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DYEWITNESS INTERVIEW

Interview by DJ Mindcontroller, Feature Photo: Reesses Pix Redlab Radio, Photo 2: Peter Vincent

Mindcontroller: First of all, I just want to start off by saying that you’re a big influence. My older brother got me into techno and house. Probably about ’89, ’90.

Dyewitness: All right. Cool.

Mindcontroller: I’ve got to say that when I first heard your music, it was mind blowing.

Dyewitness: Was it the Dyewitness stuff?

Mindcontroller: Dyewitness in the early 90’s. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but in LA we had large support of the techno scene. They would actually play techno at one of the biggest stations still to date here, Power 106. They do more hip hop now and stuff like that, but back in the early 90’s, they actually played great music. I remember hearing your tracks on there.

Dyewitness: I really had no idea that the early hardcore stuff, or the heavy hardcore, or whatever you want to call it, was really that popular. This is actually the first time I’m doing a Dyewitness show ever in LA.

Mindcontroller: That was one of my questions. I actually recall seeing you on a flyer maybe early ’94 or ’95, but it was a fraud.

Dyewitness: It was fraud. I never had any requests or any bookings from LA.

Mindcontroller: In the States, you never played as Dyewitness in the States?

Dyewitness: I don’t think so.

Mindcontroller: Okay, wow. Interesting, how did you get into the rave scene, techno music?

Dyewitness: From when I was a child, I was always playing around with tape decks and turntables, and fiddling around with cassette players and all that stuff. Gradually I got into mixing, and then I got a simple drum machine. I learned how to program drums. I started making mixes, recording it on tape, making loops and different things. I listened to a lot of electro stuff, but also hip hop stuff.

Mindcontroller: What came first, DJ or producer?

Dyewitness: Producer. In that time, there was no computers or anything yet. Everything was done by hand, so you had to know how to beat match and all that stuff. Mixing was then at the same time as producing.

Mindcontroller: How was Dyewitness formed? Secondary, what is the meaning of Dyewitness?

Dyewitness: It’s actually, I think it still exists today. I saw a commercial on … Probably maybe within the States or where … I don’t remember. It’s a spray that, if you get attacked or raped or whatever, it’s a spray that you spray in somebody’s face. It gets a thick layer of foam, green foam, so your face … And it gets stuck there for weeks, or a long, long time. The stuff is called  “Dyewitness.” That’s how I also came up with the green monster.

Mindcontroller: I always thought that was maybe a fascination with extraterrestrials.

Dyewitness: No, no, no. It also had to do with Observing The Earth was the first thing. It was a good combination between the green alien and the green face from the Dyewitness.

Mindcontroller: To my understanding, it was a group prior, right? It was yourself and someone else, or is that misinformation?

Dyewitness: No. The Observing The Earth I did it completely by myself. Later, with The Future, I started working with Patrick and Cyclone and Trevor. Probably for that I did most of the work myself.

Dyewitness at Trauma 2015 pic 2
Dyewitness at Trauma 2015 pic 2

Mindcontroller: Was Dyewitness your first project?

Dyewitness: Yeah, it was.

Mindcontroller: How did that come about?

Dyewitness: Yeah, just messing around and just recorded something on a cassette tape. Actually, a friend of mine … I didn’t even bring it to the record store, but there was Midtown record store in Rotterdam. A friend of mine recorded what I was making and Midtown Records heard the tape. They were like, “Yeah, yeah. We want to release it.”

Mindcontroller: That was Observing the Earth?

Dyewitness: Yes.

Mindcontroller: Awesome. Let’s see. Let’s take it back even further. What was the first record you ever purchased?

Dyewitness: Probably I have a lot of old records but the one I can remember buying is Michael Jackson Thriller.

Mindcontroller: What was your first DJ gig or live PA? How was it?

Dyewitness: My first gig was in 1990, I think, with The Dead Kirks. It was one project on Midtown Records. One of the owners of Midtown, he had a project called The Dead Kirks. He needed somebody to go onstage with him for the keyboards and everything.

Mindcontroller: How was it? Were you nervous? Was it a big event?

Dyewitness: Completely don’t remember. It’s so long ago. It’s 25 years ago eventually. No, no. I always have been myself on stage, so I’m not pretending to do anything.

Mindcontroller: To me, the Dyewitness sound was so innovative, and to many, considered early hardcore. What inspired your Dyewitness projects?

Dyewitness: For me, it was never hardcore. There were some tracks that obviously were hardcore, but it was mostly a cooperation with somebody else making some hardcore, happy hardcore The Future is, I don’t know what but you wouldn’t call it, but it’s not even that hard, you know? It’s not like anything that came out of Rotterdam at that time because there was much harder. Inspiration was just records that I was listening to, all kinds of records that I was listening to when I grew up I sampled, or inspired me to make whatever I wanted to make. I never really cared for what others were making. I always did my own thing and if somebody wanted to call it hardcore, somebody wanted to call it house or whatever. Doesn’t matter.

