8 Tracks: Martin Landsky’s Milestones

This was probably the first electronic synth only music I had in my life. I was 7 or 8 and got my first radio cassette player from my parents and my first bought cassette I had was a very bad Boney M album with tracks like “Rasputin”.

One day I discovered this original tape cassette of “Equinoxe” in my fathers room, I liked the artwork and was curious. When I listened to it, it was crazy to me. I never heard anything like that before, these weird sounds and acoustical landscapes. The whole album is also mixed, there are no breaks between tracks, something not very usual at that time- at least not in popular music.

I don’t know how many times I listened to this album, daydreaming along with it and finally playing very rudimentary sequences on my Bontempi home organ on top of it, it’s kind of the soundtrack of my early childhood.

And even if it’s partly quite cheesy it still moves me big time when listening to it these days… I’ve still got the original cassette, it’s a heritage!

This might be my favourite Arthur Baker production ever. It’s actually a remake of Eddy Grant’s original song from 1979. For years I had this one only on an old cassette tape, a pretty bad copy actually. It used to be the most favourite track in my neighbourhood where I grew up- on every playground, in the school, at the lake, at the parties, this damn song was everywhere and I have never had enough of it and it still sounds fresh to me these days. It’s magic.
There were a lot of tracks in this style back then, like all this D-tain and Prelude stuff, but this one is simply more Ghetto somehow. I love these funky synth laden dance tracks with lots of drum machines and great use of effects especially in the extended club versions, you could definitely smell House Music here already.

It got into the spotlight again recently because of this big fight over copyrights and how much Grandmaster Flash was really involved in creating this songs etc.Nevertheless besides all this bad things happening right now, personally this track is the most important rap song in history for me.

I was a kid listening to it all the time on my Walkman when walking down the streets, even when I wasn’t able to understand all of the lyrics as I was young and my English was not good enough at that time. But I still got the message behind it and it made me angry and depressed to see what some people have to face in our so praised western world. This song definitely woke up my senses for social criticism in music and the power of music.
Even today this track stands up right there to all standards in terms of impact, power, musicality and production techniques. Man does this thing have a punch!

I think it was released almost the same time as “Planet Rock”, which was a bit earlier if I remember correctly. “Pack Jam” definitely wasn’t as underground as a lot of other Electro records back then, it was also used as the title song for a cheesy German chart show in television.
But still this is Breakdance music for me at its best, so funky and sterile (artificial) at the same time.

I still remember how I won the second prize in a breakdance contest, doing an Electric Boogie freestyle to this song. So, yeah that track means a lot to me…

I think it was originally released on Hangman records but I am not 100% sure. Anyways I always only had the double 12″ release on R&S records. This track is definitely one to blame for consolidating my love for electronic dance music. I started DJing when I was very very young and electronic music like House or Techno simply didn’t exist at that time. I was playing a lot of funk and disco at that time, when the first House records were appearing in my hometown Hamburg. I was infected by the sound immediately.

Even if there were a lot of House records before this one, “House Of God” is responsible to a great degree for me deciding I had to dedicate myself to House. I thought: “This is what i want to do the rest of my life!”

As far as I know it was originally released earlier on a 12″ but I’ve only got the double album on Reinforced, including some other amazing tracks like “No Sleep Raver”. The vocal sample which made this track so famous is actually sampled from an episode of the original Star Trek TV show.

The track is dark and intense, it still gives me goosebumps when listening to it. Of course the lyrics are sad and morbid, but also the whole vibe created by the synths and beats is simply frantic and sinister. You simply can’t listen to the track and forget it, it stays, it’s powerful.

Even though this is a breakbeat record it used to be big at house parties not only at raves, when the DJ dropped that the whole room freaked out. Undoubtedly a big, big milestone of the underground dance music movement.

Taken from the album “Internal Empire”, it was released in the same year as his ‘Minimal Nation’ album on Axis, which was definitely one of the most important genre defining records of Minimal Techno. But I chose this track because it just sums up the whole idea of minimal dance music perfectly.

It’s basically just a kick drum and a simple synth sequence but still creates this huge emotional atmosphere that twirls your mind and has an amazing groove that keeps the floor rocking. A brilliant statement of the wonderful art called Techno.

This is probably an obvious one but I would be lying if I denied the impact this track had on me.

There’s this whole debate about whether this was the first acid song or not, Sleezy D’s “I’ve Lost Control” is one of the other contenders of a subject I don’t want to get involved in. Inarguable is the fact that “Acid Tracks” took acid to the extreme. A simple metallic beat that grooves on forever and a perfect acid line that is tweaked constantly to take you to several climaxes. It’s so rich, powerful and on the point- it’s unbelievable.

If it wasn’t genre opening it was definitely genre defining.