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DARKMODE: PROPER TECHNO, INDEPENDENCE AND THE ART OF TAKING A DANCEFLOOR ON A JOURNEY

Electronic music has always moved forward by remembering where it came from.

For Darkmode, that relationship isn’t theoretical. The Newcastle upon Tyne producer, DJ and founder of Biotech Recordings has lived through several generations of electronic music culture, from hearing electro as a child in the early 1980s to witnessing house, acid house and techno establish themselves as movements in the UK.

More than four decades after those first encounters with electronic sound, he is still producing, DJing and releasing music according to a remarkably simple principle:

Don’t follow trends.

For Underground Movement Show #124, ElectronicRhythm.com sits down with Darkmode for a one-on-one conversation about the music that shaped him, his beginnings as a producer, the creation of Biotech Recordings, the philosophy behind his DJ sets and why his definition of proper techno still matters.

Then the conversation gives way to the music itself: a nearly two-hour Darkmode guest mix that brings those ideas onto the dancefloor.

Growing Up With Electronic Music

Darkmode grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England, hundreds of miles from London.

His relationship with electronic music began unusually early.

He remembers hearing electro in 1983, when he was only seven years old. House arrived a few years later. In 1987, he encountered Steve “Silk” Hurley’s Jack Your Body, a record that became his first direct experience with house music.

Then came acid house.

Darkmode was twelve in 1988, watching as news reports and newspapers attempted to make sense of the acid-house raves spreading across the UK. What was being treated by mainstream media as a strange new youth phenomenon was simultaneously becoming the foundation of a culture that would shape much of his life.

By 1989, techno had entered the picture as well.

Those experiences matter because Darkmode wasn’t introduced to electronic music retrospectively. He was hearing many of these sounds while the culture surrounding them was still developing.

But another branch of electronic music would push him toward something more than listening.

From Listening to Wanting to Create

During the interview, Darkmode recalls becoming deeply interested in ambient music as a teenager.

Artists such as The Orb were part of that world, but one record had a particularly strong effect on him: Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxygène.

A friend with a large CD collection lent him the album when Darkmode was sixteen.

The experience changed the way he listened.

Rather than simply hearing the music, he began wondering how it existed in the first place.

How were these sounds made?

How did somebody create this?

What equipment and ideas were behind it?

Watching footage of Jean-Michel Jarre performing at La Défense in Paris pushed that curiosity further. Darkmode remembers sitting in his parents’ living room watching the concert on VHS and reaching a decision:

He wanted to make his own music.

Becoming Darkmode

That intention eventually became practical.

In 1998, Darkmode began a two-year music technology course at Newcastle College and started producing his own material.

His early production environment was considerably more modest than the mythology often attached to electronic-music studios. He talks about producing using Reason, a piece of software he continues to use, and working on a laptop through headphones when proper studio monitors were financially out of reach.

The important thing was making music.

His first compilation appearance arrived in the early 2000s, followed later by his first vinyl release. Connections developed organically through the techno community, including his relationship with Keith Tenniswood of Radioactive Man and Two Lone Swordsmen.

And somewhere along the way, the artist needed a name.

The answer came from another major influence: Depeche Mode.

Darkmode is a longtime fan, and the connection ultimately provided the inspiration for the name under which he would release and perform.

It’s a small detail, but it connects several pieces of his musical history. Long before techno became his primary territory, electronic sound itself was the fascination.

DJing Is About the Journey

There is a point during the UMS #124 conversation when the discussion moves away from records and releases and toward something more fundamental:

What is a DJ actually supposed to do?

For Darkmode, the answer isn’t simply playing one high-energy record after another.

“I do like to take people on a journey,” he explains.

That journey can go up. It can come down. And then it can rise again.

It’s an approach rooted in dynamics rather than constant intensity.

Darkmode argues that hammering away at maximum energy for too long can eventually become monotonous. Contrast creates impact. A change in rhythm, style or expectation can reset a room before the energy starts building again.

That philosophy has occasionally meant putting records into his techno sets that some DJs might never consider.

Electro is one example.

He remembers playing classic electro during techno sets and watching the crowd respond immediately. During one performance in Dublin, he dropped an Arabian Prince record into his set before mixing into Joey Beltram.

The stylistic change worked.

And there is another story he remembers particularly clearly.

At a Newcastle techno event in 2013, Darkmode finished a two-hour set with Yello’s Oh Yeah, originally released in the mid-1980s.

Afterward, a young woman approached him wanting to know what the final record was.

For her, it wasn’t an old record.

It was a discovery.

That moment says something important about the role DJs can still play. A record doesn’t stop being relevant because its release date becomes old. Put into the right context, music can become new again for somebody hearing it for the first time.

Biotech Recordings: Don’t Follow Trends

In 2011, Darkmode took another step toward independence and created Biotech Recordings.

The motivation came partly from frustration.

He had accumulated unreleased music and was sending demos to labels. Some rejected the material outright. Others liked what they heard but wanted him to change his sound so that it better matched the identity of their label.

Darkmode wasn’t interested.

If a piece of music represented what he wanted to make, reshaping it simply to fit someone else’s formula defeated the purpose.

So he created somewhere he could release it himself.

More than that, he created a label with its own philosophy.

“We don’t follow trends.”

Biotech Recordings has consequently developed around Darkmode’s own musical values rather than whatever happens to dominate the current cycle of techno.

