Join the Future: Bleep Techno and the Birth of British Bass Music by Matt Anniss

Author:Matt Anniss [Anniss, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: music, Genres & Styles, dance, Electronic
ISBN: 9781913231002
Google: hGErEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Velocity Press
Published: 2019-12-15T23:22:50.549970+00:00

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Edward Irish was not the only student at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance with musical ambitions and a passion for throwing shapes to contemporary House and Techno cuts. In one of the years below was a student from Leicester called David Duncan.

Unlike Irish, Duncan had been making music since his early teens. ‘I studied micro-electronics and got a diploma in that, so wanting to make electronic music was just a progression from that,’ Duncan explains down the phone from his Copenhagen home. ‘My set-up was pretty simple - I had one of the Yamaha DX series synthesizers, a sequencer and a four-track. When I came to Leeds, I’d make music when I came back from the Blues. I’d bang through track after track that way such was the inspiration of the Blues. It gave me so many ideas.’

Through going out dancing in Leeds, Duncan eventually became friends with many members of the extended Bassic family. ‘Being at the dance school probably pushed me towards going out in certain places, which also happened to be where they were hanging out,’ he says. ‘Dancers always went to where the real party was. That’s how the two scenes were linked together and how I ended up meeting DJ Martin, Mark [Millington] and the others.’

When they first met, Williams had no idea that Duncan made music; in fact, he only twigged when a mutual friend played him some of the dance student’s demo recordings. ‘Martin liked my stuff, played it to the rest of the Bassic crew and then asked if I wanted to make a record,’ he says. ‘I was never going to say no! As I’d been making electronic music for quite a few years, I wanted there to be quite a bit of artistry behind it. I wanted to make a piece of music that would last the test of time.’

With the help of Williams and Harriott, Duncan did just that. Over six months, countless all-night studio sessions5 and numerous revisions, the three men turned Duncan’s “Pressure” demo into a stunning work of audio art. ‘What I had when I got in the studio is maybe what you’d call a blueprint, but what we ended up with was a completely different track,’ Duncan says. ‘It evolved a lot as we worked on it in the studio. We stripped it apart completely and then developed each of the elements individually. We did things like sampling bass parts from other Bassic releases then tweak those to make them sound as deep and dubby as we could. We kept doing things until we ended up with sounds we liked.’

It was a labour-intensive process, but one that all three men enjoyed. ‘I think Martin really enjoyed being in that situation,’ Homer Harriott says. ‘He could forget about himself and work with the two of us all night if he wanted to. David had more experience of making music than anyone else we worked with and a singer that he wanted to work with.

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