Friday, March 25, 2016

NERD MUSIC Weekend Mixtape: House and Techno Classics


The G's House and Techno Mix (3.25.16)

Most people think of house and techno as European music, likely because both styles are significantly more popular in Europe than the U.S. But house is actually from Chicago and techno is from Detroit, and though both are thoroughly globalized now, they were originally made by Black artists--reflecting the specific experiences of African Americans in these postindustrial U.S. cities.

I was a bit late to the party, so to speak, only really discovering house and techno in the early/mid 90s. But it blew my mind--here was a music that captured the zeitgeist perfectly: the epochal shift from mass employment to automation, the onset of urban decay, the rise of cybernetics and information networks, the increasing pervasiveness of surveillance and the breakdown of all the old music industry hierarchies and mechanisms for gatekeeping.

So enjoy this "tape" of 12 exquisite house and techno classics, mostly but not exclusively from the 1980s and early 1990s--tracks that I believe capture the pure joy and thrill of that era...