Perth techno veterans MOT3K cook up some of the grittiest (and spookiest) dark tech in the country. We chat with MOT3K’s JP before they hit the decks for Rough Love’s The Factory II this Friday, July 25.
“Dazz K and I have been friends ever since I migrated from Holland. He was working at Sanity records and it was love at first sight,” laughs JP. “No. But he did invite me to come to the heat night club for a proper DnB/breaks gig, and from there on we have been mates. Sharing a very similar taste in music, it was a natural progression to include Dazz in making beats. I’ve been making music for over 24 years now.”
MOT3K, a blurring of “more techno” – (they replaced the E with a numeral after “some Belgian hardcore producer complained”) – are dedicated to self-determination: “I do all the artwork, we both come up with the ideas. We control the lot. We try not to use a lot of samples. For basskicks and hihats we do use samples. You don’t need to be reinventing the wheel a thousand times, but all the atmospherics, strings, and leads we want to make ourselves. Our main sound creator has to be the worlds best VST – Alchemy.”
“Our musical differences is what it makes it special,” says JP. “Dazz’s favourite band ever is Queen, for fuck’s sake! I really love the hard and nasty techno and Dazz is into housier tech. We always want to keep evolving and working out new sounds and beats. We never really get writers block and our brains seem to hit the sync button when we’re working.
“Genre doesn’t mean much nowadays,” he says. “They have a name for everything now. Deep hard house, or progressive minimal tech – I can’t do much with that. For me, a lot falls under the name techno, house or progressive. Trance I won’t even mention. Way too far from my musical taste.
“We don’t want to pigionhole ourselves too much, so keeping it under the general tag Techno or Hard Techno is good enough for most of our tunes, but it’s important from a DJing perspective to be able cover all those subgenres in your set.
“Dark techno I can do something with,” he says. “You’ll be guaranteed that it won’t be too melodic and obviously will have a lot of dark elements in it. Tech house gets a thumbs up from us as well.”
Regarding the dark conceptual elements that characterise tracks like Achluophobia and The Creeper, JP says the aesthetic is “very important. We’re not writing fucking nursery rhymes here. We have a gasmask as our logo – that says enough. This is dark, deep thought- and mood-provoking underground music.”
“Rough Love are great guys, full stop,” says JP of the upcoming Factory gig. He’ll be playing alongside other Rough Love golden children, including Shaddow Brothers and +1. “We definitely share the same vision and attitude and we’re grateful that they are putting on these parties at different venues never before used – it adds a dimension that people won’t forget. We feel honoured to be a part of making the factory a success story.”
