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Cristian Vogel`s explorations of music have taken him far and wide, into some strange sonic territories, but at the heart of his work is the musical pulse and philosophical base of techno. Cristian`s influence on techno – and techno`s influence on him – has been such over the past 14-odd years means that, in his words, “I am already deep within. In fact, I can't really see any way that I could get out, if I wanted to.” Though many may have higher public profile, there are very few people on... Read more
Cristian Vogel`s explorations of music have taken him far and wide, into some strange sonic territories, but at the heart of his work is the musical pulse and philosophical base of techno. Cristian`s influence on techno – and techno`s influence on him – has been such over the past 14-odd years means that, in his words, “I am already deep within. In fact, I can't really see any way that I could get out, if I wanted to.” Though many may have higher public profile, there are very few people on the planet who could claim to be as tightly and intimately tied into the social networks, the technologies and the sonic developments of techno itself. Though his output may be ever-diversifying - taking in electro-soul with Super_Collider, pure electronic sound-making as Trurl & Klaupacius, post-punk with the Chicks On Speed and many other sounds - techno is and always will be woven into who he is and what he does.
Like techno itself, Cristian is avowedly internationalist, acknowledging the importance of places but refusing to be tied to them. Though many have tried to use the fact of his South American birth, or his strong ties with Berlin (and the Tresor label in particular), to bundle him into particular movements or sounds, he has always managed to mutate and escape the confines of others` definitions. Just as techno is not defined just by its own origins and outposts in Detroit, Berlin, Glasgow – wherever - but by the actions of every person across the continents that is playing it at any given moment, so Cristian`s life and work are defined by the totality of his travels and the global reach of his music.
The story of Cristian and his life in techno begins in a bedsit in the Midlands of the UK, “with my mates and their raver flatmates in Leamington rushing very very hard to tapes from the Eclipse in Coventry, to that same acid tape that hadn`t made sense to me before, and to all these 12" vinyls these nutters had in the bedsit... and it all made sense very suddenly and it was written in light that acid house was so fucking revolutionary, and that getting high was something that i was gong to have to get used to, and that my life was going to be completely amazing and completely dedicated to that top top buzz of music that couldn't be played on the TV or Radio 1.”
From then on it was “clubbing, hooking up with people that knew a whole lot more than me about DJing, records, breakbeats, hip hop and just fuckin soaking it all up, making tracks the whole time on my Amiga.... I must have written literally thousands of proto-acid and techno during that period, on 4 channels of an Amiga."
Cristian attended – and later taught 20th century music at - the University of Sussex in Brighton. His time there coincided with his first releases, his first international club gigs, the patronage of John Peel (who invited him to record two sessions for the show, the broadcast of the first of which caused Cris to “switch on as many radios in the flat as possible and kind of run from one to the other, giggling”), and his general emergence as an established artist. Yet even as he was being lauded across Europe and beyond, he was struggling to find a place in his adopted home town`s scene, a relationship that would remain complex for years:
“There was no cultural infrastructure for an alternative scene to develop, the infrastructure was occupied by the boom of commercial dance clubs and commercial dance music; there weren`t any spaces left. At least in the alternative, or independent, small business environment, there was some kind of community based infrastructure, cool people with advice and support networks, like the SubGenius boys [cult leaders, pranksters and t-shirt artists] Red Design [who still create Cristian`s artwork] etc. We were part of that community, and so thats how No Future managed to be born and survive in Brighton. Also, on a personal level, I spent the best part of my 20s in that funky town, and during that time got a solid grounding in British cool, British fun and wonderful people.”
The artist collective, No Future (or Erutufon as it is alternatively known now), certainly did emerge with Cristian, Emma Sola and Mat Consume at the helm, and in a tangled and twisted way flourished. Many connections with friends and collaborators were made in this time: Trash, Spymania, Dave Tarrida and the Sativa crew, Neil Landstrumm and Scandinavia Recordings, Cristain`s long-time friend Si Begg, and the musicians who were to go on to be his co-conspirators in Super_Collider (most importantly, of course, Jamie Lidell, then part of Subhead). Club nights – successively The Box, Defunkt and Freekin The Frame – were organized, big names spun records in little venues, parties were thrown, messy nights and blurry days passed and a small but tight network of people witnessed the birth of some incredible music, including Cristian`s legendary early albums:
`Beginning To Understand` and even more so `Absolute Time` reflected Cristian`s experiences on the Euro DJ circuit, consisting of pummeling club tracks aimed at “an imaginary audience, no longer individual people, but a dark, never-ending throb of psychosexual and paraphysical beings fuelled by high volume modular music ” `Bodymapping` explored housier textures (including `Scratch And Bite` which was picked up and remixed by Blake Baxter and Joey Beltram), but following this Cris moved into unrecognisable territories.
Through `Specific Momentific`, `All Music Has Come To An End` and `Busca Invisibles`, Cris got as deep into his own studio gear as any tech head ever has. His explorations reflected deep personal changes, and social changes in the wider scene even as they worked alone as radical new demonstrations of the possibilities and complexities of the techno form. `Busca Invisibles` also marked the first conscious expression of his Chilean roots, with its Spanish title and Afro-Cuban and South American rhythms.
Parallel with `Busca Invisibles`, Cristian was working on Super_Collider`s `Head On` with Jamie Lidell co-producing and singing. The Super_Collider project was to become perhaps techno`s only true “band”, and to produce two albums (thus far) of some of the most perfect meldings of technologies finesse and power with real human funk ever made, as well as some legendary live shows with a team of serious underground musicians.
The album `Sing Sweet Software` recorded under the name Trurl & Klaupacius represents Cris`s purest exploration of electronic sound; “a pure avant-garde creation, recordings of my more esoteric and surreal sonic ambiances recorded one weekend, when the moon was right; a pure white heat”, as he puts it. This was followed by his move to Novamute, and the awesome `Rescate 137` which showed his production skills sharpened even more on a huge variety of rhythms and styles, incorporating hip hop, avant-garde sounds and live instruments, but always with a beating techno heart. The `Dungeon Master` double 12” followed, “an important step into the realms of the 'beyond'” for his style, mixing snarling bass and pounding dancefloor techno with the experimentalism of his previous releases.
Now, settled in Barcelona and working hard on art projects (notably the 2005 Gilles Jobin dance piece `Steakhouse` for which Cristian has built a brand new electronic sound manipulation device known as Angus) and production for other artists, Cristian is ready to give the world Station 55 on Novamute. A record built up through a series of collaborative efforts with local friends and internationally-known artists, it is shot through with huge enjoyment as much as with the dark and strange emotions that he has never been afraid to explore on wax. Though tempos and moods vary, it is still as much a techno record as anything in his career, a record which shows his unflagging dedication to the radicalism of the scene which started him rushing so many years ago:
“I still love it. The best thing is that now, post-techno, and post-acid, I know what to look out for in music ... it's that 'thing' , it's that alternative mentality, that awareness of the power in the sound and it's cool that it can be expressed in rock and guitars and electroacoustic blips and hip hop and pure production, and all that music that we carry on rushing to so much.
”That revolutionary power is innate in the music, because it's got a living breathing loud and raucous community that celebrate it every fucking weekend! And you know, don't worry, because all that commercial shit and wack music will never really dominate, because once you've tasted the essence, and understood what it's all about, it's so easy to tell the difference between the authentic and the plastic.” Show less
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