Techno Relevance

Long before the advent of Dirty Dutch house, Rotterdam's Speedy J (AKA Jochem Paap) was churning out grimy mutant techno. Now the '90s live veteran is returning to Australia for the first time since 2006, when he played a rave at Kryal Castle outside Ballarat. "It's been a few years, yeah," an easygoing Paap says. "I guess the opportunity [to tour Australia] comes up pretty much every year, but it's a long way for me, so it doesn't always fit the calendar. But this one suited well, so I thought I'd make a trip again." 

Among The Netherlands' earliest techno producers, Paap, originally a hip hop-loving DJ, connected with Canada's Plus 8, the label run by Richie Hawtin and John Acquaviva. Extraordinarily, he'd spawn a Top 40 hit at home with 1991's Pullover, a rudimentary rave anthem auguring gabber – the dubious hardcore genre from Rotterdam that was briefly, and unfairly, associated with a neo-fascist youth subculture but more often mocked for its 'hoover' sound ('gabber' is Dutch slang for 'mate'). Some years ago Aphex Twin joked about leading an ironic gabber resurgence. But it was Paap's tech-trance Evolution that DJ Mag lately cited in its 'Top 100 Most Important Techno Records'. The Dutchman released his debut album, Ginger, on both Plus 8 and,  as part of its Artificial Intelligence series, Warp. He then deviated into experimental music, or extreme sound design, pioneering IDM on NovaMute's Public Energy No. 1. Paap oscillated between sublime ambient and austere industrial even within the same track. After 2002's Loudboxer, he threw himself into collaborations, cutting the album Collabs 3000: Metalism with Frankfurt's Chris Liebing, the inventor of schranz. And Paap devised his own label, or 'brand', Electric Deluxe. Today Paap divides his time between Rotterdam and Berlin, where he has friends. Still, he isn't prepared to leave Rotterdam completely, maintaining that its scene is "pretty healthy at the moment." Besides, flying out most weekends for gigs, the old port city is more convenient. "Berlin is okay, but the airport is horrible!," Paap quips.

Paap may have slipped off the media's radar, but he's busier than ever. This year he teamed with Italian DJ/producer Lucy (Luca Mortellaro) for an album of abstract techno as Zeitgeber (German for "synchroniser") on Mortellaro's Berlin-based Stroboscopic Artefacts. It's Paap's most high-profile project in ages. "I've been doing a lot of singles and remixes and stuff like that – and also I've done a 5.1 surround sound DVD [Umfeld] in 2007. So I haven't been off the radar or quiet, I've actually done quite a lot of work, but this is the first result in a while. I've also got a new solo album coming up next year. In the meantime, I've been focussing on building the label and our event series – we do a lot of clubs worldwide with our brand Electric Deluxe. We also host stages at festivals." Paap and Mortellaro are developing a live show.

Paap is ever-changing – but he has perhaps finally exorcised the ghost of gabber. "I've always permitted myself to go anywhere I want – because I've been around for quite a while and, if you start to conform to an image that people have of you, you basically get stuck in an area where you are no longer free to do what you want. I wouldn't be happy, or I wouldn't be as involved with the whole thing, if I wasn't able to do what I feel like. This is just a way for me to keep myself interested and to keep pushing myself."

Many of electronic music's old guard are cynical about, or deride, the (US) EDM phenom. Yet Paap considers it "a positive thing". He's pleased that younger listeners are "little bit more open-minded" – or less purist – and the scene more unified. The kids will party to Skrillex, David Guetta and Hawtin. "It's all called EDM or electronic music." Paap is similarly gratified that fans have stuck by him through his serpentine career. "Never underestimate your audience – that's the thing!"

Paap is again relevant, gauging by the industrial strains of the post-dubstep techno emanating from UK producers such as Blawan. He agrees that '90s techno is undergoing a "revival". And, while techno has always exalted futurism, he deems "recycling" in music as inenvitable. "I don't think there's a big problem with that because the context around it is different, and the perception of it is different, so that keeps everything fresh and interesting."

On his East Coast Australian tour, Paap will perform a hybrid live show on laptop. "I've been playing live since the start of my career [he issued a live album in 1995] and, although I've adopted some of the DJ techniques from recent years, it's still very much a live show. I use parts of existing tracks of music by other people, but that's basically just to increase the amount of stuff that I can play around with – sort of like a bigger arsenal than if I just stuck to my own. But the way I play is still pretty much based on improvisation and manipulating things in such a way that most of what I play is unrecognisable... I kind of feel that I'm cheating if I'm not doing that, because I'm coming from a producer's background. Even if I play somebody else's track, I feel the need to tweak it and do something with it that makes it my own. So it's like halfway between DJing and playing live."

Paap has surprisingly little patience for those arguments about what constitutes 'live' or 'DJing' that have embroiled a deadmau5. Ultimately, though he is a member of techno's intelligentsia, it's all about having "fun" for him. "I don't think the technical aspects of the way somebody plays should make a difference or should be in people's minds when they listen to it. All that's important is that they have a nice experience and a good night and hopefully get faces blown off at some point on the night! How that is achieved technically is not really relevant – that's only relevant to me because that's the way I can express my ideas in the best way. I really don't care about the whole debate about vinyl versus digital or anything."