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Features
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Introducing NEM3SI$’s new label Infinite Resistance! | Mindbenderz talk ‘Lord of the Rings’ and fishing, as well as the creation of their new album ‘Celestial Gateway’! | Iono-Music artists One Function, Eliyahu, Invisible Reality and Dual Vision talk Robert Miles, kids, dogs and vinyl, while we chat about their current releases! | Luke&Flex talk influences, the Irish rave scene, why Flex wears a mask and Play Hard, their new EP out now on Onhcet Repbulik Xtreme! | Lyktum expands on his new album ‘Home’ – talking about his love of storytelling, creating new harmonies and the concept behind his musical works. | Pan talks getting caught short crossing the Sahara, acid eyeballs and tells us Trance is the Answer, plus shares his thoughts on his latest release 'Beyond the Horizon' - all from a beach in Spain! | Miss C chats about living with the KLF, DJing in a huge cat’s mouth, training her brain and the upcoming super-duper Superfreq Grande party at LDN East this Saturday, 16th September! | NEM3SI$ - I Live for the Night – talks superficiality, psychopaths, and bittersweet success, ahead of a plethora of evocative, emotional, and passionate upcoming melodic techno releases! | Psy-Sisters Spring Blast Off! We talk to DJ competition winner ROEN along with other super talents on the lineup! | Blasting towards summer festivals with Bahar Canca ahead of Psy-Sisters Spring Blast! | Shyisma talks parties, UFO's, and Shotokan Karate ahead of his upcoming album 'Particles' on Iono-Music! | SOME1 talks family, acid, stage fright and wolves - ahead of his upcoming album release ‘Voyager’ on Iono-Music in February 2023! | The Transmission Crew tell all and talk about their first London event on 24th February 2023! | NIXIRO talks body, mind and music production ahead of his release 'Planet Impulse' on Static Movement's label - Sol Music! | Turning the world into a fairy tale with Ivy Orth ahead of Tribal Village’s 10th Birthday Anniversary Presents: The World Lounge Project | The Psy-Sisters chat about music, achievements, aspirations and the 10-Year Anniversary Party - 18/12/22! | A decade of dance music with Daniel Lesden | Earth Needs a Rebirth! Discussions with Psy-Trance Artist Numayma | Taking a Journey Through Time with Domino | New Techno Rising Star DKLUB talks about his debut release White Rock on Onhcet Republik! | PAN expands on many things including his new album 'Hyperbolic Oxymoron' due for release on the 14th April 2022 on PsyWorld Records! | Psibindi talks all things music including her new collaborative EP 'Sentient Rays' on Aphid Records, her band Sentience Machine and 10 years of Psy-Sisters! | N-Kore talks Jean-Michel Jarre, unfinished tracks and fatherhood! | Celebrating International Women’s Day and Ten Years of Psy-Sisters with Amaluna | A Catch Up with John Phantasm ahead of his upcoming set at the Tribal Village 4 Day Outdoor Event in Kent 6-9 May 2022! | 'The Maestro that is Tristan talks barn owls, Shazamming and keeping it Psychedelic ahead of his upcoming performance at the Tribal Village 4 Day Event in Kent 6-9 May 2022! |
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Aaron Liberator Stays Up Forever
Reported by Sterling Moss
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Submitted 24-05-10 19:26
Stay Up Forever & Kinetec Records have united to bring www.909london.com to the music buying public, as a one-stop download shop for the London Acid Techno sound, and eventually for all forms of hard & funky techno. This is the first dedicated site of its kind for this type of techno. Although some of the music is featured and available on sites like Beatport, if you are looking for this type of music on those sites, it is a time consuming and difficult task trying to locate it amongst all the other types of techno listed.
The site is not just a shop, but is also a community space, so people can interact and discuss musical releases and info from the scene. Stay Up Forever are still wholly committed to vinyl, being one of the last major producers of vinyl in the world of techno, and www.stayupforever.com is now becoming a one stop shop for the vinyl side of things, featuring all the new record releases, back catalogue and special releases including white labels & one off copies of rare releases.
