So I’m sitting here listening to Gorje Hewek’s Vous Lhiem, and suddenly it strikes me, around 48:36: none of the layers here would be out of place in house music, just like their groovy interplay would be right at home, so why does this still feel like techno to me? There’s layers, loops and grooves in house and in techno, what is it that makes me want to call something housey or technoy.
Well, it could be something like this: techno uses stuff to make loops and layer them, and a lot of nice techno uses grooves for that. House uses loops to groove, and layers them if it enhances the groove. [Shorter: techno loops grooves, and house grooves loops.]
Apart from that (which is nothing like an ironclad law) anything’s possible of course, and it all depends on taste and influence and mood and expression and suchlike. The stuff that the techno guys loop is often artificial or concrete or abstract and not explicitly groovy, but it becomes groovy because the layering of the loops is hypnotic and that’s a very deep groove. The loops that the house guys groove are more often organic or come from a simpler artificiality that tried (and failed, gloriously) to mimic organic sounds: venerable 303’s belching clouds of acid vapour while attempting to sound like two hands, clapping. Also therefore techno depends on hypnotic layering, which determines the structure of the tracks: there’s no room to dig in to lyrics, choruses and so on within that framework, so instead it just keeps looping and shifting, minimally, to stay in a zone that’s fit for enjoyment by humans. The structure of house stays a bit closer to already developed forms of call and response, verse and refrain and all that, which have proven themselves to groove throughout the ages.
But always this: either you work towards layered looping (with groove as a very welcome side dish), and thence into hypnosis/trance; or you go towards groove (with some smart loopy layers to smarten stuff up) and from there into the sexytime.
And now that I’ve said that of course I don’t give a cock what you call it (housetechnobreakstrancegospeljazzecstasy), but it still feels to me as if those two are different directions, and it might be possible from there to feel into some potential palettes of expression and movement and energy, which would be fun. Worked for Kurt Koegel, and worked for me when he taught me about them (those palettes of somatic movement in contact improv he put together are awesome and freeing and comfortable and very very nice).
Tags: house, Kurt Koegel, palettes, techno
June 16, 2008 at 3:18 am
Whoever wrote this article has a very strong ear and is very clued on because it is spot on. After reading it all made sense and it certainly explains why techno is so un-structured. It just shows that dance and electronic music has evolved so much that it’s actually become technical to recognise the difference!
That’s ok for musicians and dj’s but what about the fans who know nothing about music? I am a dj and I get pissed off when my mates label a house track as techno. I know it’s silly but to me it’s like labelling a heavy metal track as country & western. Ok, that’s a bit exaggerated but you know what I mean. If someone asks me what the difference between techno and house is, I would like to be able to give them a proper explanation. But I will be buggered if I’m gonna tell someone who knows nothing about dj’ing that the difference is to do with the looping and layering. That will confuse the shit out of them!
Most websites and dj’s will tell you that house and techno is all to do with the difference in time signature, that may be true 10+ years ago but today both genres have the same signature (4 by 4). What is obvious though is that techno simply sounds synthetic whereas house sounds more realistic, as if the song was actually played with instruments. You will also find that house is more commercial than techno as it is structured for big choruses and lyrics. I guess you would say it is more radio-friendly. Whereas, techno is more underground and chaotic; it rarely has lyrics and it’s generally not structured with choruses and verses, etc. But this is only the basic difference because sometimes these criterions don’t in fit to one genre. An example is Zombie Nation ‘Kernkraft 2000’ (an absolute dance floor classic), it has big choruses, it’s structured, it’s very commercial/cheesy and has it been categorised as house. If you listen to the song it actually sounds very synthetic. I don’t think it sounds like a house at all; it sounds like techno that has some structure. To be honest, I think it sounds quite trancey (just to make it more confusing). So which one is it?
Another problem is when you start to sub categorise dance music, it all starts to get complicated. For instance, I’m a big fan of progressive house (John Digweed) however it sounds the same as minimal techno (Sven Vath). So why isn’t Digweed classed as minimal? I have read various descriptions on both sub genres but all have failed to explain the difference, if there is a difference? If you do not comprehend, you will have to a listen to some tracks to understand.
Maybe I’m thinking too hard about it all or maybe we need to scrap all these sub-genres and keep it simple? Some people still refer some house tunes as acid techno or acid jazz. What the fuck? I guess it’s all to do with the age of the music. This confusion is gonna get worse with all the new sub genres popping up every decade. Soon, no one will know the difference between techno and house!