Dave Clarke
Techno

White Noise

Dave Clarke is a DJ with an anarchist streak a mile wide and punk in his soul.
Technologically, he’s an early adopter with the studio to prove it, but he also
embraces sounds outside the staunch electronic dance remit, from Nick Cave to
Savages to old favourites Bauhaus. Such music informs his attitude as, using Serato
on a 13” Macbook Pro Retina for his ruthlessly effective, fat-free club sets, he pushes
the worldwide boundaries of what techno and electro can be. After a break , recent
years have seen him make his presence as a producer felt again, working with Dutch
partner Mr Jones (Jonas Uittenbosch) as _Unsubscribe_ and dropping remixes
ranging from John Foxx’s seminal synth-pop gem ‘Underpass’ to Gesaffelstein,
Detroit Grand Pubas and Octave One. Not a week passes when he doesn’t live up to
his nickname, the Baron of Techno, a moniker given him by the late, great BBC
Radio DJ John Peel.
“I still love DJing with a passion,” Clarke enthuses, “Keeping a balance with
technology so it doesn’t take over. Anything in a DJ set-up has to provide something
extra, as opposed to being there as smoke and mirrors. There’s too much of that sort
of thing going on, especially since the American EDM explosion…”
Dave Clarke was born and raised in Brighton, England, but currently resides in
Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The offspring of a technology loving father and a
disco-soul loving mother, it was always evident that Clarke would cut a swathe
through music. As a youth he ran away from home, sleeping in car parks and on
beaches. He took lousy jobs in shoe shops, living off £5 a day, to subsidise his
income from badly paid local DJ gigs - anything to further his involvement with music.
“I didn\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'t really engage at all with the outside world,” he recalls, “I was your typical
disenfranchised JD Salinger-inspired young adult that used to hide in and behind
music.”
Clarke’s debut release was in 1990 on XL, around the time the label was launching
The Prodigy. He used the name Hardcore, a guise he then took to the legendary
Belgian techno-rave imprint R&S where he released various EPs (some as
Directional Force). By 1992 Clarke’s own label, Magnetic North, was on the rise and
he unveiled the classic ‘Alkaline 3dh’ (as Fly By Wire), among others. A next level
career boost was round the corner when his ‘Red’ trilogy were unleashed in 1994.
These catapulted Clarke into a different league and he suddenly found himself
remixing the likes of Kevin Saunderson’s Inner City, The Chemical Brothers, New
Order, Depeche Mode, Moby, Leftfield and Underworld. Undisputed landmarks in
techno, DJ Mag rightly incorporated ‘Red’ in its All Time Techno Top 100 list.\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\