We caught up with Aaron Liberator, part of the infamous Liberator DJ crew, and one of the masterminds behind both www.909london.com and the Stay Up Forever Collective of labels and artists.
Tell us about the concept of 909london.com, is it the first download site dedicated to Acid Techno/London Techno?
Yes it is the first "one stop" download shop for Acid Techno/London Techno. The idea for the site came from the frustration of not having a higher profile on sites such as Beatport. 90% of the total Stay Up Forever catalogue (over 1200 MP3's) was showing up on Beatport, but it was always difficult for fans of the music to find. We (being Chris Liberator and myself) teamed up with techno record shop Kinetec to build a specialist site which would give us the chance to sell new tracks that you could only get through 909, as well as the old catalogue with easy to find menus and good information about the artists and the music. Hopefully we will see a trend emerging which will see specialist download stores becoming independent entities to support specific styles.
Can you buy downloads of older labels like C.O.S.S.H. & Smitten, and other back catalogue?
Yes you can and hopefully you will see a lot more old classics from other labels of the past added to the mix such as Pull The Strings, Intensive and Skankadelic. There are a lot of tracks from back in the day that people now have never heard but would love to hear. It is definitely our aim to get more of these hidden gems out there to be played again on a big rig. Members of the site have been requesting tracks for us to put up so we are always searching through old DAT tapes and CD's for master copies.
Have you any plans to push the site to expand it's musical content to include other kinds of techno such as Hard Techno, Funky Techno, or Hard Dance?
We are already expanding the site to labels and artists outside of the SUF Collective, the only conditions we make are that the music is of a high quality and most of all we must like it. Both me and Chris play a lot of techno from other labels which is completely different to our sound. It fits in all the same as they also have a passion for energized techno that’s maybe just a bit slower or stripped down. With this in mind we have been talking to some great artists about doing exclusive labels for 909 and would like to see some of the established labels we rate to come and join us.
What labels and what artists feature on the site at present, and are there any labels that are exclusive?
All the big guns of Acid Techno / London Techno are present and correct on the site, Chris Liberator, D.A.V.E. The Drummer, The Geezer, DDR alongside new recruits A.P., Sterling Moss and Ganez The Terrible to name but a few. Classic labels Stay Up Forever, Cluster, Hydraulix, Highwire, Powertools and Hive all have exclusive counterparts on 909London with the same great artists making the exclusive tracks. We also have download versions of all our latest vinyl releases.
Are you still producing vinyl too, and if so, is this still important to STAY UP FOREVER?
The decline in the record industry has made it a difficult time to make records when the sales are a lot smaller than 5 years ago but this has yet to put us off. We still love the vinyl and so do a lot of DJs around the world still hungry for records new and old. We will keep the vinyl going as long as vinyl junkies still want it, and with our stayupforever.com site you’ll be able to get our records for some time to come.
As a DJ, do you prefer playing vinyl to downloads and what are the advantages and disadvantages?
Well I'm old skool so still love to play vinyl as its all about the feel of having something solid complete with an identity and memory in your hands to play. I have been getting used to playing CDs which I do enjoy from time to time. The advantage of having a bag of CD's in your record box is you may sound better on them if the club you are playing in has a digital sound system tuned to the CD players or laptops rather than turntables. This I found out when playing a gig in New York with Lenny D and Robert Armani. Both Lenny and myself were on vinyl and the sound was really sludgy during our sets vibing out the dancefloor, when Robert came on playing CDs the whole place suddenly jumped up and was alive again thanks to sudden crystal clear and pounding sound now coming through the speakers. I thought then I must learn how to mix on the CD players and keep a bag of CD's handy.
