Hardcore! How ’90s TECHNO blew up the dancefloor – with Joe Muggs

About this episode

Diving deep into all things ’90s… Hardcore, crusty, dub, four to the floor, LET’S HAVE IT… we are, of course, finally diving into the unrelenting, tribe-declaring world of ’90s techno (and the chemical revolution that fuelled the whole thing). The story starts in a Detroit suburb in the late ’80s with Kevin Sanderson, Derrick May and Juan Atkins – a trio of high-school friends with a deep fascination for European electronic music like Kraftwerk, Belgian synth-pop and Depeche Mode. Incorporating elements of Chicago house and funk, they created a sound that would go on to define the future of electronic music and even pop across the world, from the soulful Strings Of Life to the minimalistic bleep of Warp Records to Underworld and Orbital, and the almost impenetrable German punishers that packed out the floor at Tresor every weekend. Music journalist and tech-head Joe Muggs evangelises on the magic of the 4/4 to a slightly sceptical Miranda – “Sometimes I think I’m too Northern”. You’ll have to listen in to find out what prompted that… CORRECTION: ⁠Flux Trax⁠, the brilliant techno primer album, was compiled by Richard Norris of The Grid not our own Andrew, but he did the sleeve no