TECHNIQUE RECORDINGS

What defines drum and bass? A rocking Drumsound? A heavy Bassline? Take a serving of each, season with 174 secret herbs n spices and heat on a medium flame. Once golden, you’d be left with the precursor to a successful Midlands based record label. It was none other than Andy Wright of Drumsound and Simon ‘Bassline’ Smith who combined their talents and passion to form Technique Recordings nigh two decades ago, in 1999.

THE EARLY DAYS

The tail end of the 90’s saw local Derby crews Drumsound and Future Tech run amuck hosting regular drum and bass nights which they called Technique. Often pulling in big fish like Andy C, Bryan Gee or Optical, these club nights gained a great deal of traction and talk of a record label was inevitable. So that was that, it happened. End of article, yeah? Nah.

As the new millennium loomed, Drumsound & Bassline Smith spent the first few years building their brand and honing their signature sound. Then in 2001, Technique celebrated their tenth release with The X Project EP series which included a Teebee remix of dancefloor crusher, Beeswax.

GOING GLOBAL

2003 saw Technique Recordings ship big tunes from Twisted Individual and Distorted Minds but also saw the birth of sister label, World-wide Audio. While you don’t hear much about it these days, it became a popular outlet for artists to share their more experimental sounds.

Following the launch of WWA, Drumsound & Bassline Smith released their debut album, Nature of the Beast which ended up receiving countless accolades from the DnB massive and beyond. The album included a huge track titled The Odyssey which hit DJ Mag’s top 10 Dance Tunes chart of 2004.

Dancefloor crushers Tantrum Desire signed to Technique in 2008 and Aussie artists Skyver, D Jon and Phetsta were also snapped up and signed. State of Mind, Loxy, Nightwalker, Friction, K Tee, J Majik, Wickaman, Tali and Youngman were all brought in for remix duties so in case it wasn’t clear, Technique Recordings were now making vibrations all over the world.

Technique Recordings embodies a mutual appreciation that everyone involved has something to offer and advancement is for the benefit of the project as a whole. (Knowledge Magazine 1999)