Hypnotic Techno
Nine minutes of almost the same bar, which is exactly the intended effect.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
The cabasa hits every third sixteenth for the whole loop, which means it lands on 1, the a of 1, the and of 2, the e of 3, beat 4 and the a of 4 in the first bar, then somewhere else entirely in the second. It only comes back into phase with the bar after three bars, and playing this over an eight minute track is what produces the drift. The hats run all thirty two sixteenths in a twenty four point velocity band so they read as one continuous texture. Two rimshots in the whole loop, both off the beat. One open hat, on the and of 4 of bar two, and the closed hat steps out of its way.
What it is
The Berlin house style, more or less: long, loop-based, no backbeat, no drop, and a change of state every thirty two bars that you notice about four bars after it happens. Berghain and Tresor are the rooms it was built for and the sets are long enough that a track only needs to hold one idea. Its ancestry runs through Basic Channel's rhythm work, Jeff Mills' loop records and the Birmingham label Downwards, and its current form is what most people mean by raw techno. The absence of a clap is deliberate. A backbeat gives the ear a place to rest, and this music is trying not to give you one.
What it sounds like
A relentless kick with a hard front end, hats running every sixteenth in a narrow dynamic band so they blur into a texture, and a metallic tick on a rhythm that does not divide into the bar. Underneath, a filtered drone or a resampled loop that keeps changing without ever announcing it. There are no melodies. There are barely any events. The effect is that after four minutes you stop hearing the individual parts and start hearing one moving object.
Key elements
- No backbeatOne or two rimshots across two bars, and never on 2 or 4. Removing the backbeat is what makes the loop stop resolving.
- Rolling sixteenth hatsEvery sixteenth, with velocities in a range of about twenty five points. Close enough to blur, varied enough not to sound like a machine test.
- Three against fourA cabasa or metallic tick every three sixteenths. Over sixteen steps it lands in a different place each bar and only realigns after three bars.
- ResamplingBounce the loop, run it back through a filter and a reverb, bounce again. Two or three passes give you the grain that this music is made of.
- Change without eventsThe arrangement is filter positions, send levels and one element being muted. Nothing new is ever introduced after the first minute.
How to get them
- KickLayer a 909 body with a distorted click at around 3kHz. Keep the decay at about 350ms and gate it tightly so each hit is identical, because uniformity is the effect you want here.
- HatsOne sample, sixteenths, velocities cycling roughly 74, 50, 66, 50. Put a light saturator on the hat bus so the loud ones open up slightly and the quiet ones do not.
- The polyrhythmPlace a dry cabasa every three sixteenths across a two bar loop. Keep it around velocity 42 so it is only just audible; too loud and it reads as a mistake rather than a drift.
- ReverbOne medium plate of about 1.8 seconds on a send, with everything going to it, ducked by the kick. Shared reverb is what glues the loop into a single object.
- The droneA sustained low sound, resampled and filtered, that you high-pass and low-pass across the track. Nothing else in the track moves, and this should never move quickly.
- LengthWrite eight minutes. The style depends on the listener losing track of where the bar started, and that takes time to happen.
Reference points
Function, Marcel Dettmann, Ben Klock, Donato Dozzy, Peter Van Hoesen, Rrose, Regis, and the Ostgut Ton, Downwards and Token labels. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.
The pattern is a starting point rather than a rule. If you want the theory underneath why any of it works, Battuto measures it.