"My purpose was simple: to catch the feel, the pulse of rock, as I had lived through it. What I was after was guts, and flash, and energy, and speed" - NIK COHN - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "When the music was new and had no rules" -LUNA C
Monday, June 10, 2019
just 4 U East LA
the EQed breaks and loping bass on this make it almost midtempo jungle
until the rapping comes in
(via Oliver Wang)
the title translates as "the race" - talk about territorialisation, cultural ownership, localism as intensification
cf. "just 4 U London", "london sumting dis" etc
his second album was titled East Side Story
He did a track called terminator funnily enough, like ice t and nwa he stretched back to la electro https://youtu.be/pyQMMOW1RZM
ReplyDeletethat's funny about the terminator tune, what with the eq'd, pitchshifty pinginess of that break like in Goldie's track
ReplyDeletei saw a program on early LA hip hop, or maybe it was just on NWA, and they were talking about the electro basis of it in the early-mid Eighties, and someone - i think Ice T - said we were all into that techno stuff then. The word 'techno' cropped up a few other times as word for what we call electro. so that's an example of 'techno' as a term predating or at least paralleling Detroit's move to brand it.
I won't be surprised if Ice T was referring of Techno Hop Records sounds. An early LA electro label that released his first record. Dr Dre did also produced a record for them. https://www.discogs.com/label/3804-Techno-Hop-Records
ReplyDeleteThere was also a joint effort with Kru-Cut Records (who released pre-NWA World Class Wreckin' Cru effort) : Techno Kut Records.
oh wow that is interesting Pietro
ReplyDelete"techno" was a word that was used widely, often as a pejorative to describe New Wave synthpop type music - Anglo and Euro stuff. A character uses it as negative in that film Fast Times At Ridgemont High - or maybe it's a similar teen movie of that early Eighties era, i can't remember. He is into "real" punk, i.e. hardcore, whereas the purportedly shallow kids who just like to go dance are into "that techno shit"
and the term technopop also had some currency. Kim Fowley the veteran impresario / producer / manager had a band called Money Jungle - two girls, two boys - modelled on UK synthers like Human League, and whose sound he called technopop.
i think techno and electro were interchangeable terms to some extent.
I've never though of using Discogs to find first use of the techno word but besides YMO it seems that there was an obscure english band called Techno Pop band who released an electronic cover of Paint in Black in 1979 https://www.discogs.com/Techno-Pop-Paint-It-Black-/release/3744452. I didn't find any Money Jungle though.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if the word techno was pejorative in the Black community and names probably also depends of the area. I think that electro was the main/general term and depending of the area : Techno (LA, Unknown DJ), Miami Bass (Egyptian Lover, Pretty Tony), Altanta Bass and then Electro Bass (Miami's Dynamix II) or Techno Bass (Detroit's Aux 88). Mad Mike has always acknowledged that he was into Techno Bass.