Torque. Brief story behind the sacred techstep compilation

Nico Sykes: “What you get on Torque is about 15 nights over the past few months when we got in here and really wore the speakers down. Each track is made in one night. There’s usually a point in the night, and it may just be because we’re high as hell, where I’m thinking, This is feeling pretty good right now and that’s the time to press ‘Record’. Although we do an arrangement on the computer, a lot of it is live dub... Three minutes in and I’m feeling, Hey, we need more distortion at this point!”

And how did all begin? The future founder of the No U Turn label Nico Sykes worked as a sound engineer in one of the studios and was completely bored of producing techno and house tracks to order. Untz-untz-untz-untz. That was until he met Ed Rush at the beginning of the 90s and decided to found his own studio in the attic and do some side work on Sundays.