Regis
Adolescence: The Complete Recordings 1994-2001

“I listen to a lot of early '90s techno, I'm quite obsessed with that stuff, I really like it because it's so raw and basic and not complicated or full of detail like my tracks. Most of those pieces have only three things going on (...)" -APHEX TWIN- The '90s techno, from the cradle of native Detroit, with the symmetrical/mesmeric minimalism of Robert Hood, the imaginative and spiritual electro of Drexciya, the vigor of Underground Resistance, the eclecticism of a master like Jeff Mills, or the soul warmth of Carl Craig. On the other side, in Germany, a new school of producers was rising threateningly, giving birth to a dub-techno-ambient mutation (Basic Channel, Maurizio, Chain Reaction) as innovative as it was spectral and rarefied, yet emanating an enveloping, human warmth, and then England with its ambient and IDM hybridizations, worldwide the genre grew, developed and hybridized with other electronic forms, giving birth to new labels, many of which would leave their mark. The Downwards of Birmingham, founded by Karl O'Connor and Peter Sutton, was one of these, and much more than this, rising with its experimental productions and its unique sound ("mono") to true underground cult status over the years. This precious box set practically gathers all the material published by Karl O'Connor under the Regis brand from '94 to 2001; in fact, the tracks from the records published in collaboration with the label's co-founder Peter Sutton under his name are missing. We are facing a piece of the entire history of electronics; what Regis proposes is absolutely one of the most uncompromising legacies ever heard in a scene, that techno, which precisely in those years seemed to graze (especially in the Detroit area) rather warm and "soul" sounds, nothing more distant from all that is contained in these 3 CDs crammed with stuff. Downwards and Regis created their new grammar of sound by subtracting almost everything from it, a sound reduced to the bone, a skeleton, a specter of what had been understood for techno until then. Regis' music has more points of contact with industrial than with techno, its main influences seem more to be Throbbing Gristle and certain post-punk (and in the future, these influences will be even more marked) than Underground Resistance or Juan Atkins. Each track in this box set is simply glacial, a surgical and ruthless coldness, yet with a raw, dirty, metallic sound. An oppressive sensation of perpetual threat looms over tracks such as "Careless Pedestrian," "Ritual," "Her Surrender," or "A Necklace Of Bytes," just to name a few. The telluric and harsh beats spread irrepressibly in deadly atmospheres created by circular sound-noise waves in continuous loop, obsessive, exhausting, with no melodic concession or even remotely close to it. Each track is a tunnel, an abyss, an chasm; throwing oneself inside and letting oneself fall is always something as frightening as it is sublime.