aaa Archives - BLAZAR

Vammens soundtrack catalogue

BLAZAR — Tue, 12 May 2020 20:44:40 +0000

Morten Vammen: “I suppose I have to drop some pompous nonsense – its tradition in music journalism – but please don’t ask me about influences or childhood stuff….” Vammen was one of the first to release acid/techno in Denmark in the early 90s, but preferred to be invisible outside the underground – the focus is music. LISTEN HERE.

“I really hate genres – but I tend to use “Electronica” as it is more open that “techno”. One new thing is that people don’t care about the music itself anymore, but about who makes the music. The public is more interested in celebrities and how a certain artist is more famous — than the music itself – pop music is a kind of reality show now. It changed the way the audience relates to music, its about style signals and parasocial relation and most listeners have no transcendental connection to music and its quality anymore, they just wants the glamour. “Electronica” doesn’t want to be part of it, because it’s not about humility, or arrogance, it’s not a posture ′′we don’t want to be famous, we’re underground”. None of that. “Electronica” is about the human soul, not about the appearance. “Electronica” has values, teaches to live the moment, work together, and especially to respect the next and look to the future, it’s about being open in the now for everything thats possible. “Electronica” is an international language that represents freedom, because of its roots in rebellion and mind expansion. “Electronica” makes people feel good about themselves.”

ENJOY THE NEW ALBUM HERE

As a kid Vammen went to music conservatory and made industrial funk tapes and played in weird bong bands and started to DJ back in the 1980s, then he made the first Danish danish acid/techno album as AUM, toured the states in the 90s, composed a lot of jingles and soundtracks and a more genre blending second solo album, A*A*A.

Then he became a writer, directed adds, documentaries and music videos – but he still bangs out tracks for fun and ghostwrites behind the scenes. Fast forward to present time, where the lockdown made him dig up old files: “Nobody make fucked up dubby post acid anymore…I had to release my archives as well as new stuff thru my label Sofarave.”I met him in his home studio playing with his charming daughter and some shimmering pads from a tall retro rack:

Tell me about the making of the first AUM album? “Imagine the 80s – no sample banks, genre norms – and no internet …DIY times…and a high learning curve and absolutely no media focus…I made a lot of tapes for fun influenced by Tackhead, Public Enemy and Throbbing Gristle – some avant-funk shit. Then the more danceable Detroit, acid and Frankfurt sounds arrived and I blended everything in my home studio via simple hardware samplers and analoge trash. Then I took a stack of DAT tapes to Anders Bonde, a master of one of the first harddisc editors – the waveframe – and we made a puzzle of tracks forming a long DJ set in one accelerating flow – and released it on EBM label Decay.”

“Techno was not really an album format then, as most electronic music was long 12″ tools on vinyl for DJs. It was fun to play live back then – people were confused – as the rave scene where split into minimal, Goa and EBM back then, so people was confused – I made a personal hybrid.”

The hard second album? “A*A*A: connoisseurs cornucopia was released in 1996. After the first Aum album I made some tracks for Lars Von Trier – so the tv and film industry became my main clients and I paused my DJ activities – the club scene was getting nasty and filled with e-robic bikers and fashionfiends on coke and the music suffered. I locked myself into my new studio. The A*A*A album was made with Cubase – and post-jungle chopping was hot. Its a more diverse collection of tracks – there are some jazzy breakbeats and D&B as well as bits from my soundtracks, ads and fashion shows – tracks for clients like Lars Von Trier, Søren Fauli, Franz Pandal, Kelloggs, Braun, Sygesikringen Danmark, Omo, Vaseline, Ikea, Masterfoods, Lego, PBS, HK, DR, B&O, Psychocowboy, Lowe, Carlsberg, Metroexpress, DR, Nestea, DR2, Spon Diego & Mads Nørgaard – so the album is also a catalogue of my ideas regarding those brands musical profiles. There are some harder “classic AUM” tracks om the album as well. I edited it in Sweden on 2CI sweating – I cant recomend it. Thomas Erhard made the cover art.” “The new album, Perfumes Volume 1 is an ambient collection – I toy with a new edge style, not hippie-healthy new age, this is darker and weirder soundtracks and drones for work, meditation and rituals.” “The AUM archives vol.1, is drum orientated funky uptempo instrumentals that will appeal to DJs and film directors – as well as a lot of people that find pop too shallow and jazz, rock and classical dated – and techno too static.”

