Total Confusion - remix from pirate radio - One for Torsten

[Zen Peddler]

I remember getting a tape of pirate radio from the UK in the early 90s with this version of Total Confusion on it - changed my life in many ways - sorry for the quaklity but its off 20-year old tape...

 

[whitewind]

That's some subversive shit brother

[Torsten]

awesome track, but awful scratching. Sounds to me like they just scratched the sample over another track and I'd be VERY keen to find out what the underlying track is cos that is just awesome. Given their crap skillz I very much doubt GFX were responsible for the track, just the crappy scratching.

Mind you, the real Total Confusion track was almost unmixable. I've got two copies on vinyl cos the only way to mix it well was to start in the last third and then mix the beginning into the end, and then mix back out in the middle, LOL.

[Zen Peddler]

Yeah i actually wondered listening to it the other day whether the total confusion sample was just being scratched by the MC of the pirate radio station over the top? Although there are bits where I thought I heard the sample cut up in the beats?

The tape was sent over with the words 'total confusion - subversive mix' on the label.

Yeah either way this song was the reason i got into techno all those years ago. The pure acid sound, the nastiness, the subversion. Love it!!

Edited July 3, 2012 by Zen Peddler BlueGreenie

[Zen Peddler]

And the brains behind the original total confusion - now deceased:

[Torsten]

He was such a creative powerhouse in the early german techno scene. I met him briefly a couple of times in Berlin when I was living there for a few months in about 93/94, but everyone wanted a piece of him. Techno was quickly becoming big business there.

Total confusion wasn't my kinda track at the time, but man it went off on the melbourne dancefloors in 91 - well, after 2am when all the boozers went home and the clubs belonged to the ravekids ;)

That underlying track might actually be him after all. Tripheads and Death by Dub are quite similar in structure at around the same time. Then again a lot of tracks sounded like that as everyone was imitating him. I'll have a listen to some of my old mixed tapes from 3RRR and 3PBS cos after listening to it a few times I got the feeling I've heard it before somewhere.

[toby]

Heard Abel play the original total confusion at a party last Friday night in Sydney. Sounds less dated now than it did when I heard him play the same record 20 years ago!

[etherealdrifter]

melbzzmeltdancefloors'91, go the chevron

[Torsten]

ahhh, the chevron. one of my favourite clubs ever. Australia's first megaclub. The place that made John Course famous. I was so jealous when he got his Akai S900 sampler and used it live. He was australias first DJ to use live sampling. This was about 1989.

Chevron was the start of my clubbing week. 'Sanction' was tuesday night at the chevron. It was industry night so got to meet loads of famous people wanting to score, lol. Molly's favourite place to pick up guys.

wednesday was richmond tavern. can't remember the name of the night, but I think Terry Ho [aka H2O] ran that one. Ritchie and Hess were also doing Quazar at the BratPackBar for a while, which was my first live acid band gig.

thursday was a night off. let those serotonin receptors recover. or a few drinks, a joint and some amyl at Checkpoint Charlies .

friday was 'Express' at Chasers. This was by far the best night in terms of music and was really what drove the straight part of the melbourne house scene. Then move on to Razor till breakfast. This was a weird venue - an old mansion that was used by some racing or automobile club. It was probably this venue that gave someone the idea to open up a club called 'mansion' a few years later.

Saturdays was either raves or Checkpoint Charlies or that gay club around Lygon st and then move onto Maze at the Commerce Club, which was by far the most decadent club EVER in melbourne [and probably elsewhere].

Sunday was Zuzu's - the pioneers in the gay scene which was driving the american acid house scene in melbourne.

There was also an intense acid night on king st for a while, but name and day escapes me. Probably left out a few, but these were the staples.

The melbourne rave scene had its roots in the gay clubs. ZuZus and Checkpoint Charlies were internationally known to be pushing the musical boundaries. Most of the patrons were't even gay but just came for the music. Then Express started at chasers and this became the focus as the music got harder and weirder, and LSD was pretty much compulsory. Maze and Razor were more decadent - ecstasy and coke were the drugs of choice and this was reflected in the music. This is what became the australian rave scene [sydney was wayyyy behind]. It's funny to think back that even the most dedicated house DJs at the time thought that house was a passing trend like eurobeat and new romantic before it, and that a year or two later it would all be over.

Poor sydney. Was so far behind. In 1988 I had a residency at the biggest commercial club in canberra for a few months. After work i'd go to a tiny place called Arena which was also owned by my boss. A DJ had just returned from the UK with the new acid sound and my boss let him do his thing. 90% of these clubbers would travel down from sydney for the saturday night just to get a dose of acieeeed because there was nothing like it in sydney. After a few months they had a falling out and since I was the only DJ in canberra with acid house vinyl I got the job. One of the best DJ jobs I ever had, but eventually I had to go back to melbourne as I was suffocating in canberra.

[∂an]

interesting how rave has given way to doof, and more (but certainly not all) organics instead of synthetics. I personally find rave music hard to connect to, although I was a fan of spiral tribe for a while. what do you ravers from the 80's and 90's think of the doof scene?

