Submitted By: Sneaky

Genre: Techno

Date of Set: Jul 2005

Filesize: 55.00 MB

Total Downloads: 24

Brian Zentz is an interesting subject. He’s a highly respected techno producer whose roots lay in the American state of Virginia, not exactly a locale regarded as an epicenter in the world of electronic music. After numerous successful releases, including his previous album Strategies for a Deeper Design (released on the Definitive label), he’s now ready to unleash his latest full-length album Seventh Breaths on Intec Records, the label co-owned by UK techno luminaries DJ C1 and Carl Cox. ITM's i_have_ADD spoke with Zentz about his musical influences, how to deal with techno purists, and his approach to performing live.

Zentz’s musical upbringing consisted of hip-hop and punk with a healthy quantity of graffiti and design thrown in to the mix, the end result being productions that cover the gamut of electronic music styles, ranging from techno, house and electro, through to ambient and even industrial. I asked Zentz who he saw as defining influences over his current style, “It’s really a lot of things. I listen to a lot of music, electronic, dance, hardcore and punk bands, hip-hop, and I think that all has its influence on me.” Going on to reveal, “I’ve always had an interest in electronic stuff, a lot of new-wave like Devo, Kraftwerk, and that kind of thing, and I also listened to a lot of hip-hop. Around 87/88 I got some gear for Christmas from my parents, keyboards and speakers, and I got hooked on it from there and started saving up and buying second hand samplers. When I first got my gear it wasn’t really techno per se, more hip-hop and electronic music.”

Named as one of the few ‘performing’ artists in the techno genre, I was interested to learn a bit about Zentz’s approach to playing live, “It’s a mixture of stuff that I have released over time and other music that’s there just for the live show. I try to go through the different styles that I do. The set is 45 minutes, which I guess is a small time frame to work in so I tend to do things pretty quickly. There’s a bit of electro in there, some breakbeat, some dub, and I try to make it all fit. I take the old-school approach, I don’t use computers only hardware.”

There’s no denying that at times techno enthusiasts can be enthusiastic when it comes to their music, and on occasions this enthusiasm can manifest in negative ways with ‘purists’ of the genre slating some producers or techniques. I was keen to hear Zentz’s tactics for dealing with the more obsessive of the bunch, “To me techno isn’t a purist thing at all, people will say ‘here’s something that’s super minimal, that’s techno’, but the first techno records that came out weren’t like that at all. It was something weird, influenced by stuff like the B52s, or Prince, or Kraftwerk, all of this stuff that was non-conventional. It doesn’t seem like those people back then were too concerned about fitting in to one thing, they were taking influences from different sources and throwing them together. I don’t really like ‘cheesey’ music, but that’s about as purist as I’d get!”

In general Zentz is happy for his music to fall within the genre of techno, but he’s quick to note that he’s by no means restricted to one style. I asked Zentz for his personal opinion on the never ending stream of classifications and genres given to electronic music, “Sometimes things become so labeled I get tired of hearing about it! Like electroclash or whatever, it’s great that people are doing it but why do people need to label it? I mean, it’s cool to describe something, but I think it can also be counterproductive. A lot of the early stuff I did was housey-techno or technoey-house, it didn’t really fit well into either genre, so it got put into tech-house.”

Zentz’s latest offering on Intec is Seven Breaths, and so far it’s received massive props from a range of esteemed DJs and producers including Francois K and Derrick May, with the latter remarking Zentz’s tracks “have a mood [and] energy... I don't think I could of done them any better, and I will therefore continue to ‘SLAM THEM IN THE MIX’! By the way the album is slamming overall.” Zentz seems surprisingly humble in receipt of such kind words. I’d say he’s pretty chuffed to have someone of May’s caliber singing his praise, and it really doesn’t get much better than that now, does it?

Seven Breaths is out now through Intec Record, distributed locally by Inertia.

He has also recently completed a full length album for Carl Cox's label Intec. 2004 promises to be an interesting year for Bryan as he debuts his own record label 'Disruptor'. A sonic blend of Detroit, Jamaica, and New York, Disruptor will be a techno label encompassing many of Bryan's influences and interests such as dub reggae, street art, and the hardcore/punk aesthetic.