The Song Remains The Same

DJ Hell was in the middle of a dry Techno set at a warehouse rave in Frankfurt about five years ago, when, out of the blue, he spun 'Me, I Disconnect from You' by Gary Numan's band Tubeway Army from their 1979 album Replicas. Not long aftewards, he treated the crowd to Depeche Mode's 'Tora! Tora! Tora!' from their debut album of 1981. On the dance floor, these remnants of a long gone New Romantic heyday didn't raise an eyebrow among the audience of 2000, few of whom were older than the songs themselves. DJ Hell didn't play the tracks as an ironic gesture, but the way these seemingly disparate forms of music integrated so naturally was disturbing.

During Germany's burgeoning mid-90s dance scene, the dominant rhetoric portrayed Techno as a Futurist form - heading towards the unknown like a rocket leaving the gravitational pull of history. This idea still remains part of the Techno-mythology, effacing any other connections the music may have had with previous youth cultures, as if these relationships somehow threatened its newness and legitimacy. Juan Atkins' statement that Techno sounded like Kraftwerk and George Clinton stuck in the same elevator is often recounted; yet other historical evaluations, like Stuart Cosgrove's 1988 article on Detroit Techno in The Face, have long been neglected.

DJ Hell's juxtaposition of Tubeway Army and Depeche Mode with tracks by Jeff Mills, Acid Scout and Basic Channel reintroduced pop history back into Techno in the mid 90s. Subsequent records by DJ Naughty (Gigolo Style, 1997) and Miss Kittin & The Hecker (1982, 1998) evoke teenage days spent listening to the Human League and Liasons Dangereuses - even those too young to have heard the originals are seemingly able to articulate a kind of fictional nostalgia for this period. DJ Hell has covered 'Suicide Commando' by German Goth outfit No More and 'Warm Leatherette' by Daniel Miller, Mute records' boss and discoverer of Depeche Mode. For the single's cover he collaborated with the Munich artists' group Chicks on Speed, who designed it in true 80s fanzine cut-and-paste style.

Some people don't enjoy DJ Hell's historical pickings, the most obvious example being Neil Landstrum who, on his album Pro Audio (1998), featured a track entitled 'Gigolos Trapped in Retro Hell'. But, while acknowledging how quickly historical referencing can turn into a worn-out fad, it is obvious that Techno lacks an awareness of its own history. The amnesia of popular culture in general is a point Meaghan Morris discussed in her book Too Soon Too Late. History in Popular Culture (1998). According to Morris, the rhetoric of either mourning or mocking the supposedly ephemeral character of pop ignores the implications of the digitised media landscape. One-hit-wonders from years ago are now as readily available as dated re-runs of TV shows - both of which enter the minds of the young in ways that could never have been predicted.

In order to understand why early-80s sounds are being recycled by the dance world, the recent historical shifts of Techno have to be taken into account. The minimalism of well-known musicians and DJs such as Jeff Mills, Richie Hawtin, Surgeon, Basic Channel or Marco Carola have dominated the rhetoric of 'cutting edge' Techno over the last few years, and this is a reaction to the extravagant sounds that dominated until around 1994. Their music is based on a steady kickdrum, an accompanying bass line and usually only one additional percussive element. Using these simple means to explore shifts in syncopation, heightens awareness of the sound's materiality - as well as functioning perfectly on the dance floor.

Now the pendulum is swinging back. There has been an inevitable generational shift: most of the musicians now working with 80s sounds are too young to have experienced early developments in dance music, and consider minimal Techno academic and anti-hedonist. Their aim is not so much a revival of 80s sounds for the sake of it, but to counter ossification of minimalism with something lively and agile. The attractiveness of Electropop's legacy in Techno clubs is the opportunity it provides to reintroduce elements that had long seemed lost: melody, singing, even verse and chorus - concepts that had been ideologically and practically negated by Techno.

The audio reservoir of the early 80s is familiar to anyone who grew up with video games, an influence which is apparent on the debut album by Finnish duo Mr Velcro Fastener, Lucky Bastards Living Up North (1999), and Goodbye Mum (1999) by the Italian band Mat-101, which sound like a version of Depeche Mode's Speak & Spell (1981) garnished with PlayStation sounds. While these records radiate naivety and naturalness in the way they deal with historical material, Les Rhythmes Digitales and DMX Krew are geared towards frivolity. The latter, soulmate of Aphex Twin and Mike Paradinas, delivered a clear-cut pop album, Nu Romantix (1998), full of delirious echoes from The Cure to Howard Jones, while Jacques Lu Cont (aka Les Rhythmes Digitales) invited 80s pop icons such as Shannon and Nik Kershaw to sing on his album Darkdancer (1999).

While younger musicians have cultivated a nostalgia for certain pre-Techno genres, the older generation of pioneers are also widening the spectrum of their musical sources. A good example is the cover design of Cologne musician Wolfgang Voigt's (aka Mike Ink) album Life's a Gas (1996), which references a number of historic albums from Kraftwerk and T Rex, to ABC and Hot Chocolate. Voigt sampled these records and then integrated them, mostly as loops, into his elegantly rolling tracks. As someone who had dealt for years with the specific demands of the Techno dance floor, Voigt discovered a way to re-situate well-known pop material within the parameters of his musical language.

Uwe Schmidt, known better as his alter ego Atom Heart, uses a similar approach, but instead of relying on his all-time favourites, he chose those of his friends - his album Pop Artificielle (1999), produced under his moniker lb, is comprised exclusively of such cover versions. Using custom software that allows him to 're-programme' his voice, Schmidt created a distance from his source (although his versions sound uncannily like the originals) - 'Angie' by the Rolling Stones or 'Jealous Guy' by John Lennon. Justus Köhncke, a member of Whirlpool Productions and A Subtle Tease, took a more direct approach on his debut Spiralen der Erinnerung (1999), where he sings eight favourite standards - from Wings' 'Let 'em in' to Neil Young's 'Old Man' - in a fragile voice accompanied by gentle electronics.

More discrete signals linger in Albrecht Kunze's album Testarchiv (1999). The titles of his instrumental tracks reflect influences from the Beatles to the Beach Boys. 'Gm 7/1' echoes the opening chord of 'A Hard Day's Night'; 'Dennis Wilson Under Water' and 'Drowning Under the Influence' obviously allude to the tragic death of the Beach Boys' drummer. But there is only one discernable audio sample: the sparse applause of the audience at the Beatles' concert on the roof of the Apple Building in London.

Schmidt, Kunze and Köhncke refer to a musical canon that is part of their personal aural history (and which most Rolling Stone or Mojo editors regard as omnipotent); while the New Romantic explorations of younger artists re-evaluate an often derided historical genre to escape from the stasis of recent Techno. But despite the question of whether these records are homages - or a rejection of the very idea of a homage - what they have in common is a desire to reinvest dance music with a sense of history.