Don’t forget to Breathe.

Only ever two songs from the sea.

In this weekly blog, I share two tracks from my drive to and from the sea I swim in. For those who’d rather just dive into the full immersion playlist, you’ll find it here.

**#234. Subzero — Original Mix**

Make some noise! But when you do, make it an act of ascension, tension, immersion, belonging and escape; in that precise order.

Sometimes there comes a. time when nothing else will do.

You need a pure shot of old school Teutonically-engineered techno — tightened to within a quark of itself, and then diffused through a state-of-the-art ‘nacht’ club soundsystem under the strobe-cut dry-ice, body dew and heavy post-beach heat of a white island club.

Ben Klock knows his chops. And this is a master class in techno.

A small rummage in his soundcloud space will have you pacing the ceiling wherever you are.

Now just because Ben smashes out bangers and can more the Berghain club to raptures on a regular basis, it’s not all straight down the line techno with Herr Klock. The long shadow of Kraftwerk, EDM, and the dystopian film soundtracks of the likes of Bladerunner patently bubble through his blood and haunt the corners of his dreams.

A wander around the electronic apocalypse of Layer One: his collaboration with Fadi Mohem with voices provided by Flowdan and Coby Sey.

Klock and Mohem set out the album’s stall thus:

“The conceptual direction of ‘LayerOne’ delves into a post-human world, where humans are close to extinction on Earth, leaving only imprints, traces, and relics behind — digital fossils and machine-generated images capturing fleeting moments of non-human photography, as Artificial Intelligence remains in a world that quietly thrives without us.

“We do not perceive this as a bleak apocalyptic dystopia, but more a sober and serene reflection of a world that continues to exist and flourish, indifferent to the absence of humanity. Despite this unremitting setting, through this journey we find survivors who signal a remembrance of the human sensibilities.”

So, OK: this isn’t going to win a Stand Up Comedy award anytime soon, but the soundscapes they’ve created in this concept album are kind of jaw dropping. The Vanishing feels like being inside a living special effect.

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Our Sector feat. Flowdan is a glorious piece of brittle, digital darkness. It’s both leaden and fractal at one and the same time.

It’s clear to see that in colabs like this, Klock is testing the edges of his precious genre space, pushing different buttons in different places at different times in different colours. There’s a method in his madness.

“I think you just have to have authentic artists and unique voices that have their own style, and not care so much about wanting to sound like this and that. As soon as you have that “copy, copy, copy” thing, then it gets boring and is dangerous for the techno scene, because at some point it gets stuck without any life in it anymore.”

So what makes an iconic techno DJ slash experimental sound artist? Well, it seems that after handing out flyers for clubs on the street, he had a stint as a Santa Claus for Mars and Snickers; sold Olives at a market, did factory work, was a call center agent, a child-minder, a street musician with a guitar, a bartender; oh, and he was a graphic designer for a couple of years.

And of course there are the influences: Detroit techno pioneers like Jeff Mills and Derrick May, as well as UK rave culture, with its merging of breakbeats and acid basslines, and on those breakbeats, Buriel’s Raver is a top of his pleasure pyre.

So when old school smash-and-grab hip-hop and a pure breakbeat won’t cut it — and you fancy something with a slightly more CheckpointCharlie-meets-Cyborg vibe, a quick rummage in Herr Klock’s satchel of goodies might offer up just what you needed.

**# 235. Games without Frontiers**

Say Yes.

Say “Sure. I remember this song.”

Say “it was nuts; brilliant; ‘other’: obtuse”

Say “what the f**k is he talking about?”

Say “who cares! It makes me feel weird in a good way.”

Jane plays with Willy.

Willy is happy again.