The second albums working title was survivor? “Yes, I survived a lot of harsh stuff in the electronic subcultural scenes and avantgarde ghettos the last 35 years – a lot of friends went insane, used drugs and got used by drugs, became boring, sold out or committed suicide. I somehow survived all the bullshit – making music is a nice way to heal when reality is too evil – music is a mental survival tool – and a pleasure. I could also have titled it AUM 2 or AUM flashbacks, its heavy on the 128 bpm 303 mutations.” “Perfumes & Artifacts Volume 3 album is a blend of the dubwise styles hinted at on the A*A*A album – and more New Edgy ambient drone stuff parred with a post-triphop dash.” Rave Museum Vol.4 is a more dubbby acid rave collection that blends well with The AUM archives vol.1 It also contains a fresh ambient drone and a downtempo beat track. Enjoy volume 4 here…

What’s the Sofarave label concept? I try to make music that enhance or relight what’s around you so reality becomes a meditative adventure. I’m a designer of atmospheres, I make sonic perfume that can be used as mental tools, smoke and mirrors or enjoyable, safe drugs.

“The corona quarantine made me dig up old, raw files – and instead of remixing and polishing, I just released what felt right now. The obsession with the new is a trap, superficially things change fast – but the basics remain the same. Some of the tracks date back to the late 1980s. I attempt to create a kind of musical scenery which is not entirely “primitive”, not entirely “future” but some place and moment impossible to locate, either chronologically or geographically.”

“I toy around with the idea of a “Sofa Rave” genre – a kind of energized organic ambient rave, but without the formulaic arrangements and stupid drops. Mainstream club culture is horrible now, so I like to dream up alternative scenarios – I try to make undefined music for new undefined spaces, new emerging undefined situations and emotions – I try not to make site or time-specific music – I like music that bring new light to different scenarios, music that could work in a home situation, on headphones, in a forest or on a boat, as a ritual tool, in the back room of a club or as a film score – the only place it won’t work is on chart radio – but is anyone listening to that anymore? “ Listen to the APPENDIX E.P. here “The lockdown EP is an exploration of 2020s new mental landscapes: “Upper” is a uplifting hypnotic meditative tool made on a mix of analog, digital and modular hardware. Feel it. “#Metoo” is an ambient ballet for the new post rave world. “Virus” toys around with vocals, and the EP ends in the blissful drum-free void of “Safespace”. The EP is an expansion of the Sofarave paradigm – hypermodern music to take the position of dusty jazz, clinical classical and boring adult rock – sonic drugs and perfumes for all situations, mediation and film.” Listen to the Lockdown E.P. here

Soundtracks vol.7: “sofa tourism or the missing link between Basic Channels dub side projects, trap, 90s triphop and Blade Runner? Its as if downtempo stoner music and dark ambient had a kid who ran away from the yoga classes and the club dance floor into a new undefined territory. The album starts out with a mutation of gongs and discreet beats, then swirls into a breathtaking cloud of great beauty. More floating textures follow until you start nodding to at Princeish beat, before the 303 hits. It continues the style of the rave museum album: “Krauterblut” is a nod to German 1970s postrock cloned into house. The manic “Happytalism” stay uptempo with 909 drums and a weird raw arpeggio. The album ends with “Betabux Brad is a Doomer at Heart” – listen to an ambient drama here..
“The Insider E.P. is revisiting a mutant dubby universe spiked with chopped breaks, punchy electro-boogie, and echoes of 80s NYC and 90s Berlin recorded as heard from a womb. The tracks mix neon nostalgia with hope for new magic post-lockdown social orgies.” Listen here Listen to CLUB MIRAGE hereListen to FLASHBACKS here

LIsten to AMNESIA here

Listen to Hyperthymesia here

Listen to Elite Bubble here

Listen to Bliss here

Studio tactics? “I prefer to start from scratch and build a unique studio setup – and a hybrid of genres – for each track as I try to remove references and fix points, I prefer a more organic structure and arrange beyond drop fixated body music or hookline fetishism. Proces still fascinate me – even after 35 years in studios. The proces is so random – you can have a perfect idea, mood and setup – and work a lot on a track that ends in the bin. Or vise versa, you can be depressed and blank and bang out a killer in 20 minutes on a rusty crap workstation, like you’re channeling something.”

“I try to dance and use a lot of inputs apart from the mouse and keyboard – music is a body thing, and I try to avoid studio work that feels like building a ship in a bottle. I even dusted off my old MPC and got some modular stuff and a weird deep 2000s Roland synth up from the cellar, to avoid eccesive screen time. Next up is the W30 I used on my first record, I like its limitations, there is a kind of zen to it compared to the vast laptop options – but hardware eats time. I avoid beeing an architect – Im more like a stripper in the studio. I try to make something that affects in a more abstract way, as I find the emotional palette in modern music too compressed.”