[Zen Peddler]

One thing that always shat me about some off the doof scene was that it tended to rip off earlier ideas blatantly and sometimes events were a little posey compared to the old acid days. I didn't move to melb until 93ish so I can only comment from then. But the acid scene was so awesome and everyone felt connected and part of a movement at the time. No one gave a fuck that the guy next to you may be retarded or that a bird beside you was in bras and Indies as everyone was fuckef off their faces and drowning in 303.

[Zen Peddler]

For me doof and psytrance especially after about 04 or so became totally mechanised while the scene wanked on about organics it had such an incessant formula that it was to predictable and I had a bad trip one night about being a computer program designed to take over minds. Not that I'm saying that I hate psytrance or trance in general but I loved the techno and acid scenes the most. It was a cool time and everyone just seemed up for a good time, quality of products at clubs were of high quality and the 303 sloppy baselines will always be my thing

[Zen Peddler]

I remember moving to melb then and their being this massive whole scene of baggie pants, shaved heads, graffiti, drugs and techno. Crazy parties where shit went down that would be front page now and then carloads of duds in shit heaps with awesome stereos heading in to the clubs or out to a rave. I remember to pick up or score at some placed you just needed a ur shirt.

Edited July 5, 2012 by Zen Peddler BlueGreenie

[Torsten]

Doof and psytrance was really where it all got boring. From 1988 to 1995 music developed so fast that DJs could slot a track into a production timeframe within no more than 6 months even if they'd never heard it before. With each new keyboard or module that was released 2 or 3 new styles developed. Even though I really like psytrance and was a doofer for many years, the progressiveness of the scene had become the obvious casualty. And I know people will whinge about that statement, but please keep in mind that I was a DJ at the time [when that was still an uncommon profession] and also had a vinyl import business supplying places like Euphemism [and that record store in greville st which the name escapes me] in melbourne and reachn, BPM and central in sydney. The sheer volume of new music that came though my hands each week was a privilege that only a dozen or so people in australia had and only 2 or 3 were doing similar styles to what I got. I was the first to import and distribute TIP, H.O.S., Matsuri, Twisted, and lots of the other psy pioneer labels to australia.

I waited for years for psy to evolve, but gave up around 2001 when the wankers on psy forums had already spent several years arguing about the finer details of what defines dark, vs psy, vs goa, vs whatever. To me it is quite simple, if the difference is so vague that most DJs of the genre can't reliably categorise a track then it is not a new category, but simply a marketing name. In retrospect most people agree that 1997/98 was the death of psy as an art and the beginning of it as a business. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Rave did the same thing 4 years earlier. Westbam said in an interview in '93 that he spent many years making music for the underground and that he is happy that the underground is now commercial [rave was commercial in germany by early '93] because that makes room for innovation and a new underground. It was one of the most logical and honest things I'd ever heard about the music scene and industry, which is why whenever a genre sells out I am feverishly looking for what might be brewing in the underground. As much as I dislike dubstep for example, at least it was something new and innovative.

Music doesn't need to be innovative for me to enjoy it. I like cheesy trance as much as I like twisted minimal techno. What shits me is when people claim innovation and evolution where there is none or where it is so incremental that it appears desperate to make such a claim. As a consumer I am happy with the commercial aspect of EDM, but as a DJ, producer or distributor my heart can only be in it if I feel like I am contributing to the evolution of society.

kalika, what do you mean by doof being mostly organics? seems to me that LSD is still the main drug and that is just as organic or synthetic as mdma or amphetamine for that matter. And coke is more organic than LSD.

[nabraxas]

london in the early 90's was a mix ov just about everything; breakbeat, techno, hardcore, garage, acid, D&B...sometimes all at one venue.

e's were cheap, easy to score in any venue, never got ripped off, more MDA than MDMA & fucking strong- you'd get these constant rushes ov pure ecstasy for the first hour or so as you came up, just one would keep you going for 6 odd hours & come the morning i'd often wish i could have my jaw surgically removed it would ache so much from the grinding.

then we'd end up at one ov the crews house smoking dope, chatting, maybe watch a vid, then back home around 11am not so messed up that you couldn't get it up, but still messed up enough that sex was fucking awesomely incredible.

i remember one time discussing w/the wife how we could save some money to go travelling, i suggested cutting the raving down to once a fortnight...that never happened. We lived for those weekends.

And i used to love the way the DJ played w/the crowd, for example going really hard getting everybody going then after a time dropping the tempo right down, you'd see everybody relax & catch their breath for a few moments, then he'd ratchet it up again & the whole crowd would jump back into it again.

checkout this vid. from the show Spaced, at the 2:07 mark it does exactly that, watching this brought back really strong memories ov those days, it's really well observed:

 

Everybody was on e, everybody, & that gave every event a really special vibe.

i agree w/Zen that the bush doofs i went to from 2000-2005 seemed "an incessant formula that is too predictable"

Edited July 6, 2012 by nabraxas

[nabraxas]

 

this was one ov the tracks that really filled the dance floor. I don't know what category you'd put it in, but for awhile in 92 everyone was mixing chanting Tibetan monks over minimalist backing tracks thanks to this song.

