Techno may have returned underground yet DJ Rolando, Aril Brikha and Fabrice Lig are creating a new – and deeper – form of the music that intrigues Detroit purists, house heads and those who always loved classic electronica without the tags.

If some have compared Brikha’s hypnotica to the seminal Mayday sound, then Belgium’s Lig has the same soulful ethos – and overall versatility – as Laurent Garnier. Along with Deetron, Brikha and Lig are the credible new stars of Europe’s techno underground.
Still, Lig expresses ambivalence towards the word ‘techno’ – at least in a contemporary context – when asked if he identifies with that tradition. “I don’t know, actually – it’s a really difficult question,” he ponders. “I think yes, because I decided to do techno because I was a big fan of techno music and I wanted to do some music because of that style. But it’s dangerous to talk about ‘techno’ nowadays because I think that my meaning of techno is maybe not the same as other people are thinking about today. Everyone in Europe I’m talking to about techno, they’re all thinking about just bassdrum music – every music with a 4/4 bassdrum is techno, even if it’s commercial. So I’m probably a techno artist, but ‘techno’ in the original meaning from the end of the ‘80s. For me now, a techno artist means someone who is working with electronic elements and maybe also with acoustic stuff – but it’s more like a state of mind. I have the techno state of mind, I think.”

Lig caught the attention of electronic music listeners with his first Soul Designer album on Garnier’s fabled imprint, F-Communications, but he is a prolific producer.
This year Fabrice presented the accomplished My 4 Stars on the Berlin-based Kanzleramt, with his idea being to explore the realm of emotive, melodic and deep techno. He remains happy with the work months later.

Lig has never set out to be an artist who revolutionises with every record – for him, it’s about subtle, and steady, evolution. He regards his lack of a formal music background as a plus. There are too many “rules” in music theory so he decided not to pick it up. “I preferred to develop my own way of playing – that’s why I think people can recognise some of my tracks, because I didn’t learn it at school, I just learned it by myself, step-by-step, and I like that way,” he explains. “I don’t want to do symphonies, it’s not my purpose, I just want to do something soulful and melodic – and it’s cool to do that.”
A techno crew in Sydney were so excited by My 4 Stars that they held a launch party without any support from the local distributor. The vibe behind Lig is grassroots. Lig, anticipating his first Australian tour, is taken aback by the attention.

Ask Lig his influences and he cites everyone from the usual suspects – the Detroit techno pioneers – to the unlikely pop star Nik Kershaw, who had hits with I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me, Wouldn’t It Be Good and Riddle in the ‘80s. Lig was first exposed to Detroit techno in the late ‘80s when he heard Inner City’s Big Fun at a Belgium nightclub – a friend later told him it was ‘Detroit techno’. Lig styled himself as a DJ and, inevitably, ventured into production, making his mark in the ‘90s with early issues on the now defunct Elypsia. Then came along his superb remix of the E-Dancer record Banjo, which Mad Mike himself praised. Lig reveals the “strange story” behind the mix.
He was invited by a friend at PIAS to contribute a remix to an EP but, in the end, it was not selected for the final release, for which bigger name remixers were favoured. Some time later he headed to a club and gave a copy of his remix to Saunderson. “Suddenly six or eight months later a friend called me and said to me, ‘Hey, man, that’s cool that remix on KMS’ – and I was really surprised because I didn’t hear from Kevin for eight months and the remix was released on KMS!,” he laughs.

Having an issue on KMS was symbolic for the Inner City fan.”I was more confident to develop my own sound after that because I knew that the other guys from Detroit were really into my music and it was ‘Detroit-approved’,” he says. “It was really important in my development.”  Lig has just returned from Paris and is contemplating a second Sound Designer album for F-Comm, with an EP in November. Fabrice prefers to record spontaneously and he appreciates Garnier as a label boss since he is non-interventionist with his artists.

Further down the track Lig means to cut more vocal records and move into jazz, and even hip hop, with one hip hop joint already in his vault. Fabrice pulled it from My 4 Stars at the last minute, as he didn’t feel it was strong enough. He didn’t want to be the token techno producer ‘proving’ he can do hip hop.  “I would like to do that, but when I feel that I can give that track to a hip hop producer and he says, ‘Yeah, that’s good, that’s a really good hip hop track.’”

Fabrice Lig plays this Friday 24th September @ Honkytonks in Melbourne and on Friday 1st October at Glitch in Sydney. Check ITM whatson for more details.