Dave Clarke’s Red Series has rightly gone down in the annals of techno history. But only now can Clarke feel proud about his creations…

Whilst respected and lauded as one of techno’s key figures, in the early-90s Dave Clarke was struggling to be heard above clubland’s white noise, whilst barely scratching a living from his mould infested bedsit-cum-studio in Brighton. With a budding DJ career that stretched back to mid-80s hip hop and electro through to acid house, rave and techno, by the end of the decade he was often gigging at small alternative venues, the odd blagged gig in Europe and, quite often, a local roller disco. 

Similarly, his myriad production aliases (Pig City, Magnetic North, Graphite, K.O.D.) and numerous styles – ranging from bass-driven house to techno, hardcore and unwittingly gabber – had neither a collective cohesion nor provided him with an artistic identity. Then, in early 1994, Dave Clarke released ‘Red One’ on Bush Records and everything changed. By the time the series closed out the following year with ‘Red Three’ on Deconstruction he had become a headline DJ, techno statesman, major label artist, household name and even dented the UK Top 40.

‍The origins

“There was some frustration about releasing sort of disjointed 12-inches on many, many different labels and not being able to really put it all together. In those days, you’d sign a deal and the deal would say you can’t record for anyone else under this name. And of course, it had your name underneath that on the label copy. But it was a very sort of disjointed way of doing things. And I think by 1990-91 I started to feel sort of confident that I had a sound and that I didn’t need to experiment by using different names anymore. I wanted to raise it under my name, but I didn’t want to just do one single here and one single there. So, I then had the idea of doing a series of three, which meant that at least there’d be a flow.”

Clarke had been working on the sound of the Red Series (named simply because he wanted to put it out on red vinyl) since late-91 and prior to the first EP’s release had actually recorded all three A-sides across two, less than salubrious, flats on Brighton’s beach front. 

“I was, without realising, a neighbour of Adam Freeland. I was living in Clarendon Terrace in a really damp, fucked-up basement and then I was living in Marine Parade in a basement. Which was, guess what, really damp! You actually had to put plastic sheeting inside the cupboard, between the cupboard and your clothes, so that your clothes didn’t stink, stuff like that. I had a table with breeze blocks on top of it to hold the speakers and some office furniture that would hold the limited amount of racks that I had, which wasn’t that much. Underneath there was a futon bed that would roll away during the day and then come back out at night. So, I was sleeping on the floor almost underneath my studio.”

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All the gear, lots of ideas

“There would have been a Tascam keyboard mixer, which basically means it’s right mountable. I think it had 12 channels, maybe 16, and had MIDI, which you could actually do MIDI mutes on, which was actually very useful, because in those days signal to noise ratios were a real issue. I soaked up all my pennies to get the Alesis Quadraverb which was £325. And then I programmed some really fucked-up delays in that, which is what ‘Red Two’ is all about. I had an Ensoniq sampler originally, I think it was an EPS, and it had point five megabyte of sample time, and then I managed to upgrade that to two megabyte of sample time. That was exciting! The computer I was using was an Atari 1040 with C-Lab Notator in the very, very beginning. And Notator was the precursor to what is Logic. And I used to quantize the shit out of everything. I had a Technics cassette deck with HX Pro. So, all the singles were mastered on TDK MA-XG cassette and I had a second-hand pair of Tannoy Mercury speakers that I got from a colleague that I used to work with at a second-hand Hi-Fi shop. I also had an Alesis 3630 compressor, which Daft Punk asked me about and then they got one as well.”

Whilst simultaneously running the Magnetic North label (he had even earmarked ‘Red Three’ to come out on the label under the Axiom alias) he released ‘Red One’ in 1994, little realising the chain of life-changing events it would subsequently set off. The sinister, reverse reverb of ‘Protective Custody’ and bionic, bass-heavy breaks of ‘Xeno Zero’ had finally crystallised the sound Clarke had been searching for and simultaneously captured the very essence of where techno was heading.

“Everything in life, there’s always an element of luck. Anyone that claims that’s not the case is over playing their hand a little bit too much. So, there was a lot of luck, I think that I just managed to find some sounds that I really liked. I was always really intrigued by some of the weird edits you get on some things, or backward drums or a guitar reverb coming in from reverse. It was always really interesting, like Jimi Hendrix and ELO even. There were a lot of tape edits going around in those days, of people being really clever with tapes, but the sharpness of how they used to do edits was insane. When you heard ‘Breaking Bells’ from T La Rock, what you heard they could do with it! That stuff inspired me. Mantronix really, really inspired me.