Programs like Tracktor and Vinyl Scratch are another way to play MP3's. These are cool too as long as your laptop doesn't crash and you are good at plugging in your equipment in the middle of someone else's set. Sounds bad but its not always easy to set up in some places and I have seen guys not being able to plug in the kit and then having to burn their sets quickly onto CD to play instead. The future will definitely be more geared to playing MP3's in clubs with better interfaces and hubs to match the digital sound systems.
I've heard the site can also be used as a forum. Do you think it is important for people to have a platform to comment on the music and interact with other 'fans' of the sound?
The community part of 909 is important and another great way to connect. This scene has always been about like-minded people finding each other through their love of the music and the free party ethos. It really is the way to keep things alive as people get to swap ideas, party info, and tracks they have written. When they see other people doing it as well it can be just the ‘kick-start’ needed to get involved.
What plans do you have for the site, are you hoping to add more labels and albums/mixes etc?
Definitely, we will have more special DJ mixes of classic labels such as Stay Up Forever, Wah Wah and Smitten, exclusive albums from DDR and the elusive Jah Scoop for Highwire and of course more labels from the archives. We also plan to start a few new ones of our own which will be a great opportunity to change up the sounds for something different and unique. Stay Up Forever Deep Missions series for example will be for tracks that show the 303 in a different way to the unrelenting drive of Acid Techno.
Is the Acid Techno sound still a worldwide phenomenon?
Oh Yes.. The Acid Techno renaissance is in full swing at the moment with some amazing tunes coming out now. The scene, although smaller than before, is a very dedicated movement in South America, Spain, France and Poland as well as in the UK. Most notably there are recent resurges in places like Lincoln, Guildford & Bury St Edmunds to name but a few. New fans of the music are coming into it all the time and are very much tuned into the free party ideology of "do it your self" culture and of course have a love for the maddening 303's. I have been to some absolutely cracking nights all over the world in the last year alone. One of the highlights was playing this little club in Brest, France to the most sweaty drunken and high crowd I had seen in a longtime, in a place you wouldn't normally associate with Acid Techno. The more 303's you gave them the more they went mad! Another great night was just recently down at the Volks Tavern in Brighton for another sweaty up for it night called ‘Sicknote’. The promoters Scott and Steve are proper Acid Techno fans, and like a lot of underground promoters they are keeping the vibes alive.
STAY UP FOREVER is coming up to 100 releases, you (and the crew) are still out there playing gigs every week, running the STAY UP FOREVER COLLECTIVE, 909london.com, you have almost 20 years of constant dedication to this under your belt, so, honestly, does it still give you a buzz, do you still love the music?
Recently I had a meeting with Chris Liberator at my house, and in this meeting we were sitting down listening to Acid Techno demos and at one point early on due to a particularly "Av In It" tune we were both on our feet dancing like idiots with big grins our faces. Another time recently in the studio with Chris and Sterling Moss made me laugh. As we were making a track for our Wah Wah label, Chris was getting me to sing the acid lines so he could copy them on the 303, then he would sing back some extra acid lines to throw in to the track. What could be more ridiculous than two middle aged men pretending to be 303's! If I didn’t get excited like that and not have a good time doing it anymore then yes, I would stop. It’s all the mad energy and laughs which keeps any scene alive and thanks to DJing I have had a chance to meet the people who are really into it, and it’s always very motivating . . .
Photos courtesy of Aaron Liberator. Not to be reproduced without permission.
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Comments:
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From: ~deleted1390 on 25th May 2010 08:50.49 Ooh, sounds good like the idea of being able to get some of the classics stuff.
Please try and get some Noom stuff on MP3!
From: El Hombre on 27th May 2010 11:19.47 Who said Smitten is Dead
From: K8-e on 6th Jun 2010 23:32.09 I'm actually fairly excited to go and get some of my much loved acid techno on mp3.. it may even kick me off mixing again who knows
From: JackB on 7th Jun 2010 13:45.18 Legend!
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