UK techno: bleep from Sheffield and raw Birmingham

Music from factory towns

Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford and Birmingham were cities losing their steelworks, mines and factories in the 1980s. Young people there listened to imported records from Detroit and Chicago, but also to local electronic pioneers such as Sheffield's Cabaret Voltaire. That mix produced British techno: cold, sparse and very bass-heavy.

Bleep: tones and bass

Around 1989 a style called bleep, sometimes bleep and bass, emerged in the north of England. Tracks were built from simple, pure tones that sounded like a test signal, plus bass so low you feel it more than hear it. One of the first was "The Theme" by Unique 3 from Bradford. In January 1990 Sweet Exorcist, Richard H. Kirk of Cabaret Voltaire and DJ Parrot, released "Testone", which became the template for the whole genre.

Warp and LFO

Warp was founded in Sheffield in 1989 by Steve Beckett, Rob Mitchell and Robert Gordon, alongside a record shop of the same name. Its biggest early hit came from the Leeds duo LFO. Their track "LFO" reached number 12 in the UK charts in 1990, a sensation for music made of nothing but bleeps and bass. Warp later moved towards experimental music, releasing Aphex Twin and Autechre among others.

Birmingham: the sound of the factory

In 1993 in Birmingham, Karl O'Connor (Regis) and Peter Sutton (Female) founded the Downwards label. The first reason was to release tracks by their friend Anthony Child, known as Surgeon. The Birmingham sound was raw, metallic and hypnotic, strongly inspired by Jeff Mills but even rougher. Listen to Surgeon's "Magneze": techno that sounds like machines working in a factory hall.

Legacy

The UK scene gave techno two things. The first is bass as the main character, which later returned in dubstep and UK bass. The second is Birmingham's uncompromising hardness, which grew into much of today's industrial techno. Regis and Surgeon are still active, and their joint project British Murder Boys became a legend.