a complex sound has a human touch to it...something analog...
I don't fully agree with this...a complex sound certainly has to have a human touch, otherwise it is just random noise - this can in itself be used to make music (see everything by Pole, and a lot of Pan_sonic stuff - although maybe the fact that they have taken noise and built music around it means that it is no longer random noise?) - but a sound absolutely does not have to be analogue in order to be soulful, complex or funky. A lot of the sounds that you hear in trance come straight from a sampler, keyboard, drum machine or bass synth without being manipulated by the producer laying down the track. A good techno producer will instead be striving to
create new sounds, i.e. - to make music using sounds that no one has ever heard before (usually by distorting existing ones into something new)..I think this is much more of a human touch (it requires talent for a start) than pressing the 'drum roll' and 'crescendo' buttons on a keyboard.
As for analogue sounds not appearing in techno: All of Jeff Mills' (excellent) Purposemaker stuff is built around breaks and samples from 70s disco and batacuda. Many of my favorite techno tracks from the last year had plenty of analogue sounds:
- Random Noise Generation 'Instrument of Change' (guitars)
- Layo and Bushwacka! 'Deep South' (gospel choir)
- Technasia 'Force' (vocals)
- Rolando ‘Revenge of the Jaguar - Mad Mike mix’ (strings)
With respect to the chemical Brothers...they have always had a mix of influences, but they were a lot more techno five years ago than they are now. 'Out of control' sounds like trance to me...'Song to the siren' like techno.
[This message has been edited by basic (edited 19 July 2000).]
