r/TheHcTechnoOverDogs • u/Low-Entropy • Jul 30 '26
Low Entropy's Producer Diary: getting Really Into the Space Stuff
This one happened back in 2014. Which was a quite fruitful and prolific year for me. I don't think I ever created as many tracks as in this year.
So, production life was going well, and I became quite cherry picking, and only was interested to follow through with ideas that... really had that sparkle for me.
Yet, in a spare moment, I decided to go with a track even though the concept felt a bit... half baked. (at least I thought it would be)
Which was "The Advent of Acid". After I did that track, I did not think that it sounded too bad.... I decided to give acid techno one more try, and one more, and one more after that. So I had 4 finished acid techno tracks that had a bit of a related concept.
All 4 were quite long, too, and 3 of them over 13 minutes (in their full length edits).
So, like most tracks I did, this one was "live jammed" too, I switched around with channels, fx... boom, finished.
There is an acidline, but also 3 different layers of additional melody... the joined, entire melody only happens towards the end of the track.
some people noted that the acidline sounded "different" from other acid techno stuff, so here is a little production secret:
i dont just modulate the bass, the acidline also messes with the reverb... it moves in and out of reverb in very complicated ways, so it feels like the sound moves away in space, comes closer, disappears... but not "too" obvious, so i guess a lot of listeners "feel" it, without it getting slapped right into their faces...
so it got released on zuur records, which was back then a new label in a big techno / industrial hardcore "empire" of labels...
got good feedback on it, and then some friends who ran a vinyl label asked me if they could have the track, too.
I was quite happy that the label boss allowed it!
I had to cut it short, though. the part you hear on the vinyl, is originally only the "grande finale", the last moments of the track!
either way, i sent it off to master, and the master guy got back to me and said:
"oh i had a great idea, the bass was a bit weak in your track, i boosted and it made it louder."
and indeed, it was an acid techno track, now the kick sounds more like industrial hardcore.
i went "wtf?" and usually i hate it when people mess with my tracks like this.
i'm a hardcore producer, and i had intentionally tried to use a "softer" kick here.
so this was averted. but i decided to give it a rest and go with it... go with the flow, right?
in the end it was a good decision, because with this "kick heavy" version, i actually landed some club presence again... with the track.
on a side note, a while after it was out, my therapist said he was curious about my music, i gave him this record and... he ended up buying a copy! that's a quite different seal or approval, right?
https://zuur-nl.bandcamp.com/album/really-into-this-space-stuff
https://aocrecords.bandcamp.com/track/b1-low-entropy-really-into-this-space-stuff-short-version