The future? “Watch out for an online mixtape album with some tracks containing uncleared samples – I even got a chilly boom bap mix – and an old live and dj sets on mixcloud. I got some new tools I have been waiting for that finally is available. I will also start a collaborative album with the cream of the crop from my musical journey. And hopefully I will kill my angst for vocals and start to sing on the next albums?”

Do you still DJ? “I prefer to play conneisseur clubs, private parties, events, outdoor stuff and art openings – so I can sleep before 02 – I still love to see how people react to sound and test new tracks and just party.”

Inquire for soundtracks, remixes, live performances and dj sets here

Peter Smith

The post Vammens soundtrack catalogue appeared first on BLAZAR.

PREMIERE: SARA & MORTEN – HOMEGIRL TRAILER

BLAZAR — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 13:14:43 +0000

First single -in a dub version – from the third AUM/A’A’A album – coming later this year.

The post PREMIERE: SARA & MORTEN – HOMEGIRL TRAILER appeared first on BLAZAR.

Techno: my early years

BLAZAR — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 12:19:48 +0000

The Japanese drum machines that finally made the white man dance..

What is the skeleton that connects the multitude of up-tempo dance subgenres, known as house & techno? Four heavy stomping bass drums pr. bar, beating in 118-160 beats pr minute – a.k.a. the lowest common denominator in music…

Part 1 :Flashbacks – Back in the ugly 80’s, when AIDS and complete nuclear destruction cast an evil shadow on a financially unstable world, a minor miracle happened; in the Land of the Rising Sun, visionary engineers from Korg, Roland and Yamaha made the hi-tech tools – previously solely owned by pretentious rock dinosaurs like Peter Gabriel and Jean Michelle Jarre – available for any hard working nerd or dancers bedroom setup. Clone the access to machines with a generation raised on post-punk and Moroders prototypical evergreen mantra- groove ”I Feel Love”, a strong influence from Kraftwerk and an urging need for a rebirth of disco – and POW! – techno was born.

This changed any preconceptions of club music – and music in general – and spearheaded a musical revolution that made even punk a tiny bump on the highway. Back then, there was a longing for disco, a genre of pure joy, like soul but without the lost love and race-issues. A pure motorically motivating muzak for sheer kitchy enjoyment. And as the reality of the 80’s sucked big time, there was a urge for a new beginning, a musical utopia that forecasted the technological revolution to come, with less gloom than the dystopian industrial techno scene.Techno/House is post-production retro disco, where echoes and ghosts of the working musicians are reassembled in the digital domain to work out dancers and take their minds to the future.

At first, the primitive 4-track cassette experiments from Chicago sounded crude, like low budget templates for future music longing for its disco past. But when a gang of sci-fi fanatics in the deserted motor city of Detroit cued in to the more serious gloom strategies of European post industrial EBM (electronic body music) and twisted house into soundtracks for the future with a dash of funk, the European producers in spe took note.A DJ back then was a nerdy hobbyist fighting for rare import 12” vinyl, only occasionally leaving his room to hand out flyers and getting his five minutes of fame on the decks. Synths and beat boxes where generally considered bad taste, and not “real music” to most people, who didn’t care for the DJ’s taste, montage and sync skills. They just wanted to hear the pop/rock hits from the radio or the funky fuzak pastel hits from the deckshoe kids on the Montmartre scene.

I played the biker-dominated Christiania back then – and was saved by the “Born to be wild” single – but mostly sneaking in electro, funk, proton-hiphop, funky industrial and dub. In my bedroom I assembled a 808 triggering delays recording it to play in the walkman stoned, but inspiring nabour and future Frankfurt hitmaker Sven-NG – we lived next to the idylic Royal Gardens in inner Copenhagen, but made the hardest beats imaginable for our own pleasure. There was no scene yet. But soon the time machine we had been loning for arrived: in 1986 the afordable sampling workstations arrived and music history changed forever.

“If Pac-Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.”

Part 2 : Alone on the floor – As a DJ/producer always looking for the perfect beat in the mid 80’s, I snobbishly shrug off house as poppy, gay, drug disco, fitness music – until my friends had a party with UK acid house DJ’s in 86’. Complete with strobes and pure MDMA.

Suddenly the dark coolness and speed/coke/alcohol menu combined with black leather and nylon gear and Front 242, “Blue Monday” and The Cramps seemed irrelevant. No more pogo or mating dance steps. Just dance for hours with the whole room AND alone, to a never-ending Roland 808/909 beat.