When asked what he looks for from artists submitting music, his first requirement is equally direct:

It has to be proper techno.

For Darkmode, that can include techno carrying a Detroit influence. It can include hardgroove, a sound he has followed since the 2000s.

And Biotech isn’t restricted entirely to four-on-the-floor techno.

Electro remains part of the label’s identity as well.

That’s significant because Darkmode’s relationship with electro predates much of his involvement with techno. Rather than treating it as an occasional stylistic detour, he describes himself as genuinely passionate about producing it.

Biotech therefore reflects the person behind it: techno and electro connected by an artist who has spent decades listening across the boundaries between them.

The Underground Isn’t an Algorithm

One of the recurring ideas throughout the conversation is experience.

Not experience as status.

Experience as accumulated listening.

Darkmode has watched electronic music move through numerous cycles. Genres emerge, disappear from fashion, return under new names and get discovered by listeners who may have no connection to the generation that originally created them.

That perspective explains why he can move from contemporary techno into an electro record several decades old without treating the transition as a novelty.

It also explains his skepticism toward trends.

The objective isn’t to play something because an algorithm says that sound is currently performing well.

It’s to understand why the record belongs at that particular moment in a set.

That distinction is central to Darkmode’s idea of DJing.

A DJ isn’t simply presenting tracks.

A DJ is constructing relationships between them.

Andrew Weatherall and a Cup of Tea

Some of the most revealing stories in artist interviews are not necessarily the biggest career milestones.

Darkmode’s memory of Andrew Weatherall is one of them.

Through his friendship with Keith Tenniswood, Darkmode had the opportunity to visit Weatherall’s studio in London in 2001.

He remembers arriving, pressing the buzzer and being let inside.

And then Weatherall asked him a very ordinary question:

Did he want a cup of tea?

More than twenty years later, Darkmode still remembers it.

Not because it was a dramatic music-industry encounter, but precisely because it wasn’t.

It was simple hospitality from someone Darkmode respected enormously.

When the conversation turns to Weatherall’s death, the emotional weight of that relationship becomes clear. Darkmode describes being devastated by the loss.

It’s a reminder that underground electronic music history isn’t only labels, records, charts and legendary clubs.

It’s also relationships.

Sometimes it’s even a cup of tea.

Still Moving Forward

Darkmode isn’t approaching UMS #124 as somebody looking backward at a completed career.

He remains active as a producer and label owner.

During the interview he discusses new Biotech material, upcoming music for other labels and electro productions, while also talking about the continued support his music has received from established figures in techno.

Dave Clarke occupies a particularly meaningful place in that story.

Darkmode says Clarke has supported his productions for many years, both through his White Noise radio show and in DJ sets.

That relationship between producer and DJ is part of the infrastructure underground music has always depended upon: somebody makes a record, somebody believes in it enough to play it, and another listener discovers it.

The technology surrounding that exchange may change.

The principle doesn’t.

Darkmode Meets ElectronicRhythm.com

The route that brought Darkmode to Underground Movement Show #124 followed a similarly organic path.

There was no formal industry introduction.

Darkmode and Parallel Preservation connected through social media and began appreciating each other’s music.

Darkmode subsequently invited Parallel Preservation onto the Biotech Recordings promo list. From there, he extended another invitation: send some productions over for consideration for the label.

The conversation went in both directions.

Parallel Preservation invited Darkmode to become a guest on the Underground Movement Show.

He agreed.

That exchange captures something ElectronicRhythm.com has always been interested in: artists discovering artists.

Not networking for its own sake.

Not numbers.

Music creating the introduction.

Underground Movement Show #124

After approximately 26 minutes of conversation, UMS #124 hands control completely to Darkmode.

What follows is one hour and 56 minutes of techno.

The tracklist reaches backward and forward across the culture.

Dave Clarke.

Smith & Selway.

The Advent.

Joey Beltram.

Marco Bailey.

The Martian.

Suburban Knight.

Alongside them are numerous Darkmode productions, allowing the set to function as both a DJ journey and a deeper introduction to his own musical vocabulary.

There is energy here, certainly.

This is peak-time music.

But energy isn’t the entire story.

The set is raw, hypnotic and informed by Detroit while reflecting the philosophy Darkmode describes during the preceding interview: take people somewhere.

Don’t flatten everything into one level.

Build.

Release.

Change direction.

Then build again.

Proper Techno

“Proper techno” can be a difficult phrase to define.

For one generation, it might mean Detroit.

For another, Birmingham.

For another, Berlin, Naples, Stockholm, New York or somewhere entirely different.

Darkmode’s interpretation isn’t presented as a historical rulebook.

It is expressed through choices.

The records he plays.

The records he makes.

The music he releases through Biotech.

The decision not to chase a trend simply because that trend is currently successful.

The willingness to put electro into a techno set.

The belief that a DJ should create a journey rather than maintain one continuous level of intensity.

And perhaps most importantly, the willingness to still be excited by electronic music decades after first hearing it as a child in Newcastle.

That’s the Darkmode we meet in Underground Movement Show #124.

An artist with history behind him, new music ahead of him, and almost two hours of techno ready for the space in between.

ElectronicRhythm.com presents the Underground Movement Show.

Music. Artists. Discovery. Underground.

Discover the artists. Support the music. Keep the underground moving.