This mini-post is an offshoot of Cape Town – The Psychedelic Years

Music has been inextricably linked to my Cape Town experience. When I arrived from Pretoria my main interests were techno 1 and drum ‘n bass. And while I never really got into psychedelic trance 2 the CT psytrance scene did introduce me to one of the most fun things to possibly do – massive outdoor parties. I vividly remember the first Vortex that I attended, at Silverstroom strand, with a swirling monster of a sound system mounted on four towers around the dance floor 3. Now let me be clear, I’m not one of those dancy-types – I’m a stand-aroundy type, but even just walking around a packed dance floor is a cool thing. I’m grateful that I got to go to a bunch of them in the warm summers and cold, wet winters of the Cape. But without any doubt the most memorable party that I ever went to was somewhere in the summer of 2000/2001 at the Old SAB Brewery in Woodstock. It was a techno thing 4. It was held on a foggy Friday night in the roofless shell of an old multi-storey industrial brick building. The building is now being renovated into offices/apartments but each time I drive past I still remember exact details of driving there, the fire escape staircases and the metal roof structure. And the driving, driving, driving music. And it doesn’t matter that it has passed and I am now old and slow – it affected me and changed me and will never be lost.

So, in memoriam and celebration, here’s a short playlist of the electronic music that rocked my world in those years. It is only a tiny fragment of the mass of CDs and vinyl that I accumulated and it can in no way do justice to all the sound that I was exposed to, but I picked a few. It starts out with some classic minimal techno from Robert Hood, takes a short detour through progressive house and some of the few psytrance producers that I have a genuine admiration for and culminates in two tracks from Richie Hawtin’s Plastikman. A few words on Plastikman; musically I was interested in only one thing in those years – less. I wanted music which was minimal and precise and only the most accomplished producers could produce a minimal sound while still invoking the insanity of a heaving dance floor. Plastikman achieved perfection in this pursuit on these two tracks.

• Robert Hood – Wisdom to the Wise
• Funf D – Overcome
• Quivvers – Do You Really Want to Hurt Me
• Accorsi & Bassetti – Concord
• X-Dream – Irritant
• Plastikman – Locomotion
• Plastikman – Consumed