Killa Productions – Feelin’ Acid II (2006)

Alternative title: “Now that’s what I call music you can’t make with Splice”

As cheesed out eurotrance becomes more and more indistinguishable from Mallorca-Schlager slop, and hard-tek pop edits for teenagers with Amazon-bought harnesses and big pants dominate many dancefloors, Europe’s party people have yearned for a RETVRN to something truly groovy, organic and minimalistic. And in the last few years, “hardgroove” techno has filled that void for many.

Today, “groove” often emodies the same annoying tendencies some people hoped they would escape through it: There is an endless amount of uncreative pop edits, DJ cult of personality, genre-focused Splice sample packs and the generic musical slop that comes along with that. There is also some good old techno snobbery around it, AND don’t get me started on annoying cheesy samba edits – I don’t want to be a culture warrior here but most of these tracks sound like the same bongo loop with a breakdown lifted straight from a James Last record, lacking all the original funk and swing inherent in so much of the latin american music these tracks seek to coopt.

But generally speaking, as worn out as the “hardgroove” scene feels right now given that bastardized versions of it seem to be popular in pretty much any local shabby party location: while I don’t play much of that music in my sets, I do like a lot of music that came out of that scene and some of the DJs that play it. And this whole movement probably wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t for the heads behind Killa Productions.

Killa they produced

These people are familiar to anyone vaguely plugged into techno: Ben Sims is still one of the global DJ elite’s most exciting figures and basically coined the term “hardgroove” through his eponymous label. I’m no techno expert but it seems to me that you’d need to look far and wide for a DJ and producer that is so well respected by underground and mainstream audiences alike.

Or maybe you’d only need to look to his partners in crime for Killa Productions: Paul Mac and Mark Broom. If I’m being fully honest, I didn’t stumble over Mark Broom through his amazing discography spanning pretty much every noteworthy techno label on the planet (including friend of the show Cosmic Records), but through a short form video of his popping up in my algorithm showing him jamming on an Octatrack. Through that I found his incredible run of Bandcamp edits, which for a while I played all the time alongside tracks by DJ Swisherman for a little techno flavor in my sets, especially his “Paid in Full” edit.

I am shamefully less familiar with Paul Mac aka Paul Souter. I know he ran Hardgroove (the label) together with Sims, ran multiple more labels by himself and is a well respected figure responsible for hundreds of fantastic techno releases. While preparing I realised, though, that I own and love one record of his, namely this collaborative 10″ with legend Vince Watson. This track is so amazing, it’s probably among my most played home listening tunes this past year

Either way, this text isn’t about their solo output but about them joining forces: The name Killa Productions was used by Broom, Sims and Souter as an outlet for their cheekier sample juggling between 2004 and 2006. I assume not all of them were involved to an equal measure all the time since Sims himself uploaded a set to SoundCloud where he lists only Paul Mac and himself as Killa Productions, but Broom is listed on Discogs, so I’m just going to assume that he was involved with production at some point. Like with so many 90s/00s releases where credits aren’t properly given due to fear of copyright holders it’s a bit of a guessing/ detective game.

I had stumbled over Killa Productions’ “Good Life” edit ages ago on a Discogs bender, but had kept it in my “to be downloaded on SoulSeek” list since I didn’t want to spend 30€ on it, given that I already own the classic Man Alive which is the objectively superior edit, even if its overplayed.

So when I found the group’s entire discography well organised in a kind person’s SoulSeek profile I thought “why not download all of it?”. And I’m glad I did. Because Killa Productions’ output is of such amazing quality and versatility that I didn’t just become obsessed with it but that it opened my eyes to a fantastic kind of techno I didn’t really acknowledge before.

While it’s hard to pick a favorite among them –“Women Beat their Men” especially is just constantly stuck in my head – “Feelin Acid II” is the one that never leaves my bag. I don’t have many records where I immediately play the B-side after the A-side is finished, but this is one of them. Like other Killa Productions, “Feelin Acid II” hinges strongly on prominent samples, but this EP can stand on its own feet as one of my favorite techno releases ever that can gel well with classic ghetto house, driving techno or anything you throw at it.

Acid preachers and Jungle Brothers

The massive A-side flips “The House of God” by DHS with its menacing preacher, and then slowly unfolds into a mad wall of sound, hard-hitting drums and acid basslines. Even playing it for the 10th time it still feels somewhat unpredictable to me, but that makes me love it even more. So far it goes down a charm in any setting, from nerdy heads at Humboldthain to gacked up teenagers at Club Ost.

The B-side features two tracks sampling “I’ll House You” by the Jungle Brothers, probably one of the first house songs I was ever really into, back when I dug through the Tribe Called Quest back catalogue on Lime Wire looking for viruses to put on my mp3 player. Both B-side tracks (the B1 is basically the vocal version and the B2 is the “dub”) are a little less unhinged than the A-side but no less catchy! They both revolve around a tasty acid melody and heavy drums. The acids comes in, goes away, there’s some delay and vocal samples, and in the end you have some of the finest oldschool/ newschool/ house/ techno crossover dancefloor burners ever – especially the vocal version is just so catchy that it just randomly pops into my head in the shower, in the U-Bahn or in the bedroom.

Imagine a late 80s acid house heater but accidentally the drum machine gets switched at birth to one of a prolific 00s techno producer, and then Dance Mania releases it in the mid-90s. All three tracks are magical, irreverent jacking techno. And while I don’t get the chance to play straight techno or house too often I can say with certainty that I’ll always try to find a way to put this one into the mix.

Jack had a hardgroove

To bring it back to the kinds of “groove” that the kids are into these days: Is “Feelin’ Acid II” by Killa Productions, arguably created by some of the people with the largest influence on that genre, in line with what people are into today?.

In short: Not really, no. While much of the hardgroove slop today seems to ride on the assumption that all you need is thick percussion, rumbling kicks and an occasional dubby chord stab to make your way to a 4 hour Berghain slot, the Killa Productions team embedded their sound in the rich history of electronic music. By stripping down classic Chicago acid tunes and reworking them into soundsystem-friendly anthems they show that they understand the musical lineage of techno, and they understand how fun this music can be.

And at the danger of sounding like an old head: Maybe that’s the reason why 50 year old dudes that look like the honorable elderly criminal uncs who beat up disrespectful teens in Guy Ritchie movies are still at the cutting edge of this scene.