There was no media, no uniform, no drugs, no set of rules, and the records where few and rare. You just danced for days with strippers, hippies, druggies, and styl- ists – often just fueled from the pure power of the bass. A fresh feeling, and a new liberating post-post punk way to interact socially beyond the general norms.

I was immensely inspired. My team created a video single under the name of Trust, fusing Frankfurt samples, drill instructors and Public Enemy-style rap – then came the Cyberworld compilation with varios EBM bands. I went solo and made the first acid CD in Denmark: AUM/Morph – the title a typical indication of the “fuck pop, we are fighting an information war on our own terms” ideas of the time, referring to the mantra of all sound – AUM – and the quicksilver “morph” effects of the Terminator films. Several occult 12” singles on secret German imprints followed, along with a more breakbeat-orientated sequel CD: AAA: “Connoisseurs cornucopia”. Note the hermetic names and “no photo” style of the time – the purist attitude declared: “let the music speak for itself, fuck packaging and the star system”. The records made minds travel, and send me on a tour of the US and through studios and endless collabora-tions, eventually ending up making sounds for Lars Von Trier’s series “The Kingdom” – and Stimorol ads. A DIY techno-success.

Part 3 : Innocence lost

The innocent scene was soon exploited by pushers, media, entrepreneurs, stale radio personalities, media and ego-driven idiot DJ’s, and split into a neo hippie Goa fraction – the forefathers of trance – and a more minimal ascetic camp inspired by the Detroit/Berlin axis. Later on, a funkier UK inspired Jungle scene evolved in the squatted city of Christiania – all three subscenes co-existing outside the mainstream clubs and charts.

Then, around 1996 Eurodance arrived as the new pop, making 909 beats mainstream. The old rave crowd – as any hipster crowd – needed to stick out, so they picked more avant-garde IDM sounds, or threw themselves at more mature, musical house a la NYC deep house, complete with afro percussion, pianos and soulful divas – as if disco never died. The up-tempo big brother of hip-hop became a global virus, and electronic music was now the new club fodder, and Prince, E.W.F. and post grunge MTV styles died in the clubs. House was now used to sell everything to the younger hipster segments.

Part 4 : Hitting the studio

Suddenly, making music was a matter of punching some drums on a grid and sync/discipline some samples from your record collection on top and master the whole shebang with a club-shaking bassline. A world apart from the tedious rehearsal, live and studio rituals of ”real” music – and you could do it cheaply ALONE.

The Danes are not funky people, and as production before the laptop revolution required a lot of gear and a lot of time to figure it out (no youtube tutorials), most producers made Eurodance, ambient, EBM or tech house. All a bit cold, boring and blue, like most Scandinavian music.

Danish tech house only bloomed after the rise of the Internet. The biggest contribution to the house cannon is probably the Nord and Elektron companies, responsible for some excellent analog-like synths, and especially the Propellerheads Reason software, which emulates all the expensive studio hardware of yesterday – even on a modest laptop.

Part 5 : Voodoo house

House music – as sample based postproduction music – has a weird evolution. On one hand its a complete underground niche music for drug dens, on the other hand its the new pop/rock, filling stadiums. Every time house seems dead, passé and overexposed, after Swedish House Mafia or David Guetta has brainwashed us via the airwaves with another gimmicky tune, a bedroom producer finds a “new old” record to sample and a new evil bass tactic. Everything from Balearic clichés over tribal drums to Balkan has been tamed by the sequencers and made into modern druggy march music. And electronic music is everywhere, as a perfume to sell everything – but the money rarely goes back to the scenes or creators.

Newer generations play around with black downtempo styles inspired by reggae, dubstep, boogie and hiphop rejecting “big brothers music” i.e. tech house – its subcultural context gone, its sign value empty, reduced to juice bar music made by blank attention hungry DJs desperate for bookings and sponsors. But the downtempo trend will just build up to the next up- tempo house backlash, like ebb and tide. Google the house blogs or beatport for further research into future beats. All combinations are possibly tried already.

And as DJ and studio technology merge on the laptop why not make your own? Music production and DJ’ing will likely end up as a kind of “Guitar Hero” game as you read this anyway.

This text is originally published in 2009 in NORDIC MAN MAGAZINE.

BONUS TRACK: a rip of a rare acid 12″ – CONTORT – made in colaboration with Dan Stielow – who turned the tempo up to 1993.

Listen to more current output here & here and new albums here

The original AUM cult video:

The post Techno: my early years appeared first on BLAZAR.