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​Humanoid's 'sT8818r' remix - Dec. 3, 2021


wredny

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15 hours ago, Satans Little Helper said:

Incredible to have Ae remix this classic! Thx!!!!!

How about getting them to do a whole album remixing classics like these :-)

Imagine. A whole album of ae remixing techno/electro/and acid classics. Damn.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was already a load of unreleased material along these lines in the vaults.

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Humanoid - sT8818r Humanoid' is out now:

Overview - Bandcamp + worldwide shops

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Colored vinyl (Limited Edition)
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Digital
Juno Download: https://bit.ly/3lC3ZDH
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Reminder for Humanoid's radio show today:
 
Today, 16h-17h CET Friday 03.12 (London GMT 15h-16h)
De:tuned w/ Humanoid (UK)
Edited by Detuned
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1 hour ago, purlieu said:

Great liner notes from Sean about stumbling across Brian back in the '80s.

As I have limited space in the flat I get digital gubbins (unless it's super duper speshial - this was close to getting due to the fabulous tDR artwork job) so missed these linear notes. Is it related to this from the Ask Autechre Anything:

@SR4
have you ever met Gaz and Brian of FSOL? Are they really pompous, or just insane?

Sean
"actually yeah in 88 i was in salford college and brian was there, i would see gaz but like, down the corridor waiting impatiently

a guy on my course booked them to play at the riverside in hyde as stakker, and there were tapes going round college as well, they were college celebs for a brief time

i left college to buy gear after that, partly cos of their stuff being so good and him making it at home (rather than in the college studio)

they were key to us even existing, looking back if they hadn't been there i would prob be an engineer in some studio by now"

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I left school in summer 1988, at 16, with just enough GCSEs to get onto a course at Salford College, titled 'Professional Audio Systems'.


Previously, in spring of that year while I was still at school I visited the college and course leader Sandy showed me around. At the time the Adelphi building had two studios - an 8-track and a 16-track. It all seemed impressive but the thing I remember most was seeing two guys sitting in the 8-track studio with some acid track playing. I asked 'is this yours?', one of them nodded and said 'yeah'.

I was thinking 'wtf, people here are making acid tunes, perfect'.
I started that September.

At the time the only gear Rob and I had were a Roland 606 and a Casio SK-1, together with a Phonic MRT-60, Rob's decks, tape decks and a recently acquired Boss RSD-10.
When I first heard acid in 87 I didn't really understand what a 303 was or how it worked, but I thought the sound of it was amazing. I used to wonder what kind of machine made a sound like that, it was so lyrical and affecting.

I liked how with acid the sound was changing but the notes stayed the same, and like hip-hop it was about using repetition in new ways and the sounds were more relevant than the notes.
I thought if I took the course I might be able to at least spend some time on some of the gear there and have a go.

Most of the other students on my course didn't even consider drum machines to be 'real music' (they were aiming to be rock/pop engineers), and the buzz around Manchester at the time was house, which I liked bits of, but mainly I was interested in electro and acid.

I found the beats on most house a bit boring. With a 4-4 you had to fit the other stuff around it well, and a lot of people would just put an open hat on every halfbeat. Now and then someone like Armando would bring a bit more funk than the others, he'd use more offbeats which was closer to what I was into, like it had a hint of electro.
By autumn 88, Stu Allan's House Hour had been going for a couple of years, and he was playing about 75% acid tunes. Newbuild had just come out which I was obsessed with, and Gerald was becoming a local celebrity. He had that same sort of funk Armando did, loads of offbeats and more interesting patterns than a lot of the jacked-up US stuff.
One lad on my course, Naweed, had some similar taste to me. I usually sat wth him, and he knew this guy on another course there, Wayne, who was mates with a guy called Brian who was doing acid tracks.

A few days later I heard a tape of some of Brian's stuff (at the time they were calling themselves Stakker). From what I can remember it was probably the stuff that was released years later as 'Humanoid Sessions' - loads of tiny acid segments fused together with little interludes made of test tones and quick bursts of other tracks you didn't even get to hear properly, like switching channels in a future where people only play acid.

All of it was solid and I was well impressed but one track on there really stood out.
Unlike a lot of the others it had an electro beat, and then this really fierce sounding acid, big flat slabs instead of enveloped notes, and slightly distorted. Really different sounding to most pre-90s acid stuff, with all these little one-bar fills and edited drops like you'd get in hip-hop or freestyle - a crafty blend of all the stuff I was into at the time.
The main hook had samples from Berzerk in there: 'HUMANOID', 'INTRUDER ALERT' and a load of laser sounds going off.
I was thinking 'fucking hell this is better than anything coming out of the US'.

It was maybe two weeks later when it charted.
The whole thing was surreal, seeing it go from being a gem on a tape in college to being on TOTP. It was pretty amazing (and actually reassuring) that something so hardcore could actually pierce the mainstream. Genuinely inspiring.

I only met Brian once back then, in this little room next to the 16-track studio. Naweed and Wayne had taken me down there. I remember he was showing us bits of video, what would eventually become Eurotechno and Evil Acid Baron Show. I asked him which studio they were using for music and he said he just did stuff at home.

I realised at that point I was probably wasting my time on that course, where each week I'd get access to the studio for a couple of hours at most, so I left in early 89 to get a job and buy more gear.

The next thing we got was a 202.

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