Anthony Rother's Return to Electro in 2013 : Perspectives

For those of you aware of the hip hop scene, the legendary Dr. Dre has a mythical album called Detox that will never see the light of day. It's going on 10 years since he announced it, and much like the Detox myth, I had written off Anthony Rother ever returning to the electro scene. He did his thing, he did it better than almost anyone else outside of the mighty Drexciya and he was the driving force in the scene's second resurgence back in the mid to late 90s. His back catalogue is highly coveted among the vinyl collectors, and continues to inspire producers today.

Fastforward to 2013, and everyone perked up when Rother started posting missives that psi49net was being reactivated. Being he's a huge star (for the electronic scene, relatively speaking - we're not talking David Hasselhoff levels of stardom;) in his native Germany, it was no surprise to see a well coordinated marketing effort of posting up his old works onto soundcloud, extremely well produced video teasers ... all efforts that have stirred up electro fans up into cautious excitement. In fact, it wasn't until this video below that we actually heard real electro beats from him .. I don't think anyone believed it, myself included.

To put it in blunt terms, I'm stunned and pleasantly surprised. I've been writing at City of Bass actively on this little scene of ours since around 2010. There had been a lull in activity for the better half of the late 2000s, with the scene held together by a small group of dedicated producers, labels and artists, but I've always felt that a resurgence was on the way. Led in part by seeing several highly prominent former drum n' bass producers flipping their own takes on the electro sound, and held down as ever by the mighty Dave Clarke, electro has been doing okay. But with Rother's return, I'm truly excited - if he does well and the sound is embraced not just by the dedicated fanatics but his entire fan base, we might see a general rise in interest in all of the scene's main active labels and producers and DJs. Kind of like trickle down economics ;)

I'm probably being overly positive, but this is a good look for our scene. Anthony Rother - we salute you. Bring it.



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