Sweden 1996-2000: how important were these guys?

[SlavikSvensk]

yeah, the dates are arbitrary, but i figure they include the height of sweden's influence on techno. cari lekbusch, adam beyer, thomas krome, joel mull, henrik b, etc.

how important were these guys? how would you assess their influence on techno? why sweden, of all places?

[baconstyle]

It gets damn cold in the winter and those Swedes have gotta do something!!!! ;)

[TechMouse]

Massive!

When I first started DJing Techno, I used to buy anything and everything by Beyer I could find.
Likewise, Lekebusch and Krome tracks were a must.

Certainly made a huge impact on my personal style of DJing and production no end.

Tunes can be fierce and hard without being distorted and scrappy!

[davethedrummer]

they utterly chnged the sound of london acid techno ( without knowing it)
i remember when it was all just 303s and then beyer came out with his drumcode lps and the planet rythms and all the other things that folowed
we were totally blown away by it all
also the code red series with thomas kromes woodcarvers double pack
and remainings from beyer
that stuff totally changed my outlook on what we were doing.
very influential stuff

[Sunil]

I remember Detroit heads slagging off the Swedes for their production being too loud and 'crisp' for the sake of it. For me though the second I heard it first I loved it. Crunchy, rhythmic, hard as ****... it got people dancing and going nuts, sometimes more so than any of the harder 'funk' coming from Detroit from that period, a la Hood or Mills. Sure, Beyer in particular took influence from Mills (albeit carving out his own distinct sound) , but so did Surgeon, Regis, Tanaka and many others. The Swedes made a massive impact, and when you go into the archives of "European Techno" as it's known today, you'll find a huge percentage of Swedish records that have stood the test of time, and still sound ballsy (How much European Techno of today can you say that about?) .

Diverse guys too (I'd say they might rather forget some of the early trance 12"s though!). Not everyone picked up on Svek for instance, yet Dahlback was doing cool minimal and house... Lekebusch was rocking it with electro and general Lekebusch weirdness, while Beyer, Mull, Krome and co. were all developing their own styles. The Swedes somehow all got lumped into the same "loop" bracket and dismissed a lot of the time, and maybe they asked for it from time to time. The fact is though, that they were making good shit, people were lapping it up, and they kept delivering. And they still get it right sometimes, even today in 2005 :)

[SlavikSvensk]

well put sunil and henry! i've got to say, a lot of my favorite swedish 90s records are on svek and borft...the atypical stuff...though i do love tons of cari and adam's banging tracks...

[The Overfiend]

If it was not for Swedish techno, techno would be an entirely different entity than of what it is now.

[Col]

yeah the boys from sweden changed the face of techno. thats for sure. i used to love it, now i find the majority of it incredibly dull.

[SlavikSvensk]

i think cari lekebusch still kicks ass...even though i don't think his records are as revolutionary or interesting as they were in the late 1990s...