oliver ho

JOCKEY SLUT INTERVIEW

ART OF NOISE

While techno's Oliver Ho exists beyond the dance floor, he is not, heaven forbid, a chin-stroking bore. Rather, says Tom Magic Feet, he's out on a limb, giving Ealing something to be proud of besides wrinkly comedies. Not bad for a bloke who used to follow Napalm Death"

Techno has always had an uneasy relationship with dance music. Even back in the music's first, faltering years, techno was about something more than simply making dance tracks to rival those from Chicago. And while some techno has left the dancefloor behind altogether, the most interesting, exciting and progressive music of the genre comes from that grey area beyond the dance, the demilitarized zone between the familiar and the unfamiliar, between club music and total abstraction.

This is the territory occupied by the likes of Jeff Mills, Surgeon, Richie Hawtin and other producers unfettered by the weight of techno's pre-written past, to whom Detroit techno is just one of a mass of reference points. It's where old concepts of 'albums' and 'labels' crumble to become 'projects' and 'series', where rhythm is a canvas to be painted on and music is a starting point; where techno meets art.

Yeah, I hear you laughing at the back. You think techno is club music, period. The word 'art' brings to mind chin-stroking beardies in galleries earnestly discussing unmade beds with £100,000 price tags; painfully serious and pretentious. But you're wrong. Values of progression and expression are an integral part of music, and it is those who have been prepared to look beyond the confines of the familiar who stand as the important artists of our time. This applies to 'dance' music just as much as it does to any other form. Look at, say, Miles Davis, DJ Shadow and LTJ Bukem - all musicians who refused to be restricted by what has gone before and , in doing so, took giant steps forward. "At the end of the day, techno is a form of music and music is a form of art," explain 20-something Londoner Oliver Ho, fast emerging as one of the leading artists on techno's progressive edge. "It's a logical thing for me. You're expressing an idea or a feeling through music- the music is a tool. There are so many different tools at hand for us to use - words, pictures, environments - it's all about expressing an idea, that's the crux of it all."

Of course, all of this would be so much hot air were it not for the fact that Oliver's new album is a tour de force that confirms his front-line position amongst techno producers. A quantum leap forward from his debut long-player, 'Sentience', which was only released less than 12 months ago on Blueprint, 'Listening To The Voice Inside' will stand as one of the finest techno records this year. It is, he says, an attempt to reconnect with basic human instincts.

"It's about turning off your internal dialogue and using your intuition. Your internal dialogue is your mind, your reasoning self, and when I refer to 'the voice inside' I refer to your instinctive voice, the voice that we've forgotten, that no-one ever listens to anymore but that's been there since day one. It's about losing the intellectual part of yourself that's been cultivated over the last thousand years or whatever."

According to Oliver, this attitude translated to the recording process very directly. "When I was making the Blueprint album I was very aware of making specific tracks; it was very consciously put together. Whereas with the Meta one I decided not to think at all and just make lots and lots of music, then at the end sit back and put it all together. I also wanted to make something more personal. It's more about me trying to push a particular style and get something more unique, so when someone listens to a Meta record it doesn't sound like anything else."

Musically, the album is looser and more complex than 'Sentience'. The rigid four-four kick drums have been replaced by rolling, splintered, multi-layered percussion that hints at Latin and African rhythms, while distorted, dislocated voices add a primal, human element from deep within the mix. "It's taking things back to a more primitive level. There's something special about the sound of a voice when you don't know what it's saying. When you listen to someone speak in a foreign language you're more aware of the sounds in words and the intonation, and it sound more animalistic as well."

The album is released on Oliver's own Meta imprint and represents, he says, the culmination of his eight previous EP's on the label. He recently launched a second, Light and Dark, and has plans for a third, Exist. Together the three will form - ahem - a complimentary triumvirate, no less. "Aesthetically, Meta is basic music," Oliver explains. "More rhythmic and tribal, music for dancing. Light and Dark is where club music can meet formless music; it's about the relationship between sound and noise. And Exist is about completely removing the club or dance music ingredient, completely abstracting everything. So altogether it's about a movement from one side to the other, from familiar structures with Meta and Light And Dark and moving towards something completely unfamiliar with Exist."

Oliver's careful to describe Exist as a 'project' not a label and says that it will go beyond music. "Hopefully it's going to redress the balance and provide people with an insight into where we're coming from and what we can do; show that it's not just about music, that music is one segment of a greater thing. It'll start with a couple of music releases, then go into other things like events or short films, maybe even a book at some point."

'We' in this case refers to Oliver's group of largely Ealing-based friends, like Max Duley and Tommy Gillard, with whom he spent his formative years listening to the likes of Napalm Death, Godflesh, Sonic Youth and Coil before discovering Aphex Twin, the 'Artificial Intelligence' series and Lost; something Oliver describes as " a very British way of getting into techno".

British it may be but the common thread between them is extremeness and a willingness to go beyond the norm. While many dance music and techno producers are content to imitate, Oliver Ho represents a new breed of artists for whom the credo of advancement has become in-built, almost genetic. As he says with a shrug, "You can't stand in the way of progress."