Tetsuo - Gabber DNA / Empty Warehouse Mix.

Tetsuo – Gabber DNA / Empty Warehouse Mix – 3”CDR – Self Released – 2019.

    Tracklist.

01. Gabber DNA [08’45’’]

02. Gabber DNA (Empty Warehouse Mix) [08’45’’]

I’d only heard the name Gabber back in the 1990s without knowing anything about what it was in terms of musical style. Then very recently I saw some ironic postings on Facebook of videos of different people from the early 90s demonstrating Gabber dancing to Gabber music. I was meant to laugh at it and add a twatty comment, but the sounds and insane style of dancing were mesmerising to watch, more than Breakdancing or Robotics ever where. This was a real underground club movement of the past and how the human body can make itself do that style of dance - I will never know. Because of that video Gabber dancing and music is stuck in my mind forever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkxGs4ETeg4

The gabber DNA track resonates with the repetitive rhythmic beat incorporated into so much Gabber music. However, there are none of the rave like sounds and electronic euphoria that often accompanied those beats, instead we have Julien Skrobek’s delicate high frequency noises circulating around the stripped down beat as if it is just a subtle high-pitched, distant feedback. In a way we are left with a partial memory of Gabber or its skeleton and nothing else other than delicate background noise that surrounds.

The Empty Warehouse mix is like silence (or emptiness) with distant high-pitched noises in the background, like the ones on the other track, yet there is no beat, the beat is dead the emptiness is the foreground. The whole concept of ‘empty warehouse’ signifies the party is over, perhaps the original movement is over. Whereas the original track may be a reflection on the past, this is the reality of the present.

Maybe this release revels in nostalgia, yet at the same time it also fully presents the fact that it is just Nostalgia and it isn’t now; now is something else completely and far less attractive, or perhaps more so if you’re inclined. Another beautiful 3” Neo – Paris jewel.

Nevis Kretini 2019.