-20.
  5. ↑ "Featured Content on Myspace". Myspace.com. Retrieved 2015-05-31.
  6. ↑ "Christoph de Babalon Biography". dissonantbooking.com. Dissonant Booking. Retrieved 2015-05-31.
  7. ↑ Ross, Alex. "The Searchers: Radiohead's Unquiet Revolution". newyorker.com. New Yorker. Retrieved 2001-08-21.
  8. ↑ "Short Eternities". Love Love Records . Retrieved 2015-09-13.
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