So I’ve heard a lot of smack talking on ‘Tech house’ from DJs I respect and it poses the question for me – what happened? Seems the term got co-opted recently to mean something else than its roots
See, back in the mid nineties there was a techno section in the record store and there was a house section and I remember talking with Brad Moontribe about how we really wanted a tech house section for these tracks that we loved that were in-between house and techno.
That likely already existed in London and maybe other parts of Europe but there wasn’t any recognition of Tech house in LA or any Tech house section in the record store quite yet.
A bit later I got a very influential CD from Oliver Bristow when he was working with Pagan Records – it was called Architecture by Terry Francis . If you’ve never heard this mindblowing Tech house mix, please go find it, it’s amazing.
Of course Evil Eddie Richards and Nathan Coles and Mr.C and a bunch of people were already actively producing Tech house – the records were there but there was no category for them in the stores in LA. And then one day there was.
Anyway Tech house is the intersection of house and techno, it’s really simple how the category came up. Now tech-house a dirty word apparently.
Someone said to me the other day, ‘oh you probably don’t play Tech house’ which I guess I’m starting to understand in the context of today, but just sounds crazy to me because overall if I defined my sound with one label over the 2 decades plus I’ve been actively DJing, I’d probably pick Tech house, even if it’s a bit of a simplification. It still stands that I like techy house, and housey techno 🙂 Anyway I resisted the urge to say I play ‘real Tech house’
Well tbh it’s not the 1st time this has happened to me. I had dozens of Tropical House mixtapes and CDs out there before Thomas Jack and Sony came in and fucked that label up 🙂
Following that, Tropical become Tropical Since 98 and the Tropical House group became Organic Tropical House No GMOs 🙂
What will tech-house become?
For reference, here are 49 of my mixes that I think best fit into the category “Tech house” https://soundcloud.com/ben-annand/sets/ben-annand-tech-house-mixes