Industrial Techno
Metal, distortion, and a kick with the transient sharpened into a weapon.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
The closed hat plays only the a of each beat, never the beat or the offbeat, so the top end sounds like it is tripping rather than driving. The timbale is the loudest thing after the kick, at 108 on the and of 1 and 96 on the last sixteenth, which is the opposite of how most kits are balanced and is exactly the point. The electric snare is six points harder on 4 than on 2. Bar two puts a hat on the and of 2, moves the open hat from the and of 4 back to the and of 3, adds a metallic hit on the and of 2, and drops a doubled kick and a second snare into the last two sixteenths.
What it is
Techno crossed with the industrial tradition that runs from Throbbing Gristle through Ministry, made from distortion, metallic percussion and recordings of things being hit. Birmingham got there first: Regis, Surgeon and the Downwards label in the mid nineties made loop techno with the low end cranked and the tops made of scrap metal. Berlin and later Perc, Ancient Methods and Blawan took it further into pure noise. The hi-hat is often not a hi-hat at all but a sample of a pipe or a spring, and the backbeat is a distorted electric snare rather than a clap, because a clap sounds too human.
What it sounds like
A kick that clips on purpose, a snare that has been through a guitar amp, and metallic hits landing where you expect a hi-hat and also where you do not. The mid range is full of resonant clangs. There is a lot of reverb, but it is a bad reverb, small and metallic, more like a corridor than a hall. Melody is rare. Where a lead would be there is usually a feedback tone or a filtered scream, and the whole thing sits at the edge of distortion for its entire length.
Key elements
- Distortion on the kickOverdrive or a clipper on the kick itself, not on the master. It adds harmonics up through the mid range and makes the kick audible on a system with no sub.
- Metallic percussionTimbales, springs, pipes, brake drums. Recorded or sampled, pitched around 800Hz to 2kHz, and often louder in the mix than the hi-hats are.
- Distorted electric snareAn electric snare through saturation, on 2 and 4 but harder on 4 than on 2. A clap would be too warm for this.
- Hats on the aInstead of running eighths or sixteenths, the closed hat lands on the last sixteenth of each beat. It sounds like a stumble, and it is a Downwards signature.
- FeedbackA resonant filter self-oscillating, or a delay pushed past unity and caught before it takes over. Used as a lead line and automated by hand.
How to get them
- KickTake a 909 kick, drive it into a soft clipper by six to ten decibels, then high-pass at 40Hz to recover headroom. Compress after the distortion, not before.
- Metal soundsRecord a radiator, a chain or a metal shelf on a phone, then pitch it down two octaves and gate it hard. The unusable frequency response is what makes it sound right.
- SnareElectric snare into an amp simulator with the gain at three quarters, then a short spring reverb of about 400ms. Keep it mono and centre so it hits with the kick.
- ReverbA small metallic plate or a spring, 300 to 700ms, with almost no pre-delay. Long halls make this sound like ambient by accident.
- The noise leadA filtered noise generator with a resonant band-pass, resonance near self-oscillation, and the cutoff played by hand. Record the performance and comp it later.
- Mix disciplineEverything is distorted, so nothing has dynamic range to fight with. Use spectral separation instead: kick under 120Hz, snare at 200Hz and 3kHz, metal above 800Hz, and carve holes for each.
Reference points
Regis, Surgeon, Ancient Methods, Perc, Blawan, Paula Temple, Container, and the Downwards, Perc Trax and Avian labels. Reference points for the sound, and not endorsements. Birmingham techno is the same lineage played drier and more slowly.
The pattern is a starting point rather than a rule. If you want the theory underneath why any of it works, Battuto measures it.