Mindcontroller: Your current project DJ Misjah is night and day in comparison to Dyewitness. Would you ever consider revamping Dyewitness?

Dyewitness: Well, never say never, but I don’t see myself. Actually, I haven’t been producing anything since 2009. I’m way too busy with mastering and I don’t have that studio anymore anyway. I know everything is done in the computer now but it’s not how I like to work. No, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Mindcontroller: Sadly, I’m sure. You’re going to break a lot of peoples’ heart.

Dyewitness: Well, you know, it’s a period in your life. First, I made the Dyewitness stuff. Then I was done with that, you know? I’m like, “Okay. Now this is a different phase in my life,” which became the DJ Misjah stuff. The techno after that, one day I was feeling like, okay, I’m done with this as well, you know? Then I started doing mastering, in 2 to 10 years or whatever I’m done with that I’m doing to do something else. As long as I do what I like, I don’t mind what it is.

Mindcontroller: Dyewitness or DJ Misjah, What’s your favorite DJ gig to date?

Dyewitness: For Dyewitness was Hanger 13 were always fantastic gigs in Scotland, but also had a lot of good gigs in Australia. As for Misjah, it was, I don’t know, Love Parade or Womp in Tokyo. So many. So many places.

Mindcontroller: I could imagine you guys are spoiled in Europe.

Dyewitness: Yeah, it’s all one big pile of memories and clubs and people.

Mindcontroller: Your current automobile you drive, make and model?

Dyewitness: Just a normal BMW. Nothing special, 320 diesel It’s a automatic. I’m lazy driver. I put it on cruise control and I steer and that’s about it.

Mindcontroller: Top 3 tracks of all time.

Dyewitness: Humanoid is in there for sure. Something from Joey Beltram, Thomas B Hackman was one of the tracks that was like, wow, what the hell.

Mindcontroller: What advice would you give to any up and coming producers?

Dyewitness: Make what you like. Don’t listen to what others are doing. Make your own shit. If nobody likes it, doesn’t matter as long as you like it.

Finnish *core scene report

Brainbashers - Visions of the Post-Clubbing Era-1
Brainbashers – Visions of the Post-Clubbing Era

by Teknoaidi

I’m Teknoaidi aka Zutsuu, a musician, live-act, dj and promoter from Tampere, Finland. I have been active in the Finnish underground *core scene for nearly 10 years. In this article I will write about the local music and party scene, focusing mostly on the underground, as well as on what is unique about Finnish hardcore techno of today.

1990’s-early 2000’s
Finland has a small, yet relatively passionate hardcore techno scene, taking into account that the population of the country is only 5 million. Hardcore has been present in the rave scene at least since the early 1990’s. One of the first, if not the first, local live-artists being The Mighty Rubber Boots and one of the first crews organizing hardcore-only parties was Trance Source i3. In the early days the sound was also pushed by Amiga demoscene crews such as dA JoRMaS. Tres is a hardcore/speedcore artist who is still more and less active to this day. He was the founder of crews such as Inkvisitio (it means ”the inquisition”) and Antenniosasto (”the antenna department”), which organized bigger and smaller uncompromised underground and club parties from 1997 till 2007. They left a big impact on the scene before the torch was passed on to the next generation. The music at these events ranged from hardcore to speedcore and from breakcore to noise. Two other notable artists at the end of scene’s first decade were Disruptikk aka xybo and H8!Machine aka Vihakone who had a speedcore label called Fleshwound Records and also released on various German labels.

Present Day Party Crews
The organizers throwing parties today are of the third and fourth generation. Mindcore (founded in 2004) organizes mainstream hardcore and gabber parties with popular international headliners, typically attracting 200-400 or more attendees in the capital city Helsinki. Other prominent cities with occasional shows of international mainstream hardcore artists are Turku (House of Hard Music) and Vaasa (Finnish Gabber Promotions Oy) on the western coast. Semi-legal underground and smaller club parties, which focus in underground hardcore and breakcore, or a mix of both mainstream and underground sounds, are organized in various cities and usually attract around 50-150 people. The most notable crews doing such events are: Kovaydin.NET (literally ”Hardcore Network”), founded by yours truly (based in Tampere), the fairly new crew Club Syndrome from Joensuu (Eastern Finland), and the latest player in the scene, X-Treme, which started throwing monthly parties in Helsinki this year. Another major, but currently inactive, 21st century underground organizer was Valovoima, who organized Earthcore squat parties in Helsinki and Lavantautitanssit (”typhoid dance”) parties in Turku, as well as the ambient/industrial/noise/core club event Syntesia-klubi in Tampere among other events. He is now a part of the Kovaydin.NET crew. International artists and dj’s are also often visiting the Finnish underground parties, however in contrast to the bigger club parties where fame is often the first priority when choosing international headliners, in order to try to meet the budgets, the international artists visiting underground parties are invited primarily based on the originality of their music, regardless if their name is known or not. Global grassroots networking and artist exchange has also been encouraged, especially to the neighbouring countries Russia and Sweden.

