New Predicament is a smooth acid flavored track from 2001. While a straight forward track, it does have a breaky West Coast feel which makes it fun to play. Aside from the percussion and airy samples, most of the sounds were produced by the mighty Virus synth, some sampled and morphed further in the DAW, others recorded straight from the box and tweaked in real-time.
Listening to it after all these years I decided to slow it down a bit as the original was too fast by today’s standards. So I brought it down to 135bpm, and actually prefer it at this rate.
Once again, the wav download is available and recommended.
Carbon Face is a funky track that was picked up by the Netherlands-based Work Hard Play Hard label and released in 2006 on a self titled 3 track EP. The track was inspired by the techno-house sound of the early 2000’s pioneered by Italian producers like Marco Carola, Rino Cerrone, Gaetano Parisio and others, and is essentially a tribute to them. In recent years this flavor of techno has faded in favor of minimal sounds but I look forward to hearing it reappear in future genre mutations.
We’ll cover Gimmick and Thoroughbred (also on this EP) later, but I was pretty happy with how this release came together as each of the tracks features some pretty mangled samples but the focus on the groove is maintained throughout. As for Carbon Face itself, its based on a bass line played through a sampler using sounds from some expensive bass guitar sample CD which I bought and almost never used. Almost. But it ended up on this track and sort of made it worth it since I dig the track and it wouldn’t work without it. (Come to think of it, I think I used a different bass sound from the same sample CD on the track Homeage, covered here earlier this year.) The vocal sample is from another sample collection and its not as ambiguous as I it ought to have been, but its a good fit.
Anyhow, the release is available at BeatPort in any format you like.
In the short list of my most favorite techno labels has to be Luxus, a short lived German imprint known for intelligent arrangements built on crispy, groovy beats and superbly put together. A few records by Plasmatics and Lower Level released on this label were frequently heard in my mixes, as well as of other New York based techno DJs including my boys DJ Eleven and Preston Space.
I bring up this label here since its sound, and the sound of Plasmatics and Lower Level in particular, was the inspiration for the track Decoy, available for download here. Decoy is another personal favorite – a raw, loopy track with a tribal feel and a thick revolving bass laid over polished drum sounds. The bass was (once again) played through the Virus B synth and processed with the RNC 1773 compressor. The sound is deep enough to sit alongside the kick drum even without side-chaining and ducking, though this technique could have perhaps given the track more of a pump. But it rolls nicely without it and the spotlight is on the sounds in the top end, of which the core is the highly compressed clap. I used this sample on a few tracks and, if I remember correctly, it came from a Luxus record! Aside from the percussion samples, present are a couple of other classic Techno elements – the TR909 snare drum and ride cymbal.
Fake House is a rare house track of the bunch. It sort of caught me by surprise and took all of about 4 hours to arrange. It has a very raw, sample-based vibe which makes it a fun track to play (and play with) in an early or late set.
The creamy bass line was played on the Nord Lead keyboard, and is joined by a reversed electric piano riff and a couple of other mangled samples. The main beat was summed and reversed in a couple of breaks to add to the odd feel.
Produced 6 years ago (almost to the day), Battery is an alternate version of Alkaline, a track released in 2003 on one of New York’s premier techno labels: Gotham Grooves. Alkaline was a B-side on the Funk Matter EP, which featured remixes of the title track by Agent Orange and Valentino Kanzyani and will be covered here more directly later, but for now we’ll just focus on the Alkaline‘s gentler sibling.
Unlike the released version which has a darker, mangled vibe, Battery is a funkier jam with a free style bassline. Until now, only a couple of select few DJs had access to this rare mix. Now you do too.
We’re going way back to 1999 for one of the first Alek Biotic live mixes: Funkin. A disco house set, Funkin features a few classics from the period, most notably Knights of The Jaguar by Aztec Mystic (aka DJ Rolando). A flurry of remixes followed the release of Jaguar, but Funkin features the original which I’m happy to stay I still have on vinyl (2 copies, in fact). Also present is one of my favorite Basement Jaxx jams, Miracles Keep On Playin’ (Red Alert Remix), often heard in my sets around this time.
The mood of the mix toughens up in the second half with a couple of tracks from Timo Maas, Joey Beltran’s Arena and ending up with Adam Beyer’s remix of The Real Jazz – a sick crossover track and a personal favorite. (The original version of Krome and Dahlback’s The Real Jazz appears on the mix The Hook Up Service, completed in early 2009 and featured on this blog.)
There were lots of copies of this CD going around and it actually got quite a few plays. According to unconfirmed reports it even reached cafes on the Adriatic and Mediterranean coasts. I worked on a follow-up tentatively titled Stylin which followed the same vibe but was never officially released. I’ll see if I can dig it up and make it available here in the future.