“For me, techno came with house. It was already techno when it was house for me because whilst you had the more traditional sounds on the A-side, you had the more exciting, experimental edits and dubs on the B-side. That’s where my heart was.”

The reaction

The acknowledgment of house music’s foundations would later be given a knowing salute on the sophomore EP’s lead track as Clarke lifted the title from a vocal hook in The Elect’s 1986 hard-to-find classic, ‘I’m House’. Spearheaded by the first track he had recorded in the series, the nuclear dubbed-out reverb of the speaker shredding A-side ‘Wisdom to the Wise’, Clarke’s name was now well and truly on the techno map. But he was ill-prepared for the global attention that was to come off the back of the release of ‘Red Two’. He soon found himself flooded with remix offers, DJ gigs, attention from the majors and the life-changing effects of fame.

“I have an element of imposter syndrome regarding the Red Series, especially on the release of ‘Red Two’. Like a bit uncomfortable, bit weirded out, not really feeling, you know, like beating my chest on it in a big way. And of course, living in Brighton had this incredible ability of squashing you like a shit on the sidewalk. And in those days where even if you are being successful, people will just fucking shit on that from a large distance, massively.

“I was being slagged off for signing to a major record label (Clarke signed an album deal with Deconstruction), like heavily by journalists, by this, by that, by everyone. As if, now being signed to a major record label, my whole personality was going to change.     

“It’s kind of akin to being a techno DJ and then, all of a sudden, starting a residency in Ibiza, and then becoming the biggest cunt the world’s ever known, right? I wasn’t going to do that, because for me, it was always about the music, that was the most important thing. I got a whole load of shit from it, massive amounts. People like wishing me death.”

Whilst Clarke tried to navigate the strange new world that fame had thrown at him, he now had the added pressure of recording his debut album ‘Archive One’, plus the unfinished business of closing the ‘Red’ trilogy with a bang. The nuclear kick and Euro rave stabs of ‘Thunder’ duly delivered the big dancefloor FU, but the B-side ‘Storm’ saw Clarke do something of a techno no-no. As the press were beginning to dub the genre as faceless and devoid of any personality, he stuck his voice above the parapet and on to red vinyl.

“I used a borrowed ART Rhythmic Modulator, which was like a sort of cheap version of the Eventide Harmonizer, that I was a big fan of, that I saw in the R&S studios in 1990. There was a flea market behind me and I went there sometimes to buy things because I couldn’t afford shit. And then I found this book called ‘Pantagruel’, that was originally published in 1532. It was just a random page opening and I was like: ‘Holy shit, this is really cool.’ Then I adapted the lyrics to suit modern times. And then people were going: ‘Oh, fucking hell, he’s even using his own voice now, he sounds like a fucking idiot.’ It was constant, really!”

The legacy

Now 30 years on, after a set of protracted legal wranglings, the Red Series and ‘Archive One’ are remastered, remixed and repackaged into a celebratory limited six-vinyl numbered set, signed print and booklet. How does Clarke look back on the three EPs that are justly heralded as landmark techno releases, took his career into the stratosphere and even gave him a title (The Baron of Techno) bestowed by John Peel? Yet which, conversely, also came at a heavy personal price.

“It’s been a difficult time because when ‘Red Three’ came out I was really struggling with getting a lot of recognition, and I found that very difficult to deal with. I sort of changed who I was personally and became less smiley backstage and far more insular. I took a bit of time off because I was struggling with dealing with it. And this is like pop fame. This isn’t like walking down the street and everyone recognises you. This was like, Oh, I can’t deal with this. This is really strange. I don’t like this, so I sort of withdrew a bit. 

“It changed me a lot. I was very grateful, because it helped me circumnavigate a lot of politics that were stopping me from even being able to DJ. People could now make money off you by supporting you, so it was like bypassing a dam made by others.”

“I didn’t play it (Red One’s ‘Xeno Zero’) for so many years. The first time I played it again was in Bordeaux at the beginning of this year, because finally I got over the emotions of all of that, of not having the rights of my music. Finally, even though it wasn’t at the front of my mind, or even the mid of my mind, it was always there. You know, sometimes you have a relationship with someone and they keep trying to get your attention through negative attention? It was like that. It was constant negative attention. So, I just cut it off. Then the moment I got it (the remastered Red package) back, I got complete closure. I saw it and held it. I was like, I’m proud of this, yeah, I’m proud of this.”

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This article first appeared in issue six of Disco Pogo.

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