LOAD is back – but . . who?

SELSTROM (live)
MAZZULA (hybrid)
TEKKAZ (live)
DJACKER (pounding techno)
RASKAIN (live)
CIRCITIFIED (Home built at Circuit Bent Hardware – live)
DIGITAL BUDDHIST / b3 (live)

The Basement – Sat 25th August – 10-4

So, after a brief hiatus after our 10th Birthday LOAD returns to the Basement on the 25th August.

In keeping with our long-standing philosophy, we again bring the best techno/electronic talent available our locality, live (mostly) over two rooms, with a decent PA.  Don’t be mistaken though, this is far from a community building/arty up its own arse chin stroker.  This is a proper, pounding night, pulling artists from the street who actually represent what is happening in the more electronic, techno, electro part of the scene.  It’s not for the faint-hearted, more for the open-hearted who are brave enough to find something new.

This time out, amongst others, we welcome in Selström, who leads the fight in the main room.  You probably wont know him and what he does?  It turns out that he has a proper techno pedigree.  Selström bangs hard.  We asked him how the hell this happened, and what part electronics played in it all . . .

(1) Who are your influences?

I used to love all the old Detroit techno, Hood, Bone, UR etc.  Also been a huge fan of Surgeon, listening to him, Pariah and Blawan at House of God inspired me sell all my Roland Aira gear, and most other possessions to go down the modular path.

2) When did electronic music first get your attention and can you remember what you heard and how it felt?

When I was about 12 or 13, a friend gave me a tape cassette of the Prodigy’s ‘Experience’. I played this tape almost constantly in my Walkman: walking to school, in school, out in the evening with my friends, in bed, literally everywhere. Up until then I hadn’t really paid much attention to music, but listening to tracks like ‘Weather Experience’ and ‘Out of Space’ got me absolutely hooked. It wasn’t the first time I had heard it, but I can remember very clearly, a moment while camping in some woods with some friends on the West Coast of Scotland, we were up on a hill overlooking the Firth of Clyde, I went for a walk down the hill early in the morning at around 5am, just as the sun was coming up and I could see for miles. I had my headphones in and ‘Weather Experience’ came on. I can remember how it felt… like the perfect moment as the awesome strings came in. 25 years later I still feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up thinking about this. From there I went on to listen to a lot of oldskool breakbeat mix tapes by the likes of Carl Cox and Ellis Dee, before finding techno in the mid 90’s and becoming obsessed with Dave Clarke and Jeff Mills etc. Tracks like Dave Clarke’s ‘Wisdom to the Wise’ on Red 2 inspired my love of techno.

(3) What made you go from being a listener to a maker of music?

This only happened very recently. I’d been a bedroom DJ for many years, (although I have played out a few times, many years ago.) I’d always thought synths were very cool, but knew nothing about them or anyone who owned one. A little over 2 years ago, I’d been toying with the idea of buying some of the Roland Aira gear, when my father-in-law obtained a Roland-77 drum machine, Roland’s first ever product. It’s not programmable and just has very basic presets; I think it was intended to provide backing tracks for musicians. However, I had a play on it one Sunday afternoon with him, and I instantly realised that I needed to get myself some more advanced gear. So, that week I bought a Roland TR-8, System 1, TB-3 and MX-1 mixer, all of which apart from the MX-1 were later sold along with many other items, to fund my Eurorack obsession.

(4) Where is Selström heading in the future? What would you like to do?

I’ve got a few interesting and creative projects lined up after LOAD. In November I’ll be playing a vinyl vs modular back to back set in Birmingham with Tarantism resident VashTheStampede, which is pretty cool. I’m also hoping to release an EP later in the year, and I’ve recently become involved with a project called Divergence, which promotes art, film, culture, music and innovation within my local community in Alsager, where I’ll be running some workshops on modulars. In the future I’d like to keep practicing and record more music for release both as a solo artist and maybe some collaborations, as well as play some more live gigs.

We asked for a quick tour of the set-up he’ll be using at LOAD.  It gets no more live than this.

If you are an electronic music producer and would like to get involved? Get in touch . .