milwaukee wisconsin, with it's blue collar industry, roots in agriculture, and taste for beer is one of the least places that one would ever imagine that can be credited to shaping the electronic music scene.
1992 was the start of it all, where friends Kurt Eckes and Patrick Spencer started throwing raves, incorporating elements from the city's residual punk-rock scene laced with heavy-metal sensibilities and a comforting tone of house music that it absorbed from neighboring Chicago. Milwaukee's scene firmly planted and fortified itself with withstanding the mainstream media indifference, police harassment, and quickly changing musical tastes that had stalled the movement throughout the rest of North America. They liked it hard. REAL HARD. 170 to 240bpm music was not uncommon to be heard in rooms of 2 to 3 thousand people going off in a frenzied panic.
Kurt and Patrick decided it was time to start letting the world know some of the talent that was in the the farthest reaches of the midwest - and spawned the DROP BASS NETWORK. truly impossible to attach a specific "style" or "genre" to this label, each release showcased the immense talent of their residents and close neighbours - acting as the springboard sending them into long winding careers, like acid lover Woody McBride, also known as DJ ESP, Dave Rogers, now known as DELTA 9, and old school techno veteran Freddy Fresh. Furthermore, they brought in heavyweights like the welsh brothers known as Somatic Responses, Denmark's Lasse Steen, and Germany's Martin Damn aka the SPEEDFREAK to round out the diversity of the label. Soothing 303 acid laced pieces faced off with distorted hi speed compositions changed the way that these mid western kids thought about music forever. (see the evolution of breakcore, idm, glitch, booty house, and countless other genres that have firm roots in surrounding areas).
The scene in Milwaukee continued to grow and spread out to other areas, including neighboring Canada influencing many prairie dj's. Annual outdoor festivals known as Further and Even Further - regarded by some to be similar to a woodstock like gathering attracted thousands of people across the world and continued to showcase the amazing amounts of talent available from the neighboring cities.
DBN branched out and spawned other labels - Six Sixty Six - started in 1995, focusing on only the most abrasive of experimental noise and hardcore, and a hard breakbeat label in 1997 known as GHETTO SAFARI. DBN stuck to their roots producing music that impacted people, never selling out and putting out releases for money. sadly, drop bass network went silent in 1999 , yet flames have rekindled recently with them issuing newer releases.
each release under 1000 copies, 90% of them went to other countries and sold out immediately. thanks to scratch records in vancouver acting as one of their distributors, i was able to collect these seminal releases (80+) and would like for you this Friday to TUNE IN, TURN ON, and DROP BASS while we showcase the entire catalog. If you were listening to techno in the early 90s, this will be a refresher for you - and for those who weren't - an awakening!
SLEIZURE, in it's 4th year of broadcast is an experimental electronics show focusing on the art opposed to the dance element, broadcast from the top of burnaby mountain on CJSF (90.1 FM 93.9 Cable) every friday night from 1am -> LATE. For those outside of the Vancouver, BC area you can tune us in at
http://www.sleizure.ca to hear our high quality stream. SLEIZURE is one of the few places to hear the history of how things once were.
Oct 05, 07
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