HEROIN HOUSE aka DUB TECHNO aka Chain Reaction

PORTER RICKS

 Biokinetics

 VAINQUEUR

 Elevations

 MAURIZIO

 untitled 

 VARIOUS ARTISTS

 Decay Product

 MONOLAKE

 Hongkong

 (all Chain Reaction)

Spin, 1998

by Simon Reynolds  

Think "house," and in your mind's ear you'll probably hear a thudding, metronomic kick-drum and a shrieking soul-diva. Nearly fifteen years on from its Chicago genesis, house has evolved way beyond this original, winning formula, and diversified into at least a dozen subgenres. From the disco cut-up style popularised by Daft Punk to the unhinged abstraction of nu skool Chicago label Relief, the most exciting contemporary house is designed for  "track-heads"--purist connoisseurs who prefer minimal tracks to anthemic songs. 

I don't like purists either, but if the truth be known, when pop music's final reckoning is done, house is not going to be remembered for adding to the sum of  "great songs," nor for its pantheon of distinctive vocalists. Its real contribution and innovation resides elsewhere.

In this spirit, the Berlin label Chain Reaction have distilled house down to its essence: no songs, no vocals, barely any melodies, sometimes not even a beat. What, you might wonder, is left after such ruthless pruning? Texture and pulse-rhythm. Or more precisely, texture-rhythm as an indivisible plasma-like substance that is molded and extruded through dub-space. 

Take Chain Reaction's aesthetic pinnacle to date, "Resilient 1.2": a slow-motion tsunamai of  ego-melting, body-boundary-haemorrhaging bliss. Some people call the Chain Reaction sound "heroin house" *; "Resilient 1.2" actually reminds me of Velvet Underground's "Heroin". A soundtrack in waiting for the first zero-gravity nightclub, it was my favourite track of 1997; you can find it on the Chain Reaction CD Decay Product, a compilation of tracks by the production team Various Artists.

Based out of Berlin's Hard Wax record store, Chain Reaction is the sister label of Basic Channel, whose nine 12-inch releases were the toast of techno-house cognoscenti  throughout the mid-Nineties (but don't let that put you off!). Devoted to vinyl, the mysterious figures behind the twin labels established their own pressing plant. This makes Chain Reaction's series of single-artist CD compilations--encased in striking metal cans that resemble DJs's record boxes--a sort of ideological lapse, a concession to the market realities of the digital era.

Prise open the cannisters, and on tracks like Maurizio's "M6", Vainqueur's "Reduce 2" and Porter Ricks' "Port Gentil" you'll encounter electronic music as warmly cocooning and spongy as the lining of the womb.What initially sounds monotonous reveals itself as an endlessly inflected, fractal mosaic of  glow-pulses and flicker-riffs. Using studio-processes like EQ, filtering, phasing and panning to tweak the frequencies and stereo-imaging of their sonic motifs, CR artists weave tantalising tapestries whose strands shift in and out of the aural spotlight. The effect is synaesthetic, like fingertips tremulously caressing your neck.

Although CR artists would probably distance themselves from rave's drug culture, their music sounds like Ecstasy sensations encoded in sound, abstracted into a velcro-sticky audio-fabric that tugs at your skin-surface and gets your goosebumps rippling in formation. Melody is minimal--limited to rudimentary vamps and ostinatos--because it's just a device for displaying sound-in-itself. Simple motifs twist the timbre-fabric in order to best show off its properties, making you thrill to the scintillating play of  creases and folds, crinkles and kinks.

            CR music isn't all opiated oblivion: Monolake's "Lantau" and "Macau" are like Cantonese reggae, while Porter Ricks material often has an abrasive industrial tinge,  reflecting the fact that one half of the duo is acclaimed ambient experimentalist Thomas Koner. But my favorite CR output is the stuff that offers a sublime surrogate for MDMA experience, a bliss-space you can access at any time then leave, without cost or comedown. 

That said, this music's appeal  extends way beyond ravers--anyone who's ever swooned to neo-psychelicists like Spacemen 3 and My Bloody Valentine, or  been mesmerised by minimalists like Steve Reich, will find almost unbearable pleasures here.

            As well as Chain Reaction's own CD and vinyl 12 inch output (available at domestic prices), addicts will want to search out the artists's releases on other labels:  Porter Ricks' self-titled album on Mille Plateaux, Various Artists's glistening pulsescape "No.8" on Fatcat. Porter Ricks also created a fine remix album, The Koner Experiment, based on  music by Experimental Audio Research--a collective that includes ex-Spacemen 3 leader Sonic Boom and MBV's Kevin Shields. That fact alone that should seduce any hesitant psych-guitar fiends into taking the plunge.

* Heroin House copyright Kevin Martin