Midwest Techno?
From the late eighties to the mid nineties there were some very cool and exciting new things happening in electronic music globally. It’s well known that the Midwest of the United States was part of the forefront of the global underground electronic movement of the time. Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis artists made some very big splashes in what was then an underground music scene that revolved around artists getting their vinyl 12″ records played exclusively by DJs at raves in the U.S. or raves and nightclubs overseas. Radio play was completely out of the realm of possibilities in the US for techno musicians. Additionally most of these artists received little credit for their work (especially if they didn’t DJ) as they were overshadowed by the gigging DJ’s that would regularly get credit for playing sets of awesome music which they did not create to thousands of ravers and clubbers on drugs.
While the U.S. west coast (mainly California) was known for it’s funky and calm breaks, the east coast was known for it’s clubby, poppy, and sometimes hard house and harder techno sound. Florida (Miami in particular) was known for it’s (Miami) breaks. The Midwest underground sound was, for a while, almost exclusively hard quarter note TR909 kick drums with acid squelches or the same TR909 kick drums with synth sounds that ranged from deep, clean, hollow and melodic to aggressive, distorted and dark. There was of course also tons of House music with heavy Disco influences coming out of Chicago but Chicago House needs it’s own blog all together.
While this blog is a salute to nineties Midwest Techno and the artists that shined during that time, there are artists from other periods and parts of the world who were influenced by these Midwest Techno Originals and had considerable success themselves while also influencing others, so I’m posting their music as well.
SPEAKING OF POSTING MUSIC, …
**If you are an artist or label who owns copyrights to music I have posted on this blog and you wish to have it taken down, please let me know and I’ll gladly remove the post immediately. On the other hand, if you’re an artist featured here and you have a track or two you’d like posted (old or new), please send me a message and link to an mp3 and I’ll post it.
