Bleep

Belgium’s De:tuned present the long-awaited remastering of Humanoid’s (aka Brian Dougans) critical 1988 dance single ‘Stakker Humanoid’, the first decisive UK acid techno record to break into the mainstream. To revisit this enrapture pressurised onto record, De:tuned’s reissue invites personal favourites - Autechre, Luke Vibert and Mike Dred - to rework Humanoid’s equally classic.

Before forming the Future Sound of London, Brian Dougans - initially a part-time lecturer at Salford College of Technology - had prophesied music’s mysterious alliance with engineering, in the raw invention he had made on a shoestring budget. Through underground dance floor hit, minds were warped, bodies swayed - the youth of an entire nation ecstatic, while dumbfounded authorities descended into serious panic. Nonetheless, its big announcement to the world was totally irreversible. With his enigmatic technical wizardry epitomising the peak of an era, Humanoid’s music is even housed in MoMa New York’s collection via Stakker Eurotechno. ‘Stakker Humanoid’ crystallises the very moment when recently engendered configurations of rave had spilled out from the underground and appeared in the limelight for the first time. A visceral and psychedelic barrage, the deep pulses of the Roland 808, alongside the wet squelches of the Roland-303 melting the mechanics of electronica towards the infinite unknown.

In today’s distant world where such magnetic powers are museologically enshrined, it may be tempting to describe Humanoid’s uncompromising promise as a fleeting occurrence, but its trickles have certainly made their way into countless formations of dance music offspring, proving otherwise. As utopian impulses are passed on from the previous century to the next - with Humanoid as a pivot and rave as its domain- the hope of rapture remains unceasing.