Andre has a red flag,

Chiang Ching’s is blue

They all have hills to fly them on

Except for Lin Tai Yu

For all of its chirpiness, obtuse lyrical dog legs, and goofy referencing, the almost cheerily bleak soundscape, Gabriel built for ‘Games without Frontiers’ took some mustering:

Opening with a mixture of acoustic and electronic percussion accompanied by a countoff…the electronic percussion was triggered by a PAiA Programmable Drum Set;… the first time Gabriel used a drum machine on one of his solo albums. During the intro, a synth bass and an angular slide guitar part enter with Kate Bush’s vocals, creating a “dark sonic environment” as described by AllMusic reviewer Steve Huey.

In thematic terms the brooding ‘dark sonic environment’ was vital, though it took a little pop cultural scraping to get to the belly fat of it all.

Gabriel points to its profundity in a sideways manner when he states that: ‘It’s a Knockout.’ Anyone with a time machine could tell you that Jeux Sans Frontières was a TV idea that ran in several European countries ‘where Teams representing a town or city in one of the participating countries would compete in games of skill, often while dressed in bizarre costumes. While some games were simple races, others allowed one team to obstruct another. [The British version was titled *It’s a Knockout*].

As a rather layered geopolitical statement, it simply pointed to the bizarreness of watching people from countries at war only some twenty-something years before, sliding around with soapy buckets in big foam suits throwing sponges at each other. Perhaps Gabriel felt it was was a preferable gamification of War to Rollerball or DeathRace 2000

The complexities weren’t reserved for the composition and application of new technologies and techniques, or the nuances of Gabriel’s underlying message.

Amongst the rarified personnel, things could get quite ‘knotty.’ Peter Gabriel was constantly surrounded by some exceptional musicians and artists, and some it seems had rather a lot to say about how Steve Lilywhite ran the recording sessions; especially when it came to one miss Kate Bush:

Lillywhite provided guidance on how to sing the “jeux sans frontières” lyric. After a few passes, Robert Fripp, who was in the control room, insisted that she had already provided a satisfactory take. Fripp felt that Bush “nailed” her take within a short period of time and asked Lillywhite why he wanted her to attempt the part again. Lillywhite found Fripp’s comment to be a “real play by him because he’s been the producer. I just completely ignored him, pressed the button and said, ‘Can you try that again please?’ It was a pivotal moment in me keeping to my guns and getting what I wanted.” In a 2022 interview, Fripp reaffirmed his stance that it was “paramount to protect the artist” from recording beyond the completion of a “magical” take.

The impact of Gabriels music back in those pre-Sledgehammer days was substantial, but nothing prepared anyone for the MTV smash.

It was as if destiny had drawn an artist, a medium, an art form and an audience into a divine collision that we’d never recover from.

Gabriel’s early electronica fetishes and the soundscapes of some of his later, more expansive work attracted the ears of many electronica DJs artists and producers. One such attraction would give us the sublime lounge terrace vibe of the Massive DB mix with Massive Attack and Dave Bottril which featured on Gabriel’s Flotsam and Jetsam album.

Having previously listened to Nursery Cryme, I think I’d posted Gabriel in a particular bucket of bucolic British rock eccentricity — rock operatic Am-Dram improvisation with lashings of muso and ginger beer, rambling on about Hogweed, Harlequins and the fountains of Salamis, primped in outrageous costumery. Everything seemed to jig and sprawl. It sounded like the inside of a dressing-up box smelled.

Then:

Solsbury Hill landed in my world and I was like ‘Wha..?’ That impetus? Those guitars? All the fluff stripped out. Then swing in behind it with Games without Frontiers and suddenly there was a momentum — push push — I’m heading somewhere special, and then Sledgehammer — well. We all needed a lie down.

But the most precious space in my heart is held for ‘Games without Frontiers.’

So hey! Shoot me.

It’s a thing

The Author: Julian Borra is a creative writer and strategist, living in Lewes in the UK, with a life-long love of music. A sometime drummer, and percussionist in various bands, music is the sea he swims in when confined to dry land.

Julian’s commercial works can be found at thinairfactory.com or he can be found at linkedin.com/in/julianborra/.