Martyn Reflects on the Idea of "Techno-Infuenced" Bass Music
a.k.a. An exclusive preview of one of the essays that accompany the 3024 founder's forthcoming 'Through Lines' compilation.
Hello everyone. Shawn here. After a couple of weeks away, I’m back home in Barcelona and back into the swing of things with the newsletter. That being said, today’s edition is something by a very special guest: Martyn.
Although the Dutch-born, Virginia-based artist is best known as a DJ, producer and label founder—he heads up the 3024 imprint—he’s significantly broadened his palette in recent years, launching a popular artist mentorship program while also ramping up his writing output. First Floor readers may remember that Martyn penned the foreword to my book last year, and he writes an excellent newsletter of his own, the recommendation-centric Four Things. And as part of his upcoming Through Lines compilation—a hand-picked collection of his own tracks from 2005 to 2015—he’s authored a series of essays, reflecting not only on the music but on “an era of UK-inspired dance music where ideas, genres, tempos and scenes seemed to rapidly merge and splinter off.”
All nine of those essays will be available this Friday, May 10, when Through Lines is officially released. Ahead of that, however, Martyn has offered to share one of the pieces via First Floor. His (lightly edited) words are below, and dive into a phrase that became rather common in bass music circles at the height of the post-dubstep era: “techno-influenced.”
What exactly did people mean by that, particularly in the context of UK-centric bass music? Martyn aims to figure it out, along the way commenting on the parallel histories of techno and bass music, the music press and its tendency to employ lazy shorthand, the role of systemic racism in the conversation and more.
When writing music, the limitations and restrictive nature of genres and subgenres can sometimes make it difficult to find the freedom to express ideas. But after the music is finished and released into the world, it becomes part of a larger collection of ideas, often from a host of likeminded musicians continuously influencing each other as part of a “sound.” To map out these connections and discover the paths these ideas may have traveled, expose the “through lines” if you will, using genre and subgenre names may still be of some practical use.
The “post-dubstep“ media narrative of the late ’00s and early ’10s centered mostly around the influence of other genres on the original dubstep sound played at early London club nights like FWD>> and DMZ and in cities like Bristol and Leeds, as well as the emergence of a host of new music makers hailing from outside these musical epicenters. (Like in my particular case: Rotterdam.) A designation that always troubled me for its opaqueness was the cloudy “techno-influenced dubstep.” Because techno is such a broad and multi-faceted term for a large set of sounds, local scenes, even whole eras and philosophy, it feels appropriate to try and dig a little deeper into if and how producers were influenced exactly by the sound of techno.
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