Tech House
Tech house emerged in the early 1990s in the UK. Simply put, it's a house subgenre incorporating elements of techno and house.
Like house, tech house features a 4-to-the-floor beat but with techno-like shorter, darker and often distorted bass drums and typically an open hi-hat on the offbeat. Further characteristics are cool, groovy and heavy basslines, minimalistic, repetitive melodies and a tempo between 120 and 130 bpm. Its influences broadly range from Chicago house and Detroit techno over minimal techno to dub and electro house – which can be explained by the history of its origin.
Originally, tech house was not a genre but more a style of dj-ing. People like the »Godfather of tech house« »Evil« Eddie Richards – who had already helped acid house become big in London – were not happy with where the house scene in the UK was going: rave music developing into hardcore, posh super-clubs, uplifting and commercial house music... They wanted the original, early acid house vibe back and to offer some tougher, »rawer« alternative. Together with Terry Francis and Nathan Coles, Richards hosted the legendary Wiggle parties which became the birthplace of tech house: parties which took place in unused warehouses or car parks, which were spread by word of mouth and where the djs made use of the finest underground records from the 4-to-the-floor realm to create their sets – anything between the two poles of techno and house could be chosen when it met the taste of the dj or the demand of the audience. Other important names in the history of tech house are London nightclub The End and its co-owner Richard »Mr. C« West, in the 1990s frontman of Scottish psychedelic band »The Shamen« and an old companion of Eddie Richards. Opened in 1995, The End was considered as the home of tech house in the UK in the late 1990s.
Record stores like Vinyl Zone and Swag Records also played a crucial role in the history of tech house. Especially the Swag record store became kind of a community hub for the scene with lots of djs working there like Terry Francis, Carl Cox or Liz Edwards. Sooner or later producers and djs began to create music which specifically could be defined as tech house, so finally it had become a genre of its own. Probably, the term »tech house« came from Swag, too, but there are different opinions and stories on the origin of the genre’s name.
Early examples of tech house are »Percolator« (1992) by Cajmere (born Curtis Alan Jones and today better known as Green Velvet) and »And On« (1994) by Animus Amor (consisting of Mr. C and Jeremy Jones). Terry Francis’ »Reggae's House« from 1997 and 1998’s »Kode2« by Eddie Richards are definitely genre classics, as are tracks by Asad Rizvi aka Silverlining, e.g. »Pearl Diver« (1996) and »Precision Spanner« (1999).
Tech house did not remain an UK phenomenon. Examples in Germany are the label Plastic City, dj/producer Jean F. Cochois aka The Timewriter and tracks like »Say That You Love Me« (1996) by Ricardo Villalobos or »Crazyness of Myself« (1999) by Paul Kalkbrenner, released under his alias Paul dB+. The USA saw the development of a Westcoast and tribal-infused scene with labels like Grayhound and Tango Recordings and artists like Chris Lum and Halo with tracks like »Primitive« (2000). Tech house became a highly popular genre with now classics like M.A.N.D.Y. vs Booka Shade’s »Body Language« from 2005 or »21st Century Ketchup« (2008) by Steve Lawler. By 2010, the genre became a style for the masses and had taken over dance floors worldwide including Ibiza.
Examples for (more) recent successful genre artists are Welsh dj/producer Jamie Jones, British dj/producer Patrick Topping and especially Australian dj/producer FISHER with his hit records »Losing It« (2018) and »You Little Beauty« (2019).
