In the second of our Youtubing feature series we talk to Bas Mooy, the uncompromising Dutch producer who’s recent releases on Mote Evolver and Perc Trax have gotten him some well deserved and long over due attention. He sheds light on his influences, current favourites and the Dutch and Rotterdam scene.
Tell us how you got into music, what’s the first track(s) you bought that made you want to get involved in music?
I started buying records after visiting one of the legendary Strictly Techno parties in ‘De Vlerk’ in Rotterdam, which was this sort of small underground concrete ‘bunker’ in the middle of the city. That’s where I first heard banging techno in a time where most clubs were just programming mellow club music. After that weekend I went to a record store for the first time and asked for the kind of stuff I had heard at the party. Got a shit load of records to check out and went vinyl shopping almost every week from that moment on, checking out stores in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Eindhoven. Was a really interesting period, when you are going through big piles of records, trying to find the direction you want to take it. The tunes below were some of the tunes that got me into techno and that I bought when I started playing records.
Raoul Delgardo & Eddy Masvoodler – Tall Eric EP
Johannes Heil – Die Offenbarung
Jeff Mills – Berlin
Space DJz – Side on
You’ve just had some big tracks out on the iconic Mote Evolver and Perc Trax labels, how did that come about?
Really happy to be part of the catalogue of both labels. I played a gig about one and a half years ago with Luke Slater and spoke with Heidy from Mote Evolver about sending some tunes over. Luke was playing and charting some of my tracks around that time, so decided to send him some tunes. He was enthusiastic about it and was interested in two of them. Mote Evolver has been one of my favorite labels over the past few years, so I can say I was more than pleased when I got an email from Luke about his plans. Also cool that Chris Finke was taking care of the other side of this chapter in the Parallel Series, since he’s a good friend of mine. Regarding Perc Trax, I was already in contact with Ali (Perc) for some time and he had been supporting my label Audio Assault quite a lot with chart and podcast action, so when I finished some new tunes I decided to ask him if he was interested. Ali really has a vision about his label and what direction he wants to take it, think the four tunes that got selected for the release make a nice diverse package. Got a great amount of positive feedback. I always released on labels within my network (Audio Assault, Arms, Planet Rhythm etc.). Seemed like the time was right to approach some labels outside that network and I decided to aim high and focus on the labels that are on my top 10 list of favorite labels. There’s still a small list in my head of labels that I would love to release on in the future, it’s cool that two of them were already interested in working with me so far.
What’s happening for you next, in terms of projects, gigs and releases?
Working on quite a lot of projects actually. Beginning of 2012 I decided not to take on any new projects for a while. I finished all the releases I was working on and that had a deadline. After that I took some time off, which was really refreshing, made me think about a lot of things and actually got things in perspective a bit more since then. At the moment I am just working on tracks, which might be released on my new label ‘Mord’, but can also lead to an album, which has been in the planning for quite a while. But I am just waiting for things to come together and see where it takes me. Upcoming soon are my new Audio Assault release, with remixes by Pfirter and Developer and my release for Gynoid, with remixes by Xhin and Radial. I’m also working on some remixes again and some projects that I can’t really talk about yet. News on that soon!
Regarding gigs, just had a really busy weekend, we did a Strictly Techno weekender, with Pfirter on Friday and Len Faki on Saturday in Rotterdam’s number one club Perron. Amazing weekend, with two great nights of proper techno. Was playing on both nights myself, warming up for Pfirter and closing down the night after Len Faki. This week I will be spending some time at ADE (Amsterdam Dance Festival), where I will be playing on a Perc Trax labelnight with Perc and my labelpartner Radial. Soon after that I will be back in Prague and a cool warehouse party in Amsterdam. Good things to look forward to for sure!
What’s your top three techno tracks at the moment?
Truss – Hackney
Paul Birken – Acid Youth of Malibu
Rrose – Prism Guard
The Dutch (and Rotterdam’s) techno scene is looking really healthy from over here, what’s it like as an insider?
Well, of course we have quite a lot of stuff going on in Holland, but Rotterdam was off the map for a while and totally is back on track now, mainly because one amazing underground club, called Perron. There were some years that there were only clubby tech housy programmed clubs, no room for dirty driving underground techno at all. Now there seems to be a new generation that is really openminded and actually looking for some darker more banging stuff instead of the ‘high-heel house’ beats, I am really pleased about that. It was so frustrating for quite a while: living in a city that has this Industrial vibe and no small parties with banging underground techno. Viva Perron! The last year there were so many great artists playing at Perron: Speedy J, Ben Klock, Jeff Mills, Marcel Dettmann, Ben Sims, DVS1, James Ruskin, Oscar Mulero, Perc, Tommy Four Seven and the list goes on and on. Proper banging quality techno all the way. Besides Perron there’s still not a lot going on techno-wise, accept some parties every now and then at Maassilo and a couple of small local initiatives. We got a great festival season in Holland, with a lot of amazing festivals, such as Awakenings Festival. But the club scene seems pretty healthy, when you compare it to some other European countries, most cities got their own clubs and nights that usually work well, Amsterdam has some really cool concepts, but also more outside the center of Holland we got parties like the legendary Planet Rose nights in Nijmegen.
What other producers and/or productions do you really admire from the technical side of things?
Planetary Assault Systems and Speedy J. I think they are the two artists that have influenced me most from the start. So many great productions and never afraid to reinvent themselves.
Speedy J – Pannik
Planetary Assault Systems – Sucktion
There are lots of new producers and fans coming into techno now, what tracks should they listen to to educate themselves with history of the genre?
