New Beat

What it is

A DJ at the Boccaccio in Destelbergen dropped a 45 onto 33 with the pitch fader pushed up, the floor went for it, and by 1987 Belgian records were being made that way on purpose. The trick was applied first to existing EBM and hi-NRG twelves, and then to new productions built at 108 from the start. For about two years it was the biggest music in Belgium, with hundreds of one-off white labels and a lot of studio time booked by people who had never made a record. The sound is EBM slowed to a crawl: the same sequencer, the same shouted samples, the same clap, but with all the aggression turned into something heavier and more stoned. Everything that followed in Belgian dance music, including the rave records of 1991, came out of this.

What it sounds like

Slow, thick and slightly comic. The kick is long and boomy, closer to a tom than to a techno kick, and there is a lot of it because at 108 there is time. Claps are wide and a little too loud. On top: sampled orchestra hits, sampled shouts, sampled anything, all played back below their recorded pitch so the formants sag. Basslines are a monosynth or a slowed 303. Cowbell is used without embarrassment. The mix is bright and midrange-heavy because most of it came off vinyl at the wrong speed and lost its top before anyone touched it.

Key elements

• 108 and no fasterThe tempo is the genre. The same arrangement at 128 is EBM and at 96 is something else, and there is a narrow window around 105 to 112 where it works.
• Pitched-down samplesOrchestra stabs, shouts and horn hits played back three or four semitones low, so they arrive slurred. This is what half of the top end consists of.
• The long kickDecay of 400ms or more, tuned low, with the tail bleeding into the next beat. It has to fill the space the slow tempo creates.
• CowbellLoud, on the a of the beat rather than on the beat, and mixed forward enough that it becomes a hook. Restraint was not part of the aesthetic.
• The acid line underneathA 303 or a resonant monosynth running slowly with the filter opening across sixteen bars. It arrived from Chicago and slotted straight in.

How to get them

• Set the tempo firstStart the project at 108 and write everything to it. Do not write at 128 and slow it down; the parts you write at speed will be too busy to survive the drop.
• KickA long 909 or DMX kick with the decay near maximum, tuned to around 50Hz, saturated lightly and left uncompressed so the tail is audible under the clap.
• Sample lowTake an orchestra hit or a brass stab and drop it four semitones with no formant correction. The unnatural sag is the sound, and correcting it removes the genre.
• ClapOne wide clap sample at minus eight, gated at 250ms, panned centre and layered with a very short reverb of 120ms. It should feel bigger than the kick.
• Cowbell808 cowbell on the a of 2 and the a of 4, band-passed 700Hz to 3kHz, at around minus twelve. Higher than good taste allows, which is correct here.
• AcidA 303 emulation at half the note density you would use for acid house, cutoff opening over sixteen bars, resonance around 70 percent and accent on every fourth step.

Reference points

A Split-Second, Confetti's, The Maxx, Lords of Acid, Erotic Dissidents, and the Antler, Subway and Music Man labels out of Ghent and Brussels. Named as reference points for the sound, not endorsements.