Plastikman – Spastik

I just found that record which may have inspired Rich for this record:
https://www.discogs.com/fr/master/185861-Ubik-Non-Stop-Techno-EP
The Non STop Techno track.

Proof that many people doesn't really appreciate a certain music style or genre "Plastikman : Spastik" offers nothing original only a repetition of the same blattant 909 sounds we have already heard by then . This music kinda reminds similar to "Le Bolero de Ravell" which is also a boring classical music that after a couple minutes you get the point . Spastik is an easy skip and is overrated there where much better "Techno" tunes and artists in that era that doesn't get any recognition at all .

Sadly the same can be said from other artists and titles i don't get were that loved to be sick for and where shoved to vomit on every CD/audio cassettes compilation such as 2 Unlimited : Get Ready for This , T-99 : Anastasia , ... to name a few of them .

Also not to forget that Spastik got many times parroted on other music style which also had the same repetitition such as "Haardcore : Ore Slope" and "Bold Bob : Bold Bass" which offer nothing exceptionnal either only to quick skip the track .

Oh man, I'm about to make some enemies here. Before I proceed, suffice it to say that I am a huge fan of all music and I'm certainly familiar with a ton of it, electronic music, and otherwise. This track, Spastik, is somehow known as the holy grail of techno music with people. I feel that it's wayyyy too overrated .Sure, I can pick this track out of any DJ set-it's easy to hear once and never forget it. To me though, it's the sound of a 909 aping a marching band, then repeated ad nauseum and filtered here and there for 10 minutes. Nothing amazing, nothing deep or soulful about it, and certainly not very innovative(at least to me). How this song(track), became such a classic and a runaway success while other tracks like Psyche/BFC tracks, Goodbye Kiss-Folwkes, any track by Shake, anything off of Red Planet /UR, All for Lee-Sah, Suburban Knight, and everything by Drexciya, etc., got left behind in the dust, or at the very least, not as championed as Spastik, is beyond me. It's actually my least favorite Hawtin track, and I like a lot of things that he did. Does anybody in the universe agree with me here?

This classic hit of Plastikman has got samples taken from Diss-Cuss ‎– Pissed Apache: http://www.discogs.com/Diss-Cuss-Pissed-Apache/master/66132

There was a relatively short time in the realm of techno music where tracks were built on drums and drums only. I have a few examples of these rare "strictly rhythm" tracks and this is one of them - "Spastik" that is. And God is it ever cool! Richie Hawtin legitimately can claim some rights to being called the pioneering innovator of many of techno's innovations. In "Spastik" he used a trick that became horribly over-used later in the evolution of techno but he seemed to do it first (that I heard anyway). The trick is the reverent "mid-range sweep". During the recording of the track (or possibly the remix or mix-down?)he slowly manipulates the "sweepable mids" on his mixer which makes the sound thus "tweeked", which was at one time the backbone of techno. It's also something that seems to have largely disappeared from techno music production. But there it was back in '93 - the "tweeked drums" of Richie Hawtin as Plastikman. Not only was that trick employed but Richie's creative use of composition - building in this case - made for a track that had new tricks around each corner of the track. Were you really ready for that POUNDING 808 kick drum that suddenly comes in after four or five minutes? It will make listeners take notice. I have proceeded to scratch the surface of the tangibles that make "Spastik" so great, but lest we forget the intangibles, the stuff I can't explain - why it's just a great track! Richie was genuinely talented at composition and had a great sense of how to logically construct a track from front to back and keep it interesting. I've said things about Richie in other reviews that may have some of you thinking I'm hypocritical but I assure you - I give Richie the highest props as to his genuine talent and my negative words (as some of you would understand them) relate more to listeners of Richie unfairly and unfoundedly deifying him to unjustly Godly levels and he's not that immensely cool. He's just another talented techno musician that made the genre fun to listen to back in the early '90s. This record showcases some of those talents. Check it out.