Almost impossible to pick, but here’s a couple of tracks that really inspired me personally and have been important for me from the start and I think they should check out.
Robert Hood – Minus
Public Energy – Three O Three
Polygon Window – Quoth
F.U.S.E. – Substance Abuse
Surgeon – Optic
Jeff Mills – DNA
Dave Clarke – Red 2
Planetary Assault Systems – In from the Night
Fix – Flash
What’s your favorite three non-techno tracks of all time?
Joy Division – Disorder
The Cure – Faith
Stone Roses – I wanna be adored
If you were going on a long drive tomorrow, what tracks would be essential for the car?
When I am in the car I prefer to listen to loads of different styles of music, Ipod-shuffle mode…might be something like this:
Sonic Youth – Teenage Riot
I-F – I do because I couldn’t care less
Pennywise – The Unknown Road
Lastly, what’s your guilty pleasure, the track you love, that you really shouldn’t?
Well, I guess some of the people checking out the non-techno tunes I selected for this interview probably already think I answered that in some of the previous questions, hehe. I have always been honest about what I like and don’t like, without caring about what people think of it. The stuff I like outside techno is mainly stuff I was listening to when I was a teenager and I still like a lot of that kind of music. Will probably have something to do with all the memories that are connected with it. Besides that raising a 4 year old girl gets me in touch with music I would usually never really listen to, but I even catch myself humming a cheesy billboard tune every now and then, I confess…Anyway, used to be really into Eek-a-Mouse when we were still smoking trees for breakfast. Is that a guilty pleasure or still acceptable? ;)
Eek-a-Mouse – Ganja Smuggling
thanks to Bas Mooy for this, more info on the mnn and him music at :
Perhaps its the freedom to set their own prices and have more control over their music and features like embeddable artwork players with the ability to preview the whole track instead of the measly 1 minute you get on some stores. Perhaps its the huge amount of formats its supports (audio is uploaded uncompressed and can be bought in many formats including FLAC aswell as wav and various mp3 qualities). Maybe its just that other download sites are clogged up with music irrelevant to independent techno labels and their fans.
Whatever the reason it seems to be taking off, and its not just for digital sales – labels including 2 of the most popular underground techno labels to emerge in recent years Semantica and Perc Trax are selling vinyl and CDs direct to the collector, while Orphx even sell t-shirts from theirs.
The flexible pricing allows not only the labels to set prices, but in some cases customers to name theirs – I Love Acid’s compilation which includes artists like Ben Sims, Luke Vibert and even the mighty LFO can be picked up for whatever you want to pay (yes, really) here. Going beyond that labels can give away tracks for free or for an email address, as Dispired Industrials are doing currently. Re-issuing past music is also popular including oldskool sampled techno from Player, Arne Weinberg’s archives, and Paul Birken whose early 90s productions, that were recorded in one take straight to cassette, are now re-issued digitally here.
Some are offering their content on Bandcamp exclusively with no other distribution at all – Rob Booth recently launched his whopping 60+ track Electronic Explorations compilation this way taking in artists from Neil Landstrumm and Perc to Milanese, Radioactive Man which topped the sales charts for the entire site, see http://electronicexplorations.bandcamp.com/
With a lot of techno labels and artists struggling with their place in today’s oversaturated market, Bandcamp has allowed techno to get back to its DIY roots, connecting artists and labels direct to their fans whether they sell vinyl, mp3s or even give their music away. http://bandcamp.com/
“Bandcamp re-ignites DIY culture in techno” published on http://www.technopodcast.com/ 1st August 2012. Check our own Bandcamp page out at Pareto Park.
Tracklisting
Gunter Saxenhammer – Gunter Meets Doric On The Night Bus – Diskono
Forward Strategy Group – TTH – Perc Trax
Production Unit – Broken20.1 – Broken20
Teste – Praecox – Probe
Throbbing Gristle – Vow Of Silence – Mute
Raudive – Sigil – Wires
Alfabet – Hell Of Samba – Rush Hour
Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom – Rise(DFA Mix) – DFA
White Lies – Bigger Than Us(Factory Floor Mix) – Fiction
Noetic Movement – Nightshift – Zero Tolerance
W-Moon – Top Of Bottom – Metro Juice
Andy Bowman – Yance – Gecko
Advanced Human – Boiler(Forward Strategy Group Mix) – Starkstrom Schallplatten
John F – Stone Cold – Exhibit
Sanys – Ice VII – Downfall Theory
Forward Strategy Group – Metal Image – Perc Trax
Blake Baxter – When A Thought Becomes You – Back In The Box
Forward Strategy Group – Nihil Novi – Perc Trax
Heiko Laux – Re-Televised – Kanzleramt
Ralph Mirto – Parallel Globe – Cannibald
Geeeman – Bang’T – Clone Jack For Daze
Surgeon – Dry 4 – Dynamic Tension
Murat – Kombat – Motion AV
Levon Vincent – Love Technique – Ovum
SP-X – Stalker – Komisch
Sunil Sharpe – Roki – Sheworks
Forward Strategy Group – Rundes Leder – Unreleased
D.Carbone – Abuse(Go Hiyama Remix) – Dynamic Reflection
Peter Van Hoesen – Rites De Passage – Time To Express
Plex vs Perc Trax, Rinse FM 26/05/12. Featuring Perc, James Tec, Luke Handsfree and Shax (Clairvoyants). The next Plex vs Perc Trax is this weekend in London with Kangding Ray, Lone, Perc, DJ Skirt, AnD, Randomer, Scanone at Corsica Studios. more info –> HERE
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