When Eminem announced a few years ago that 'Nobody listens to techno', the statement sounded incongruous to anyone not living in the United States. Americans have been finding ways to avoid dance music for years, so surely the rest of the world had followed suit? Luckily, Slim Shady had it all wrong.
From it's inconspicuous beginnings in the motor city of Detroit, Techno spread rapidly across the world and it's familiar 4/4 beat could be heard from Manchester to Rio de Janiero. As music technology continued to advance, so did production techniques, and with it, the accessibility of the technology itself. Acolytes from Canada, Japan and Germany began crafting their own forms of techno, bringing their own influences to the table and in turn influencing others.
Ricardo Villalobos was born in Chile, but was raised in Germany, and by the time he was DJing for fun at University, techno was firmly entrenched as a legitimate musical genre. He's been Djing as a career since '98, and has since established himself as not just a touring or mix DJ, but as a musician, crafting a slew of classic releases.
His signature sound is that of the pulsing 4/4 beat that never climaxes, but builds and swells. In his own words, it's a 'trippy monotone' that 'does something to your brain'. His tracks (which are known for being lengthy) are an ongoing experiment in the ever elusive search for the perfect dance floor track and the construction of the ultimate sound scape.
Frequencies and recording quality are two elements of Villalobos' production vernacular that come up regularly. He speaks of the limitations of Electronic music, as opposed to the space and reverb allowed by traditional acoustic recording. This is where his experimentation takes place, mixing electronic music and acoustic music to allow the sounds to live in what he calls the 'room'.
He attempts to create 'rooms' of sound to try to replicate what is captured by the human ear, unlike traditional electronic production, which rids its sound scape of any sense of space and lets the electronic sounds fill every sonic crevasse.
This presents problems for Villalobos in the live arena, as his demands for sound quality are usually met with cries of cost from club owners and festival organizers. Where he can though, he will bring the highest quality and most organic sounding techno to each and every live set, and I defy anyone within earshot to stay rooted to the floor.
Ricardo Villalobos plays StereoSonic at Bonython Park Dec. 4, 2010
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