Freakaholic said:
What do you know about Control Tower? Somehow, a couple of years ago, I ended up buying about 5 or 6 records of theirs, and am now on their mailing list. A group of guys now going under the name Deadsilence Syndicate are doing live DnB, ion band format, and it seems doign pretty well.
How this came from their dark electro records is a mystery to me. But Ive always dug that sound, and wondered if anyone was doing anything the same: dark, fast, evil sounding electrobreaks that make you scared more than want to dance.
Is there a "scene" for that? Other artists? Are they doing something under another name?
It was tenniswood's label. He A&Red it, and ran it with someone else.
Detroit producers like Shake, Yanu & UR used to release stuff like this pretty regularly in the 90s. Control tower & tenniswood's radioactive man stuff always struck me as a british take on this sound, borrowing a little from techstep (which doesnt figure at all on american radars).
Tenniswood was the focal point of the UK electro scene when i was into it about 5 years ago - haywire was the main night for that sort of thing. A few other people tried to set it off but it was pretty small scale, some good parties though. It seems much bigger in the states, particularly through the south.
I drifted away from that scene so i dont know much about what's happening now - try
the electro alliance forum - most hedz posted on there and, having just glanced again at it for the first time in 3 years, it seems to still be in fairly rude health.
I agree this genre could do with it's own name - 'electro' means so many different things to different people. Tenniswood did seem to be consciously pushing a sound away from retro electro, away from downtempo IDM and from the techno scene although obviously there was major crossover from those areas.
I dont know if it ever crossed majorly into the D&B scene here. Although more recently I've heard interesting reports about a free party sound system playing this sound. Havent come across them yet though.