Published by Alessandro Violante on April 17, 2023
Sometimes, a release succeeds in evoking in the listeners places and contexts different from theirs, making them experience never lived experiences or bringing them to never visited places. If they have been in those places or if they have lived such experiences, those releases evoke them once again.
Blood Fire Debt, the last release by HUREN (already very well-known and appreciated for his releases with Teste, O/H together with Rich Oddie and Devikorps with SARIN) is one of those.
HUREN has always been considered a cult artist and a pioneer of noise-influenced techno music since the early nineties. Through years, he became especially known for his releases on Zhark Recordings, the historic label founded by Kareem and Hecate in 1996.
In 2016, he started releasing tape releases with the Scottish label Clan Destine Records and in the meanwhile he has released music with other labels such as FALK, Paper+Sound and FLUX Musical Art.
Blood Fire Debt has been released on vinyl on 17th April by the Italian Milan-based label KR3 Records, which has already released music by JK Flesh and other well-appreciated musicians. This is the tenth release released by the Italian label, and in order to celebrate this important milestone they have chosen one of the most appreciated underground, pioneering and radical techno and industrial artists.
The label has recently done an interview with the artist, and here we’ll use some of its fragments.
About his pioneering role in this music, the artist wrote:
“I was one of the first people in North America with a Doepfer Eurorack system in 1996 which I learned about through the German Techno Magazines my Zhark partner Kareem wrote for… You had to really dig to find the right pieces, as well as interact with some severely disturbed cellar dweller types. In New York it helped having an in at Rogue Music and Dr. Sound in particular […]”.
When talking about a “techno” release considered in its wider meaning, it could seem obvious to remark it, but in Blood Fire Debt (a title that maybe could be an homage to the iconic Blood Fire Death release by Bathory), one of the key elements is repetition. Who knows HUREN knows that, during his career, he has explored a very wide range of music styles within the underground techno and noise fields. Each of his releases has a different style.
In Blood Fire Debt we’ll find five long hypnotic mantras evoking the world transformed by Industrial Revolution, centered around machines and factories. It’s the world of metropolises, from New York City to Detroit and to Berlin.
Huren – Blood Fire Debt
NEW YORK CITY
Let’s start our journey by New York City, especially listening to the B2 of the vinyl, Mytologinen, composed there during the nineties and released only now. The vinyl also includes a poster portraying the artist under the Twin Towers. The picture was shooted in 1996, five years before 9/11.
Mytologinen is an example of a common process in art making, which the audience not often think about. When a song is conceived, not necessarily it will be immediately completed. Sometimes, it happens that the artist works on it for a very long time, while in the meanwhile he completes other projects and he makes other music. Through time, the artist can be influenced by a large number of things and then can complete what he has started a lot of time before.
Regarding this topic, the artist says:
“As time passes one lives with certain sounds/motifs. The process of revisiting certain improv sessions ( I revile the term “jam”) and hearing some expenditure of energy. Sometimes you can’t finish something in the moment but you still are onto something that needs time to gestate. Best case scenario one IMPROVES technically… It really is true that one can grow into a track and expand it years/ lifetimes later with different ears […]”
Connecting to what said at the beginning of the article about never lived experiences, watching the poster, we can imagine how different New York City could have been before 9/11 changed the city and the whole world.
Regarding this, HUREN says:
“It really is interesting to look on the few surviving photos of the time. Keep in mind they had to be kept in boxes packed away for years before digitized to upload to THE www. With the disparate lifestyles we lead they all could have been lost to the dust of time. It all looks so grimy and nasty and unpleasant. It didn’t feel like that at the time. One had no inkling of the consequences […]”
DETROIT
Surely, listening to Blood Fire Debt and considering that HUREN, during the early nineties, has lived in Detroit, we necessarily have to mention the groundbreaking role played by the city in the history of techno music. The “city of motors” was the place where Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Sauderson started techno. Underground Resistance was born in Detroit too. Of course, Detroit has influenced any techno musician, and HUREN as well.
Regarding his experience in this city, the artist says:
“The same can be said of Detroit which I likewise spent a fair amount of time in the earlier 90’s. Very lucky I survived… Several situations could have ended it all..”
BERLIN
Obviously, we have to talk about Berlin, the metropolis in which HUREN actually makes his music. Listening to Blood Fire Debt, it’s easy to think about Eastern Berlin neighborhoods, such as Neukolln, Kreuzberg and Friedrichschein. Also the name “Symphony of a great city” given to this article is an homage to the cult movie “Berlin, Symphony of a great city” directed by Walter Ruttmann in 1927.
We have chosen to talk about Blood Fire Debt focusing on those cities which played a very important role in the development of techno music and which often communicated with each other.
Of course, that’s only one of the many ways in which this release can be experienced. The listener can listen to these bloody and burning songs simply deciding to be overwhelmed by these often heavy and annihilating sounds while walking into the suburbs of their cities or while travelling in the subway.
Regardless of the personal listening experience, what’s sure is that Blood Fire Debt is a very good example of the old Throbbing Gristle slogan: Industrial music for industrial people.
Label: KR3 Records
Rating: 9