Brendon Moeller: Life Begins at 170 ALP [FREE]

197MB | ALP | Feb 2025
Although he connected with jungle and drum & bass when he was discovering electronic music as a teenager in South Africa in the early 90s, Moeller never felt inspired to make the music himself. When he moved to New York and immersed himself in the city's club scene, he found his calling in techno. Working in record shops and distributors while he amassed equipment and knowledge, he initially debuted under the Beat Pharmacy and Echologist aliases in the early 00s. From those first releases he started shaping out a sound rooted in looming sub bass, minor chords and liberal delay and reverb. He readily admits the dub techno sound he was drawn to is rife with imitation, but he learned early on to carve out his own take on it.

This was the early days, before dub techno grew as a genre with a defined sound and a network of labels and artists. Motivated by that initial feedback, Moeller shaped his own individual approach which has permeated his work ever since. Even as his tools and techniques have evolved, Moeller is the kind of artist who displays a clear idea of what he wants to achieve with his music, and he's prolific with it. His catalogue of solo work and collaborations is vast, and yet it all hangs together very naturally. This remains true for his recent gear shift to 170.

"I think it's a natural evolution of my own sound and production techniques," Moeller says of his new direction. "When I started working at this tempo, it just hit me like, 'Wow, I have so much freedom.'"

Although the percussion scattered across this new music seems to reference drum & bass, Moeller never set out to create a specific interpretation of the genre. In fact, he wasn't thinking of drums at all.