Revision History Marc Houle

Artist/Label: Marc Houle

Last Edited: 26 Aug 2009, 09:52 am

Views: 453

• 26 Aug 2009, 09:52 am
• Liz Miller

Marc Houle grew up in Windsor, Canada with computer games on the brain, New Wave music in his ears, and Detroit as his back yard.  Influenced early on by the synthesized sounds of Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk, his love for technology-tinted music was then supplemented in the early 90’s warehouse and clubs of Detroit with a first-class weekly education in Techno from the founders of the genre.  In 1997 he began a residency at Richie Hawtin‘s club ‘13 Below’ where he hosted a New Wave night accompanied by classic video game consoles for the crowd.  It was there that he met Minimal Techno’s first lady, Magda, who then became his lodger and studio companion. 
It was during their years living together that she would insist to be given edits of his synth-laden productions to suit her own more minimal Techno tastes.  Eventually Hawtin himself heard the stripped-down versions of Marc’s work and asked him to join the legendary Minus label.
Marc, apart from having the most recognizably retro sound on the label, may also be the most prolific of the crew, having produced thousands of songs in his career.  This is also what makes Marc’s live sets so truly unique, with approximately half of all the music he plays being his own unreleased repertoire; no two sets could ever be the same, except in their ability to impress the crowd.
Be on the look out for more of Marc’s diverse musical roots showing through in productions from his own label Items & Things, plus more to come on Minus label.

• 26 Aug 2009, 09:50 am
• Liz Miller

Marc Houle grew up in Windsor, Canada with computer games on the brain, New Wave music in his ears, and Detroit as his back yard.  Influenced early on by the synthesized sounds of Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk, his love for technology-tinted music was then supplemented in the early 90’s warehouse and clubs of Detroit with a first-class weekly education in Techno from the founders of the genre.  In 1997 he began a residency at Richie Hawtin’s club ‘13 Below’ where he hosted a New Wave night accompanied by classic video game consoles for the crowd.  It was there that he met Minimal Techno’s first lady, Magda, who then became his lodger and studio companion. 
It was during their years living together that she would insist to be given edits of his synth-laden productions to suit her own more minimal Techno tastes.  Eventually Hawtin himself heard the stripped-down versions of Marc’s work and asked him to join the legendary Minus label.
Marc, apart from having the most recognizably retro sound on the label, may also be the most prolific of the crew, having produced thousands of songs in his career.  This is also what makes Marc’s live sets so truly unique, with approximately half of all the music he plays being his own unreleased repertoire; no two sets could ever be the same, except in their ability to impress the crowd.
Be on the look out for more of Marc’s diverse musical roots showing through in productions from his own label Items & Things, plus more to come on Minus label.

• 05 Feb 2009, 04:09 am
• MinusBerliner

As the Minus crew roll up in Frankfurt for another night of minimal pressure, Marc Houle cuts a rather unassuming figure. While the others are going through the hotel check-in process for the umpteenth time he stands alone, detached from the crowd, seemingly preoccupied by the recurring patterns of glass panelling that jar upwards into infinity from the giant reception area.

It’s exactly this quiet, analytical approach to the x and y of time and space that forms the nucleus of his music. The warm analogue sounds from his beloved Korg Monopoly are encased in a cold logic that’s all about clean edges and perfect angles. Listening to 2004’s Restore double pack, it’s fascinating to hear how he explores each new idea, unravelling it like some complex equation, entertaining variations and digressions before arriving at its natural conclusion. It gives his music a sense of symmetry and as the varying lengths of his work testify, he doesn’t waste time saturating his music with unnecessary layers once the magic formula has been discovered.

Anyone who caught 2005’s Minimize to Maximize tour would agree his music is equally impressive live, as it’s this medium that allows the human element behind his machinist persona to really break through. Some artists are confined by technology and the sonic boundaries they set themselves, possibly because it was music that introduced them to computers. Marc’s journey however, took him in the opposite direction allowing him both the freedom and control to lose himself and his appreciative audience in a labyrinth of sound - constantly improvising, always innovating - before triumphantly emerging intact.

Currently sharing his time between New York and Berlin depending on tour
commitments, Marc grew up in Windsor just across the waters of Lake Erie from Detroit. He was and still is a first generation computer game addict. Hooked on his Commodore 64 and a host of early video games such as Arcon and Jump Man, he was mainlining Atari straight into his cerebral cortex from the tender age of ten. The theoretical side of his musical education arrived through piano and drum lessons, complimenting the bleeps, clonks and whirrs of the laser gun battles he fought on a daily basis. As a precursor to the minimal techno that would later envelop his life, it was the primitive square waves of the game soundtracks that really moulded his taste in music and as Casio hardware started evolving into real keyboards, Marc was on hand to exploit this
new era of sound exploration.

Needless to say, European electro-pioneers like Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode had a strong influence on him during these formative years and as his studio grew, Marc started developing his own particular brand of synth-pop by appropriating the old commodore game sounds into his productions. Things began to take shape in the early nineties when, still largely oblivious to the techno-revolution taking place in Detroit, he started heading over to warehouse parties like Sickness and Recovery. After soaking up the vibes under the expert guidance of Jeff Mills, Richie Hawtin, John Aquaviva et al, he would return home, applying these new found ideas to his sound which, in turn, began to
evolve in a hyper, distorted ‘Aphex Twin’ direction. During one of these excursions he got talking to Hawtin, bombarding him with questions about a Kraftwerk gig the latter had been lucky enough to witness. This shared passion for all things electronic soon led to a DJ residency at Hawtin’s 13 Below in 1997, hosting a New Wave/Atari night where clubbers could get off on vintage game consoles while Marc pumped out a mixture of Electro Boogie and New Wave, inducing 1983 style flashbacks.

Then one night Magda turned up as a guest DJ and to cut a long story short soon ended up lodging with Marc back in Windsor. Neither realised the significance of this arrangement at the time, they were too busy joking around and bouncing ideas off each other in Marc’s studio, however this initial chemistry clearly set the wheels of their music careers in motion, paving the way for their current assault on the minimal techno scene.