& then there was this track also in 92: (this is a live version)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj4fj3VJ-Pk&feature=related

if this didn't get you up & dancing nothing would.

Happy days Edited July 5, 2012 by nabraxas

[Torsten]

I took a break from life for a bit over a year in 92, so my only connection to the scene at the time was friends sending me mixed tapes which I would play on my solar powered car stereo in my bush cabin, LOL.

These two tracks are still acid house. It just made me think that we used to have one name for a style for quite a while, but it would be quite different variants over the months. After 1997 it was the other way round - lots of names, not a lot of variation. In plant taxonomy they call it lumpers and splitters, LOL.

Hardfloor were like the skrillex or deadmau5 of today, remixing every friggin track to their distinct style. Made it easy to mix though ;)

OK, so here some of my fave's.

The only DJ I've ever heard this play was Terry Ho. This track was always the highlight of my nights at the richmond tavern in '91. I finally managed to track this down on vinyl a couple of years ago, LOL. This was doing my head in for years. Terry had it on white label and wouldn't give any details about it [that was normal for DJs in those days], but it was obvious this track should be called magic roundabout. Looking for that name always ended up with another Caspar Pound track also called magic Roundabout which had no connection to the TV show. So here is the one that used to get me off:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQZ3aboftUg

My fave track at Maze [sorry too munted to know who was playing it]. The bee.

 

 

[Torsten]

Possibly my favourite track of all time. Let me love you for tonight. Keep in mind this is '89. Turn up the volume!

 

The above was such an awesome track that Jones & Stephenson turned it into the Fourth Rebirth a few years later.

 

[Torsten]

Rebirth was also my first party in sydney and my reentry into the local scene after a stint overseas. It is still a bit of a legendary party - held illegally in the camberwell primary school. It was weird that after spending 6 months DJing in amsterdam, frankfurt and berlin at huge events, it would be a tiny party back in oz that would leave such an impression.

First Rebirth also happns to be one of my fave tracks.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HgZe3dUltk

[nabraxas]

the "let me love you" track seems to have stood the test ov time, still sounds good

for some reason it reminded me ov this choon, again from 92, if i remeber correctly it reached number 6 in the charts & was on Top of the Pops....we loved that, raving gone mainstream

 

 

Edited July 5, 2012 by nabraxas

[∂an]

Doof and psytrance was really where it all got boring. From 1988 to 1995 music developed so fast that DJs could slot a track into a production timeframe within no more than 6 months even if they'd never heard it before. With each new keyboard or module that was released 2 or 3 new styles developed. Even though I really like psytrance and was a doofer for many years, the progressiveness of the scene had become the obvious casualty.

 

yeah I can see how rapidly evolving technology would lead to more fancy sounds and less creativity. now, however, the technology has kind of plateaued with most production being software based, and maybe that opens the door for creativity again. some of the tech/dub/psy fusion that is being produced now is quite interesting...

kalika, what do you mean by doof being mostly organics? seems to me that LSD is still the main drug and that is just as organic or synthetic as mdma or amphetamine for that matter. And coke is more organic than LSD.

 

doofs at their best embrace the orgranic vibe... outdoor venues, music infused with 'organic' sounds. weed, beer, acid and shrooms seems to be the intoxicants of choice for doofs. have even seen aya and cactus... I have never witnessed someone chewing on a foot of cactus in a warehouse, but tell me I'm wrong! the incorporation of things like smoking ceremonies, solar generators, tree planting, soundoff times and workshops etc shows that there is a bit of maturity happening in the doof scene and this is really important to try to do even if it comes across as hippy crap.

i'm not trying to say one is better than the other just making an observation that doof parties now have a similar position in society as rave parties did in the early 90's as an alternative progressive force challenging peoples culturally indoctrinated ideologies. the one love vibe that you guys describe of these parties sounds really amazing, and I agree that is hard to come across these days in any genre. where is the love?

Edited July 5, 2012 by kalika

[Zen Peddler]

I've got another few cracker tracks off old pirate radio that I will post here as I don't know what these are either.

[Zen Peddler]

Btw meeting Caspar would have been awesome. Dr motte and sven were both signed to rising high as well early on.

[Zen Peddler]

Rebirth was also my first party in sydney and my reentry into the local scene after a stint overseas. It is still a bit of a legendary party - held illegally in the camberwell primary school. It was weird that after spending 6 months DJing in amsterdam, frankfurt and berlin at huge events, it would be a tiny party back in oz that would leave such an impression.

First Rebirth also happns to be one of my fave tracks.

 

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=0HgZe3dUltk

 

Holy shit I never knew the name of that freaked out track. I remember that at a few events - we called it the 'medievil' track.

[Zen Peddler]

Some Caspar for ya ears: