Big Beat Boris Otterdam
OTTERDAM INFLUENCES PART 1: LATE NIGHT VIDEO AND TEENAGE RADIO

OTTERDAM INFLUENCES:

It's my Birthday this week. To celebrate I've made a series of music podcasts about some of the music that has influenced me. I was going to do back announces but it would take up too much time. So I've just made a music podcast with a few descriptions that can be read here.

PART 1: TEENAGE RADIO AND LATE NIGHT VIDEO

• Visage "Fade To Grey" was the first ever record I bought and the first electronic music I heard at age 5. Probably where my fascination of saw waves started.

• The KLF's "White Room" was the first electronic album I really dug into. It was not popular to be into at the time at age 12, but I was pretty hooked on it. Likewise, Technotronic I had a few cassingles of. I forgot about them when I got into metal at 14 and started "hating techno" but went back to them around the same time I started producing.

• I had a neighbour who I bought weed off in 1995 when I was 17. He mostly sat around dealing and drinking cheap scotch and water in his flat because he was broke. He was the first person I met that was really into techno.
  One day he had scored some acid and invited me to partake with him. I'd never taken it before. He was talking to me about a rave he'd gone to in Fremantle and was describing the experience with great enthusiasm and telling me I'd "probably like it". I told him techno was "crap and fake music" and cited a few examples I hated, stuff that was in the charts. He shook his head and said "No they don't play that stuff. They play real techno. You've never heard real techno trust me!!"
  He asked me if I'd heard The Prodigy and I said "Yeah I've heard that song" referring to "Poison" which was getting a lot of airplay on JJJ a the time. He shook his head and smiled and pulled out a dubbed cassette from a rickety drawer and put on The Prodigy's "Experience"
  It was definitely not like techno I'd heard before. By the time I was peaking, I was a few songs into the album. The speed of the beats sounded fucking heavy to me and the tribal vocal samples and sped up rhymes transfixed me. After it was done, impressed that I was getting into techno, he got excited and then showed me a few jungle mixtapes he had. The first one was recorded live and had an MC at what sounded like a massive party. He was riling up the crowd until he stopped and screamed out "WE'RE GOING TO THE JUNGLE!!" and a massive roar of the crowd and a giant rolling breakbeat followed.
  It was my first experience with Experience, LSD, jungle and breakbeats. In a delapidated flat in Doubleview but still memorable nonetheless. I still remember the music on Experience. But being on acid, I remember it differently to how it actually sounded. What I heard rather than what it actually sounds like was a huge influence on my own production which would start a few years later. It's still a favourite album to this day and it was the first moment I realised beats and kicks could be as heavy as metal. After that day and the acid wore off. I started actively seeking out jungle and breakbeat. Goldie's "Terminator" was one of the tracks on those mixtapes. Because it was the mid 90s. I didn't really seek out a lot of underground techno though, rather the emerging "big beat" techno scene that was coming out of the UK which was all over the alternative and indie radio. I never really found a lot of classic rave stuff until I was in my early 20s.

• I had already been into The Melvins for a few years when I heard "Boris" on RRRFM punk show "Bogan Drivetime" in 1997. But the Atlantic Records stuff didn't sound as monstrous as the shit on "Ozma" and "Bullhead". The song "Boris" was the first song I taught myself to play on guitar. I drove one of my friends crazy, constantly playing the same riff over and over when I hung out at his house. When he and I started a noise band called Analogue Seaotter in early 1998. He christened us all with ridiculous band names. Jericho Von Ebineezer, Basil F. Starbuck and me "Boris Otterdam". A name which came from him calling me Boris because I was always playing that riff and "Otterdam" because it was both a reference to Seaotters and to Rotterdam the mecca of gabber.
  Bands like The Melvins, Midget and Unsane and their overwhelming heavy dirges were something that definitely inspired my early noise recordings. The use of feedback and tidal wave crashing chords, was something I tried to recapture electronically and sometimes succeeded in doing.

• In 1993, my final year of high school, I was getting into industrial music in a big way. I had already heard Nine Inch Nails and Ministry via indie radio and Rage but The Soundtrack to "The Crow" introduced me to My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult. "After The Flesh" was the song I listened to the most on there. I found a full MLWTKK album at Dada Records in the city. "Confessions Of A Knife" was assembled like a concept album but blends seamlessly from song to song, despite the changes in tempo and style. It remains one of the darkest and most ethereal industrial albums without delving as deep as the slower crawling acts like Coil. MLWTKK became one of my favourite bands and I've since collected every release they ever did. Getting into MLWTKK eventually lead to buying The Wax Trax! Box the following year. This became the key to finding more industrial music like Coil. Foetus, Front Line Assembly, KMFDM, Laibach, The Young Gods and the many Ministry side projects to name a few. The first time I ever used a drum machine. I was trying to imitate the beats for "The Days Of Swine and Roses", Skinny Puppy's "Deep Down Trauma Hounds" and The Young Gods "L'Amourir" (particularly the way the beat skips off time).

• Budd, Rapeman and Hammerhead are all examples of one of the biggest influences on my breakcore production. Noise Rock. Budd's sludgy heaviness was something I wanted to harness but not as much as the variation and demolition style of fast walls of noise that Rapeman and Hammerhead had. I met one of the guys from Hammerhead in early 2013 at a show in Melbourne and told him about this. He seemed unimpressed ;)

VISAGE - FADE TO GREY
NEW ORDER - BLUE MONDAY
DEPECHE MODE - I FEEL YOU
PUBLIC IMAGE - THE ORDER OF DEATH
THE KLF - 3AM ETERNAL
TECHNOTRONIC - PUMP UP THE JAM
GOLDIE - TERMINATOR
THE PRODIGY - HYPERSPEED (G-FORCE PART 2)
CHEMICAL BROTHERS - ELECTROBANK
FATBOY SLIM - LOVE ISLAND
APOLLO 440 - AIN'T TALKIN BOUT DUB
WISEGUYS - OOH LA LA
THE MELVINS - BORIS
MIDGET - DOGBITE
UNSANE - OUT
BUDD - KNEECAP
RAPEMAN - UPBEAT
HAMMERHEAD - CLEANING WOMAN
NINE INCH NAILS - RUINER
MINISTRY - JUST ONE FIX (12 INCH EDIT)
MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT - THE DAYS OF SWINE AND ROSES
FOETUS - BUTTERFLY POTION
FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY - DIGITAL TENSION DEMENTIA
SKINNY PUPPY - DEEP DOWN TRAUMA HOUNDS (LIVE)
THE YOUNG GODS - L'AMOURIR