Luton, England, May 1996. The green and sedate countryside on the outskirts of the town has been temporarily taken over by the Universe crew, who are holding another Tribal Gathering. For the best part of 24 hours, thirty thousand people party peacefully to the sounds of dance music s greatest talents. The evening is progressing nicely when, suddenly, two unassuming guys appear onstage in the techno tent, ensconce themselves behind the assembled rows of machinery and proceed to fire out the most deranged, glorious barrage of live 4/4s the crowd will hear for the duration of the event. Ladies and gentlemen, The Advent are in the house!
Fast forward three months and shift location to the Kitchen in Dublin. The Colin McBean/Cisco Ferreira partnership are making their debut in Ireland, and are blowing the roof off the venue with their unholy mixture of thunderous kick-drums, sinister snares, prowling b-boy basslines and pure analogue noise. The gig featured in Digital Beat s Top Ten events of the year, and is still remembered by the pair as one of their favourites. That s exactly the kind of place we like to play, explains Cisco, small and intimate with a good sound system.
Although The Advent might seem like a new arrival to many, their past is inextricably linked to the origins of modern day dance music. Cisco Ferreira co-produced much of CJ Bolland s earlier work, and played a vital role in the production of the seminal 4th Sign long player. Cisco was also Bolland s live partner from the early days.
I played with CJ at his first gig, he remembers. It was the early days of techno artists playing live apart from myself and CJ and Orbital and Underground Resistance everyone else was using playbacks and we had an idea of what we wanted it to sound like. We got it just about right the first few times, but after that it didn t really go as we expected, so I hooked up with Colin and we started making music together.
Colin s influences span back to Studio One reggae , having been enticed by the whole electronic feel, especially the bass sound.
Despite these differing backgrounds, McBean and Ferreira s common musical interest has always been electro. Listen to either Elements Of Life (their first LP), the forthcoming New Beginings album, or any of their 12 s and electro is always there, either in the form of a track or in the spirit of the music.
Electro was the original dance music , believes Cisco. It was a street culture and had an identity of its own, with special types of dancing and graffiti evolving from the scene. Electro was there before house, hip-hop or techno. When electro branched off into different directions a number of things happened: hip-hop became mainstream music in the US, and people like Run DMC sold millions of records, house producers had a number of hits with vocal tracks and techno stayed underground.
The Advent have remained true to their roots, describing themselves as bad street kids with our own flava and style , knocking out deep electro as well as tough and grainy technofunk that comes from within us. When we re happy we ll make a nice piece of melodic electro, but when things aren t going our way the music will get more aggressive.
The duo heap praise on Liam Howlett and The Prodigy Liam is like us, a kid from the streets. He s been around since the early days and has always been ahead of everyone else with what he does but when asked about Detroit, the home of all things electronic, the pair do not respond with the kind of respect the city usually receives from their peers.
The music they made was so unique at the time. They had fused elements of acid house, funk and electro to create techno, and then Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May kept it all to themselves. There were so many great producers in Detroit who never got a chance because they weren t part of that scene. All of the great talents like Aux 88, Underground Resistance, Blake Baxter, Carl Craig and Stacey (Pullen) got there on their own. Nowadays, of the original three, Juan is the only one still producing decent electro and techno and has his Metroplex label, Kevin is making commercial music and Derrick May hasn t produced in so many years (although he is rumoured to be collaborating with A Guy Called Gerald soon Ed.) that by this stage , if he walked into a studio, there would be about 40 producers who are way ahead of him.
Although they are far too modest to admit it themselves, Colin and Cisco operate on a level way above the majority of their contemporaries. Their Elements Of Life album arrived at the tail-end of 1995, and gave techno a long overdue breath of fresh air. New Beginnings is a worthy successor, and shows how the group s sound has progressed. Elements reflected the way we were at the time it was recorded says Colin and represented all the elements of our life, and most of it was aimed at the floor. Beginnings is all about starting again we recently left Internal and are now on London Records. The music has changed as well: it s deeper, more minimal and certainly more intricate and subtle. Listen to it a few times and you ll notice things you mightn t have the first time around.
The album hasn t left my stereo for the last fortnight, and Colin s advice was spot-on. Beginnings hits you when you least expect it, and even if it doesn t have the immediacy of tracks like Bad Boy or It One Jah from Elements, McBean believes that it would be pointless to churn out the same formula for the next few years instead of developing our sound. If you look at producers we respect like Luke Slater, they re all experimenting with more minimal sounds, and we feel that this is the way to go.
Although Beginnings can be amply enjoyed at home, its real home is over the booming sound system of a dark, smoky club. The notion of live techno may conjure up visions of two nerds noodling over a computer, but The Advent live experience is a totally different matter. As the pair work their machinery, Colin usually engages his audience with a manic display of bodypopping. Unlike most live dance acts we don t have any visuals, so my dancing is what gives our show a visual element. We don t want to use a stage show until we re happy that it is compatible with our music.
Dismissing the role of the DJ as the medium between the crowd and producer, Cisco claims that The Advent live have more of an impact on clubbers than yer average spinner.
If you DJ, all you re doing is playing someone else s records, but what we do is totally live, so we can take the crowd to wherever they want to go. There s nothing better than playing your music over a huge system , watching people in different countries going crazy to it and then getting paid for it.
With a gruelling remix and touring schedule planned for the coming months, The Advent also want to find time to record a single for one of the new Star Wars movies. I saw Star Wars when I was seven years old, back in 1977, says Colin. It blew my mind at the time because it was so far ahead of everything else. We want to take voices and sound effects from the original Star Wars movies and work them into a track for the new ones. The Advent are bringing techno into the third millenium, and the good side of the Force is with them. n
New Beginnings is out now on London Records.