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.

“My loft with fiberglass falling down from the roof and my girlfriend going insane downstairs at this horrible beat. [...] Once the Bludclot Artattack came out we took it into Black Market and put it on, and when the bassline came in everyone was like, Wow! We want this! It felt like it was the real deal and would one day be what was called normal. [...] A real working engine is dirty and a lot of these tracks sound and feel like working machinery. If you go into a factory, boy do you hear some rhythm! When I hear machinery operation I’m automatically filling in an Amen break in my head.”

Everything turned out to be close: Ed Rush lived in the opposite building, Trace hung out a bit further out. There were similar views but also differences: “All this UFO/abduction stuff is nothing to do with me. I don’t go with that. I don’t believe people visit this planet at all. I’m operating on the idea that we are completely on our own. For me, that’s much darker and more exciting.”