FREE∞BPM Party
FREE∞BPM Party

Kovaydin.NET – The Finnish Hardcore Techno Underground
After the illegal warehouse parties of the 90’s moved to clubs, the underground parties never really died out in Finland. They continued to exist alongside the clubbing scene, although in smaller size. These parties are typically held at abandoned buildings, squats, rented venues or out in nature. Of course, even the underground parties and crowds transformed, but a lot of the original spirit still remains. This is especially true for the underground hardcore scene in Tampere – something the Kovaydin.NET crew and other local underground crews such as Tenkale are proud of. We are also trying to promote the free party movement together in Finland. Kovaydin.NET was founded in 2005 and it first served as an online platform where artists and enthusiasts alike could network. Later it became a party crew and a netlabel. In the 1990’s and early 2000’s there were maybe a handful of hardcore live-artists and dj’s in Finland, but partly thanks to online networking and people supporting each other, the quality of the music and the amount of live-artists as well as dj’s significantly increased. It can also be said that the musical climate became more encouraging towards individual experimentations, as opposed to direct copy and paste of popularized genre standards. The Kovaydin.NET parties typically offer many varieties of underground hardcore, speedcore and breakcore, as well as hardtek and rhythmic noise. The crowds in Tampere are very diverse and you can find everything from goths to hippies and otakus to metalheads, all enjoying spasmodic beats together under the same roof. This goes to show the richness and limitless potential of what is going on in the *core underground.

SuomiHC – Peculiarities of Finnish hardcore
Finland is probably most known for the success of the Finnish freeform genre in the hard dance scene and the suomisaundi subgenre in the psytrance scene. Less known, but equally unique, is the phenomena called suomihc aka Finnish hardcore techno or just suomicore. It is usually used as an umbrella term for all Finnish hardcore, but there are also some common features to be found that capture the local spirit. One such feature are melancholic melodies and this is the kind of music that many Finns in general appreciate. The short and dark winter days provide a mindset for introspection and composing deep, abrasive, atmospheric and abstract core tunes. In the summer the sun almost doesn’t set at all making people go manic and party in a cave in the forest or near a lake – the perfect environment for contemporary shamancore rituals.

Hiiden Virren Vinguttajat Live
Hiiden Virren Vinguttajat Live

A few original Finnish artists to check out:
Shatterling – An aspiring young artist who makes melodic down and uptempo hardcore and crossbreed. He has released on international labels such as Noisj.nl and Battle Audio Records.
Skelic – Formerly known as Hell Factory, this musical-genious-shrouded-in-mystery takes the experimentalism in darkstep, hardcore and crossbreed, among other styles, even further creating some truly original atmospheric bangers.
Teknoaidi – This is my shamancore project. I try to connect the dots between shamanic music and hardcore and explore the healing properties of speedcore. Other influences include Finnish folk music and world music.
Valovoima – A musician of various styles from ambient to experimental and atmospheric speedcore, often with a twist of acid sounds. His music is inspired by nature and natural sciences and is like a celebration of the intense energies of natural phenomena.
Hiiden Virren Vinguttajat – An electroacoustic collaboration between me and Stak Etop (the founder of Tenkale). HVV music is born live at shamancore jams where we play drum machines, noiseboxes, DIY synths and various acoustic instruments such as flutes, rattles, a mouth harp or a frame drum. The best bits of the improvisation sessions are cut and sometimes additional sounds are added with software. Sometimes these jams take place at parties in the form of workshops where anyone can participate in the process.

The only thing that is constant is change
People in the scene are coming and going, sometimes taking a break, sometimes not returning. There are many interesting artists who make some kind of hardcore and breakcore music, but are scattered in various music scenes and groups, only making random appearances in the actual *core scene. The only thing that is constant is that the scene is always tranforming. Thus this was not a comprehensive list of all the artists and crews, but an effort to mention some of the major players in the scene’s history, the current situation, as well as the more original musical developments in the present. For more Finnish *core music, check out the Youtube channel called Suomicore Tube or the recent free online compilation 10 Years of Suomicore on Kovaydin.NET.

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