Trailing Edge: Initial Thoughts on ‘Grey Area’ Techno

Beats and Grooves and Random Left Turns

Trailing Edge: Initial Thoughts on ‘Grey Area’ Techno

[Welcome to “Trailing Edge,” a feature I’m trying out for the ‘blog where I discover a new-to-me genre that’s actually been around for several years. The first installment covers ‘Grey Area,’ a mathematical overlap between techno and D’n’B named for the micro-label that birthed it]

 

Something that has, for the past few months, been floating around that weird boundary between things I’m actively aware of and things I’m vaguely aware of is 170 BPM techno. I’ve always understood that techno ranges from 120 to 150 BPM with only rare exceptions. This stuff at one seventy, well into D’n’B territory? Suspect. And what is the point of it? Shoving some 4×4 beats into a set of breaks? Very suspect.

My opinion might be softening.

See, I picked up an EP from Samurai Music Group, possibly my favorite D’n’B label and one well known for pushing… no, actually for SHREDDING the boundaries of the genre. This EP is by Japanese producer Lemna, called “Urge Theory,” and it is not what I’d ever call drum and bass.

The first thing I noticed about the music was its strong polyrhythmic pulses. The first track, “Dice,” shoves your nose right in them, starting out with a languid 6/4 feel before the kicks engage and shift the frame to a half-step 170/85, with the initial pulse transformed into triplets. I enjoyed this. Tonal and rhythmic ambiguity is something that never fails to hit the pleasure centers of my brain.

[WARNING: basic math ahead]

The real fun started when I loaded the tracks into Traktor and discovered that the beat analyzer was thrown for a similar loop. All four tracks on the EP were designated as 127.5 BPM, or the triplet pulse. I did some calculations and corrected the tempo, and only a few minutes later twigged to the number: 127. Berlin techno tempo.

So the tracks have (at least) three different speeds. 170 BPM, then a half-step feel at 85 BPM, plus a triplet pulse at 127.5 BPM. I ran a quick experiment, starting with a Marcel Dettmann track, mixing it into “Dice” so that the 4/4 synced up with the triplets… and listening as the whole thing slid sideways. In a good way. Next I mixed “Dice” into a 170 BPM Autonomic tune, then back into another Lemna track. To stick the landing, I queued up a 127 BPM Martyn track and synced it to the triplets. Once again the polyrhythms slid around each other until figure became ground, candlestick switched to two profiles, and the triplets became 4/4.

Was this on purpose? A slippery little musical subgenre designed as a transition back and forth between D’n’B tempo and techno tempo? My suspicions were goosed when I looked into it more and found out that the music is designated Grey Area.

As with any genre, pinpointing a starting point can be tricky if not risky, but in this case it all traces back to California-based producer ASC. Before Grey Area was a genre it was a label, one of SMG’s many subs, a collaboration with ASC’s Auxiliary Records. Grey Area was a label with a bit of a gimmick: releasing a series of five EPs with no names, only numbers (Volume One, Volume Two, etc.), each featuring four tracks also with no names, only numbers (track one entitled ‘1,’ etc.), credited to no artists. Pure anonymity to focus the listener’s attention on the music, free of context. While we can’t be certain how much of the music ASC himself was behind, he has been the producer who has taken the ideas and most enthusiastically run with them– claiming credit for “cracking of the rhythmic code to link the 170 bpm tempo perfectly with a true techno aesthetic.”

Two years later, Grey Area techno remains nascent, the domain of a few artists on one or two labels. Will it spread further and evolve, the mathematical link between 127 and 170 made sonically concrete, or will it prove an interesting cul de sac? Damfino, but I’ll be keeping half an eye on it to see what happens next.