'You Can't Hold Onto Stuff - You Can't Hold Onto Anything That Was'

In 2002, British techno innovator Luke Slater unleashed a countercultural electro-pop album on Mute Records. Alright On Top, featuring The Aloof's vocalist Ricky Barrow, proved to be polarising — purists irked. Ironically, today it's deemed a classic.

"I'm quite a rebellious kind of person," Slater laughs. "I think that's probably half of the problem, but half of the blessing, because I don't like being tied down. That's something I've always fought against in everything, for whatever reason."

The DJ/producer is familiar with electronic music cycles. Slater became a rave romantic, and renegade, during the acid house era — pursuing music as his vocation. Beginning in 1989, he circulated his inimitable IDM under innumerable handles. His early albums as Planetary Assault Systems — space-funk — on Peacefrog Records were feted. Yet Slater's most high-profile work materialised under his own name. In 1997 he aired Freek Funk, encompassing the house opus Love, via NovaMute. Slater joined the Big Day Out. He followed with the breaks-oriented Wireless. Slater then boldly assembled a band to tour Alright On Top. He also subversively remixed Madonna's The Power Of Good-Bye into techno. "It was an interesting time because a lot of pop artists — and especially females, actually — were looking to the techno scenes to bring a different sort of mix to what they were doing." In 2006, amid a quasi-hiatus, Slater launched a label, Mote-Evolver.

"I said years ago, like, 'Don't be scared of the future, because it's gonna change.' "

Last September, Slater — now down with the Berghain-affiliated Ostgut Ton — delivered a Planetary Assault Systems album, Arc Angel, of abstractly melodic techno. Slater speaks reverently of Planetary Assault Systems as music emanating from "a mindset" — even compulsion. "It's almost like a force that I really don't understand, but I've lived with it for a long time." Rebel or not, he won't ever "mess with" Planetary Assault Systems.

Slater will both perform live as Planetary Assault Systems (on laptop, augmented with a 909) and DJ at Babylon Festival — his first Australian fest since 2013's BDO. Coincidentally, he's spruiking The Light Years Reworks, comprising remixes of seminal Planetary Assault Systems tracks from the likes of Octave One.

Ever unpredictable, Slater has resurrected another '90s vehicle in the ambient The 7th Plain — Chronicles I revealing unreleased and "archival" tracks. "Some of them are really old," he divulges. "I was a different person when I made them, so it's like hearing them quite fresh... [But] I don't like looking back too much."

Slater has seen the dance music industry change dramatically, with new technologies, economics and modes of consumption. Even those pioneers who laud progress — and futurism — might admit to feeling anxious about such flux. Not Slater. "I think there's been testing points," he ponders. "I think I said years ago, like, 'Don't be scared of the future, because it's gonna change.' The test of anything you say is when something does change and how you handle it. You can't hold onto stuff — you can't hold onto anything that was. And I think that's about going forward. Musicians have had to change and performers have had to change and the whole industry's had to change. But, then, who said there was any right for anything to be as it was before?"