The Eclectic Selector: Burning Man special

The Eclectic Selector: Burning Man special

16 September, 2009 | 8.07AM

• Written by: Elite Force
• Filed under: Music News: eclectic selector, elite force, lot49, tech-funk, u&a;recordings

I’ve just arrived back from a few days in the badlands at Burning Man festival in Nevada, USA, so I must apologise if my ramblings are slightly more ‘disconnected’ than normal. I thought I would focus my second Eclectic Selector post on some of the big tracks that soundtracked my time there.

For the uninitiated, Burning Man is a parallel universe run by 10-year olds with ADD on acid. Over the years I’ve been to Britain’s infamous Glastonbury festival many times, and one of the finest things it has going for it is when you stray from the mainstream stages to explore its rich underbelly, where the focus shifts from big-mouthed PRs flapping about where the next line’s coming from for their precious charges, to people selflessly creating art for the greater good; and the more demented the better.

The best way to describe Burning Man is that it takes the kernal of that idea and allows it to blossom, without any form of constraint.

Click through for my video montage, which shows you what it’s all about.

Amongst the many hundreds of one-off events on any given day you could, perhaps check out Screwdrivers of Sex Relay Happy Hour (‘a relay of walking with something between your legs or waiting patiently until someone sticks their pole in your hole’) or maybe a little Zymurgist Flocculation (‘the 3rd annual gathering of yeast wranglers’) or perhaps Burning Stitches & Hooks Knit & Crochet Meet Up (‘Come Stitch & Bitch’).

As you might expect, the music is a wild melting pot of anything-goes styles, but at the very heart of the festival is the sound of glitch hop, dubstep, and downtempo breakbeat, which so rarely finds itself in a position of such primacy as it does here. The likes of Bassnectar really made his name here, and you can see why his sets are routinely roadblocked here, such is the industrial, metallic, and downright savage nature of the event.

Bassnectar ‘Cozza Frenzy’ (Bassnectar Mega-Bass Remix) [Child’s Play]

In the same ‘glitch’ genre, there was no bigger track on the Playa than Kraddy’s ‘Android Porn’. I lost count of the number of times I saw dust-strewn nutjobs losing their sh*t to this.

Kraddy ‘Android Porn’ [Glitch Mob]

The Art Cars make for a significant proportion of the charm at Burning Man. These are effectively ‘mutant vehicles’, limited in their outlandishness purely by their creators’ imaginations (ie. not really limited at all in most cases). Most of them have huge soundsystems, some cunningly integrated into the fabric of the vehicle, and others simply towing a truckload of speakers behind them in a trailer.

On the Friday night I played on the outstanding Robot Heart bus having already done a couple of sets earlier in the day, and remember someone saying to me “this may be your first time out here but your music’s been coming out to Burning Man for years”. Sure enough that night I heard my new collaboration with Meat Katie ‘Believe’ bellowing out from several soundsystems, and witnessed about 4,000 people going nuts to the techier sounds of the Dopamine remix (which came out this week).

Elite Force & Meat Katie ‘Believe’ (Original Mix) [U&A]

Elite Force & Meat Katie ‘Believe’ (Dopamine Mix) [U&A]

Several years ago at the festival, Freq Nasty rocked up and dropped some dubstep on the unsuspecting crowds. They were unimpressed by all accounts, but that couldn’t be further from the truth now, with a number of stages almost entirely dedicated to the sound of the stomp. Wherever you went there were soundsystems ravaging the air with the sound of angle-ground wobble, and with temperatures hitting the high 30s and the duststorms swirling all around, this was the perfect soundtrack to choose your dance tempo … sluggish shapes by day, spastic ones by night.

Chasing Shadows ‘ILL’ [HENCH]

Reso ‘Beasts In Basement’ [Civil Music]

On Saturday night, my last night on site, I played a two and half hour set, back to back with Meat Katie at the massive Opulent Temple camp. Normally I give my sets plenty of preparation time and re-editing tracks has become a way of life these days, but this was always going to be next level for us. With a few thousand people in attendance and a massive massive soundsystem to play with (not to mention control over 10 huge propane flamethrowers from within the booth), we spent an entire week in the studio fine tuning our set for the night, and the preparation paid off handsomely.

The starting point was to decide on which tunes we HAD to play, and at the very top of that list was the simply masterful new Underworld single ‘Downpipe’ featuring Mark Knight and D.Ramirez. Vintage Underworld and perfect festival fayre, there wasn’t a single set where I didn’t play this, and at Opulent it just sent shivers down my spine (and still does thinking about it).

Underworld, Mark Knight, D.Ramirez ‘Downpipe’ [Toolroom]

Also big in the game, in what was a properly eclectic tech-funk set from us, (aside from the six or seven brand new tracks / edits we dropped) were several older tracks below.

Par Grindvik ‘Do Us Part’ (Len Faki Mix) [Drumcode]

Moguai ‘Kick Out The Jams’ (Style of Eye Mix) [Central Station Records]

Rektchordz ‘Feed Your Head’ (Elite Force Mix) [U&A]

Okay that’s it from me this month. Next month I would have just returned back from Lovefest in San Francisco, and will once again be doing a round-up of the best eclectica I find from the world of wonk.

And if you want to submit music for inclusion in this column, send it to me via my Soundcloud Dropbox.

About Elite Force

Elite Force is often credited for being a lynchpin in the developing the tech-funk genre (an amalgamation of breaks, house, techno and electro) and in a career dating back to 1996, he has released a series of highly successful singles & remixes, finding broad support from DJs and musicians across the board, including the likes of James Zabiela, Sasha, Crystal Method, Laurent Garnier and Fatboy Slim to name but five.

In 2006 he set up his own imprint, U&A Recordings and has overseen it going from strength with chart-topping tracks from a burgeoning roster that includes Zodiac Cartel, Dustbowl, Mike Hulme, Meat Katie, The Loops of Fury, Rektchordz, Butter Party. and of course Elite Force himself.

His music has also been the soundtrack to many a movie, with a huge list of impressive A-list credits to his name, including the likes of the Matrix, Charlie’s Angels, Arlington Road, Mortal Kombat,
Crow, The Bone Collector, The Jackyll, Spiderman 2. He’s also soundtracked a number of computer games, including no fewer than 5 FIFA games, several of the Wipeout series, The Matrix and Motorstorm, and also finds time to maintain one of the biggest blogs (Tech-Funk Manifesto) and forums (Tech-Funk Forum) out there.

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