gemini://notes.hugh.run/2022/2022-09-16.gmi

Ever since my last gempost I've been trying to remember the name of the album and band that was - as far as I can remember - the first electronic dance music album I ever bought. I could picture it in my mind, but not remember the name of the album or the band. Nor, to be honest, could I remember all that much about what it sounded like. But I certainly remembered how it made me feel. I remember that I - for some reason - took it to my Mum's place shortly after I bought it (maybe the same day?) and my stepfather was genuinely interested in listening to it. I remember he was delighted by the way the tracks seamlessly blended into each other. So was I.

Tonight I was browsing Bandcamp to see if I could find any new music I might be interested in. I set my filters: new release; this month; electronic - breaks; digital format. And there it was, a new release from UK group Hybrid. Boom.

The album I was trying to remember is Hybrid's Wide Angle, released in 1999. The song I remember the best sonically is "Snyper", a driving, intense track. But the main reason I liked that so much was really to do with the (seamless) transition from the previous track "Dreaming your Dreams", which is a much lighter, dare I say it dreamy kind of track. The lightness of the track leading into it is part of what gives Snyper its energy. What I hadn't realised until rediscovering this album today is that it was recorded in Moscow, and the first single from the album, and the standout track not that I remember, was recorded with the Russian Federal Orchestra. "Finished Symphony" reflects almost *exactly* the sort of dance tracks I've been thinking about making for the last month. It's a long track (9:37), incorporating lush orchestral elements with a hard electronic beat. What I hope to make is probably a little harder, I guess with more bass, but it's pretty close. It's kind of funny to think that this album I was trying to remember represents quite well the sort of music I want to make.

This is a pretty good summary of the moment it was released. All of these tags are accurate, even though at first glance some may seem contradictory. I'm not sure exactly what combination of factors have driven the ever-increasing splitting of electronic music into more and more niche subgenres, but Wide Angle represents a time before this really got going. I mean, I called this post "Trance continued", and Hybrid is now considered to be a "progressive trance" outfit, yet the tag "trance" doesn't appear here.

So in 1999 or maybe 2000 I was having my mind blown by Hybrid's Wide Angle album. Yet around the same time I also spent my hard-earned take-away shop dollars on Pnau's Sambanova. This was a totally different sound, much more disco influenced. I'm pretty sure I listened to "Hard Biscuit" over 100 times. I was invited to recall my raving days recently, and it was at the now-defunct Queens Bridge Hotel in Melbourne's Southbank where I saw Pnau play live at my first rave experience in what must have been 2000, or maybe 2001. I flew up from Hobart for the weekend, and it was the most epic, crazy thing I had ever done. This wasn't actually my first experience of MDMA - the year before I'd accepted a quarter of a tab from a friend of a friend in a nightclub in Hawthorn and ended up dancing with a bunch of strangers whilst all my drunk friends had accidentally left without me, but it was the first deliberate experience: "moonboots" and all. I chased that experience for a few years afterwards.

It was at QBH that I realised that much as I liked Pnau, I really wanted a harder sound. I found myself in the separate upstairs room where the techno was playing. And that was what I looked for for the next few years in my early 20s, going to raves and once, memorably, some random warehouse party where I think (though I didn't realise it at the time) some of Australia's pre-eminent techno musicians (as opposed to DJs) played to a pretty small crowd. Looking back it's probaby the "coolest" thing I've ever done LOL.

Anyway, there's no real point to this post, other than to say I guess my midlife crisis project is to rediscover this music I loved in my late teens and early 20s, and hopefully make some of my own.