Free tekno, also known as tekno, freetekno and hardtek, is the music predominantly played at free parties in Europe. The spelling tekno is deliberately used to differentiate the musical style from techno. The music is fast and it can vary between 150 and 185 bpm and is characterised by a pounding repetitive kick drum.[1] Nevertheless, bass drum distortion by clipping is used less often as in the related genre of mainstyle hardcore. Nowadays, some tekno producers also use drum sets that rather sound trancey, since many members of the tekno subculture as well as the psytrance subculture frequently attend the same raves and the two scenes are closely connected.
Tekk/Tekke is mainly produced in Germany and often remixes quotes or audio clips. As dance music, tekkno was unusually rhythm-oriented for the time.[2] Therefore, this term also became synonymous with particularly hard dance music.[2] At times, the number of the letter "k" was used to advertise the supposed hardness of the sound at parties and compilations (Tekno, Tekkno, Tekkkno...). A similar variant appeared shortly afterwards with the emergence of the Freetekno[de] scene. The overall sound of Tekk can be descripted as "dumb" or "asozial/assi", due to its heavy and monotone kicks with repeating vocals. Famous artists are: Die Gebrüder Brett, Zahni, Nogge, Crotekk, Minupren and Craig Mortalis.
History
Freetekno party
Tekno evolved in tandem with the teknival movement in the early 1990s since many of the teknival organisers and DJs were also making music. The music drew on influences such as hardcore, rave, jungle, early hardcore and techno, with the producers taking the sound in a darker direction. Spiral Tribe was the first to start making and widely disseminating this genre, taking it to France and Eastern Europe after the Criminal Justice act was implemented in the UK. An emphasis is placed on samples from TV shows, films and popular culture which are placed at strategic moments in the tracks. The music was produced with whatever was available: drum machines, synthesisers and keyboards as well as computer programs such as audio/MIDI sequencers and Trackers, sometimes even hitting a random table with a pen. Starting from year 2001 there has been a trend using laptop and laptops for live performances, because the capabilities of both the hardware and software were improving very quickly. Many artists, however, still use hardware for live performance and create a unique track at every freeparty. The sounds are lot simpler making them sound more oldschool and easier to dance to. The main genre that is still played with hardware, is tribe, a relatively underground subgenre of tekno.
With the evolution of the genre it has come to be known by a number of names, including spiral tekno, hardtek, tribetek, tribe and lately evolved in many other subgenres like pumping tek, hardfloor and Frenchcore which is a sort of mixture between mainstream hardcore and hardtekno, with funny and pumping samples taken from different media sources.
Artists within this genre usually follow a very different ideology when compared to more modern and mainstream producers:
Artists often use many pseudonyms, as they are not interested in mainstream success or recognition
Most are not interested in profit
They also support the free distribution of their works, as they do not see it as their own material, but as something that belongs to the fans and the community
This is described as "returning to the roots".
Subgenres
Jungletek and raggatek are genres derived directly from hardtek. These genres are often mixed to create fast energetic 190 bpm dance floor music. Kicked off around 2008 in the UK, Mandidextrous & Vandal were among the first producers of these genres. It breathed new life into the underground rave scene not only in the UK but also picking up a strong following in Italy, Spain and Austria to mention a few. Influences for this music also came from the techno scene in Europe where some of the first underground music lovers increase the bpm and added variations in structure, thus becoming tekno. Techno in the UK in the early 1990s was based on a bpm of 130–140. By the 2000s, tekno had gained more speed and hardtek was starting to dominate UK raves, especially in the South and London. Trance also progressed from sweeping delicate melodies to what's now known as hard trance. Hard trance is a faster and bouncier music than its predecessor. In late 2010s, there was a progression of drum and bass (DnB) into neurofunk, which was grittier and had harsher bass and synth sounds.
Raggatek is predominantly influenced by reggae and ragga, incorporating also elements from jungle, DnB, dancehall and techno. Well-known MCs such as YT and Top Cat are a massive influence on the world of raggatek. Producers loving this type of sound wanted to bring it to the dance floors of the underground. Upping the bpm to between 180 – 200 and adding breaks. The big sounding ragga style vocals are often present in raggatek songs.
Jungletek works on exactly the same formula as raggatek, replacing the ragga elements with those from jungle and DnB. It is less known for the vocal arrangements and more for it's the bass lines. Jungletek takes the basics of the bass line from well-known jungle and DnB tracks and recreates them in a hardtek format. Original productions also use the simple format of kick-bass with amen breaks. European raggatek and jungletek are often recognizable by their energetic eletro sounds in the bass lines and synth melodies.
Other subgenres include, acid tekno. Tracks usually include a simple hard hitting kick and acid lines as melodies. These acid lines appeared in the 1980s with acid house music. This particular and unique sound is produced with a synthesizer like the tb-303 by Roland. This subgenre eventually gave birth to acidcore, which is faster and has disorted kicks.
Another subgenre that is played a lot at free parties is tribe tek. A simple kick bassline with simple rythmic patterns on top of the kicks. This genre can be traced back all the way to the first parties where it was played on hardware, like synthesizers. This genre got its name from the Spiral Tribe collective that organized some of the first free parties in the UK and France. This genre can again be declined in to tribecore, which uses a faster rythme and harder hitting kicks than original tribe tek.
Drum and bass is a genre of electronic dance music characterised by fast breakbeats with heavy bass and sub-bass lines, samples, and synthesizers. The genre grew out of the UK's jungle scene in the 1990s.
Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that emerged from EBM in Frankfurt, Germany, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and quickly spread throughout Europe.
Breakbeat hardcore is a music genre that spawned from the UK rave scene during the early 1990s. It combines four-on-the-floor rhythms with breakbeats usually sampled from hip hop. In addition to the inclusion of breakbeats, the genre also features shuffled drum machine patterns, hoover, and other noises originating from new beat and Belgian techno, sounds from acid house and bleep techno, and often upbeat house piano riffs and vocals.
A rave is a dance party at a warehouse, club, or other public or private venue, typically featuring performances by DJs playing electronic dance music. The style is most associated with the early 1990s dance music scene when DJs played at illegal events in musical styles dominated by electronic dance music from a wide range of sub-genres, including drum and bass, dubstep, trap, break, happy hardcore, trance, techno, hardcore, house, and alternative dance. Occasionally live musicians have been known to perform at raves, in addition to other types of performance artists such as go-go dancers and fire dancers. The music is amplified with a large, powerful sound reinforcement system, typically with large subwoofers to produce a deep bass sound. The music is often accompanied by laser light shows, projected coloured images, visual effects and fog machines.
Freetekno is a cultural movement that is present in Europe, Australia and North America. Freetekno sound systems or tribes form in loose collectives, frequently with anarchist philosophies. These sound systems join to hold parties wherever a viable space can be found – typical locations include warehouses, fields, abandoned buildings or forests. Because freetekno parties are usually held illegally this sometimes leads to clashes with the police, as was the case at both the 2004 and 2005 Czechtek festivals and many other, smaller parties around the world at different times.
A free party is a party "free" from the restrictions of the legal club scene, similar to the free festival movement. It typically involves a sound system playing electronic dance music from late at night until the time when the organisers decide to go home. A free party can be composed of just one system or of many and if the party becomes a festival, it becomes a teknival. The word free in this context is used both to describe the entry fee and the lack of restrictions and law enforcement.
Happy hardcore, also known as 4-beat or happycore, is a subgenre of hardcore dance music or "hard dance". It emerged both from the UK breakbeat hardcore rave scene, and Belgian, German and Dutch hardcore techno scenes in the early 1990s. The thing that makes happy hardcore stand apart from gabber, is that happy hardcore tends to have breakbeats running alongside the 4/4 kick drum.
Breakcore is a style of electronic dance music that emerged from jungle, hardcore, and drum and bass in the mid-to-late 1990s. It is characterized by very complex and intricate breakbeats and a wide palette of sampling sources played at high tempos.
Hardcore is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany in the early 1990s. It is distinguished by faster tempos and a distorted sawtooth kick, the intensity of the kicks and the synthesized bass, the rhythm and the atmosphere of the themes, the usage of saturation and experimentation close to that of industrial dance music. It would spawn subgenres such as gabber.
Techstep is a dark subgenre of drum and bass that was created in the mid-1990s.
Hardstyle is an electronic dance genre that emerged in the late 1990s, with origins in the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. Hardstyle mixes influences from techno, new beat and hardcore.
Teknivals are large free parties which take place for several days. They take place most often in Europe and are often illegal under various national or regional laws. They vary in size from dozens to thousands of people, depending on factors such as accessibility, reputation, weather, and law enforcement. The parties often take place in venues far away from residential areas such as squatted warehouses, empty military bases, beaches, forests or fields. The teknival phenomenon is a grassroots movement which has grown out of the rave, punk, reggae sound system and UK traveller scenes and spawned an entire subculture. Summer is the usual season for teknivals.
Hard trance is a subgenre of trance music that originated in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands in the early 1990s as the Breakbeat hardcore production community began to diversify into new and different styles of electronic music, all influenced by hard house, new beat, happy hardcore and jungle music. The popularity of hard trance peaked during the late 1990s and has since faded in favor of newer forms of trance.
Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole piece or part of a larger musical arrangement. In terms of performance, the major categories are live dance music and recorded dance music. While there exist attestations of the combination of dance and music in ancient history, the earliest Western dance music that we can still reproduce with a degree of certainty are old-fashioned dances. In the Baroque period, the major dance styles were noble court dances. In the classical music era, the minuet was frequently used as a third movement, although in this context it would not accompany any dancing. The waltz also arose later in the classical era. Both remained part of the romantic music period, which also saw the rise of various other nationalistic dance forms like the barcarolle, mazurka, ecossaise, ballade and polonaise.
Drum and bass is an electronic music genre that originated in the UK rave scene having developed from breakbeat hardcore. The genre would go on to become one of the most popular genres of electronic dance music, becoming international and spawning multiple different derivatives and subgenres.
Electro house is a genre of electronic dance music and a subgenre of house music characterized by heavy bass and a tempo around 125–135 beats per minute. The term has been used to describe the music of many DJ Mag Top 100 DJs, including Benny Benassi, Skrillex, Steve Aoki, and Deadmau5.
Frenchcore is a subgenre of hardcore techno. The style differs from other forms of hardcore in terms of a faster tempo, usually above 160 –185 BPM, and a loud and distorted offbeat bassline.
Belgian hardcore techno is an early style of hardcore techno that emerged from new beat as EBM and techno influences became more prevalent in this genre. This particular style has been described as an "apocalyptic, almost Wagnerian, bombastic techno", due to its use of dramatic orchestral stabs and menacing synth tones that set it apart from earlier forms of electronic dance music. It flourished in Belgium and influenced the sound of early hardcore from Netherlands, Germany, Italy, UK and North America during the early-1990s, as a part of the rave movement during that period.
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