Track List:
Ramon Lafour & Tim J – Pluck Funkin’
Techhouse Phenomena – Pure Science
Aztec Mystic – Knights of the Jaguar
Funky Derrick – Keep It Up (Third Earth Mix)
Mile High Club – Pill Pipeline
Mastermind – Free To Do Whatever
Basement Jaxx – Miracles Keep On Playin’ (Red Alert Mix)
Mr. Spring – Blax Trax 1
Armin Van Buuren – Free (Olav Basoski’s Bodycheck Mix)
Funk Function – Empress Zero
Timo Maas – Eclipse
Jan Driver – Drive By
Joey Beltram – Arena
Timo Maas – Riding On The Storm
Thomas Krome – Real Jazz (Adam Beyer Remix)
Produced ages ago, Ghost is the first officially signed Alek Biotic track! It appeared on the German label Bazooka 10‘s first release, oddly titled Erectional Thoughts. A sublabel of Hadshot (one of the first and most respected psy-trance labels), Bazooka 10 offered a different sound and to kick things off the label’s founder, Israeli DJ Yaniv Tal, assembled this compilation. The album was available on both vinyl and CD and featured a variety of international artists including Cortex Thrill.
My discography with Bazooka 10 would include two follow-up EPs, but Ghost still stands out as it was the first ever signed record deal.
Ghost was inspired by the industrial sound of acts like Nine Inch Nails as well as a few popular Underworld tracks from the period. It was arranged using the Akai MPC2000 workstation and recorded to DAT. All of the sounds (drums, synths, samples) were played through the Nord Lead keyboard and the Quasimidi Polymorph module, and no loops were used. Ghost is a personal favorite and I’ve wanted to do a remix of it for a long time, however having sold most of the gear used to produce it and left with just the summed master the effort of recreating it from scratch didn’t seem particularly appealing. Maybe someday…
Lastly, this is the first track featured on trak.fm which has been previously released. So, no WAV download available, but you can get yourself a copy of the full album at online stores like Psyshop.com.
Atera is a Techno House track from 2006. Like many Biotic tracks, it features a driving, tribal beat with lots of percussion, vocal stabs and a thick bass line. What balances is out is the gentler sound of the Rhodes keys which give it a splash of a down-tempo vibe. The track took a while to complete and went through a few revisions, partly to fine tune the crowded low-end, but also due to the marriage the softer and harsher elements which also made it difficult to market. Subsequently, the track wasn’t shopped much and ended up rotting on some disc.
Aside from the drums, the foundation of the track is the simple pulsating bass played by the Photone Synth (see screenshot), a child of the previously mentioned Reaktor software. Interestingly, the sound used for this part was not a tweaked sound or a preset, but the raw generator tone with no filters or processing applied. I’ve always liked the basic sound of this synth and have used it on a few occasions. Reaktor and Absynth were used for the remaining synth sounds. The TubeVST plugin was used to fatten up some of the sounds and give them a more airy tone. The Focusrite ComPounder was used for this purpose as well.
In addition to the MP3 and WAV versions of the completed track, included is the midi file for the main bass line, if you’d like to use it for something or simply get a kick out of playing it in your midi player. Lastly, I’ll be adding the BPM field for all tracks shortly. For now, this one is at 135 beats per minute, a common tempo for Biotic tracks.
August 28, 2009 / admin / Comments Off on Exclusive: Upstanding Citizens present Funkadelic Sexy
Unless you’re really in-the-know, it may come as a surprise that Upstanding Citizens is a project of old buddies Rus Deep (Mr. Preverted Groove himself) and Alek Biotic. But even if you were familiar with the duo and their track Cannibal Carnival featured on Rus and David Sambor’s 2003 CD Sounds Under New York, the only way you could have heard the follow up Funkadelic Sexy would have been during a Rus Deep or Alek Biotic live set. But even then you wouldn’t have known it.
Well, here it is now, to set things straight.
Recorded in Alek’s Brooklyn studio in late 2003 and mastered shortly after, the track features the vintage Rus Deep tear-down and re-build, with the classic NYC Progressive House vibe. Once again, original Wav file is included.
Goliath is a tech-trance jam from 2002. The title comes from the sample used in it, taken from the 1997 Sci-fi flick Event Horizon. If you haven’t seen this movie and you’re into the genre I recommend it, though Sam Neill’s annoying character (and his lame lines) ruined the ending for me.
I am generally not a fan of sampling stuff from movies, but I made an exception here since the track was inspired by the movie and the line (delivered by Laurence Fishburne) fit the bill. The sound of thunder in the background also came from the movie and I always wondered what it was doing there since (unless the thunder was somehow on the space ship) it wouldn’t have been heard in space. Hollywood… whatever.
Another interesting production note is that the bass is not played by a synth but is a heavily filtered sample of an Autechre track Rae from LP5, a sick album which I was heavily into around this time. Rae remains one of my Autechre faves.
Initially, the track was not a Part anything. It was just a track of its own. But a few months later I wrote a different track based largely on it (sans the Fishbourne sample) and that became Part 2, making this one its prequel. Look for the follow-up here in the future.
New Predicament is a smooth acid flavored track from 2001. While a straight forward track, it does have a breaky West Coast feel which makes it fun to play. Aside from the percussion and airy samples, most of the sounds were produced by the mighty Virus synth, some sampled and morphed further in the DAW, others recorded straight from the box and tweaked in real-time.
In the short list of my most favorite techno labels has to be 
