Minus Orange

Arguably one of the most popular Detroit Techno classics of modern day dance music, "Minus Orange" was produced by Richie Hawtin in 1999 when Detroit influenced techno was beginning to spread across the world like wildfire. You won't hear techno nowadays in many clubs where I'm from unless you live in Germany, Rotterdam or Belgium, but godamn were those days good. The glory days of Detroit are over (known to many as the Jerusalem of techno music) but the music still lives on.

I remember being at an afterhours in Montreal called Sona in 1999 when Stacey Pullen dropped this track (it was a white label record, so it wasn't released to the public yet). My jaws dropped when I heard it.

There are many rumors of the origins of the song, but many believe that it was sampled from Yello's 1985 produced "Ohh Yeah" track that was made famous in the Snicker Bar commercials and from the soundtrack of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". Who knows where Hawtin got the sample from, but throw that into the mix with some compressed TR-909 drums and it was an instant classic.


Since 1999, Richie Hawtin has progressed into a more mature style of minimal techno. You will rarely hear him play songs like "Minus Orange" anymore. His recent work has been more experimental, abstract and dark sounding minimal techno. Him and Ricardo Villalobose have been going ape shit pushing that minimal sound in Europe when the masses were still heavily into German Schranz and hard industrial techno. I guess their hard work paid off, as most of Europe now is mainly into minimal and electro.

I picked up a copy of his latest album called "DE:9 Transitions" (Short for "Decks, Efx, and TR909"). The first DE:9 album was originally a concept album that showcased Hawtin's turntablism skills, mixed with live effects from his effect racks, while simultaneously incorporating hands on drum machine programming. Since then, it has evolved into something completely different. "Transitions" was an album that was completely mixed from Ableton Live where he spliced and diced loops from hundreds of different minimal tracks and blended them together in different orders, while using Ableton's built in software tools.

Anyhow, enough of the bloody lecture, we're not here to be educated. The two songs are taken from "DE:9 Transitions". Tracks have been incorporated into the videos he made that were released as a DVD version on his album. Enjoy.

"The Tunnel" - Richie Hawtin


"We (All) Search" - Richie Hawtin