Concrete does
half the
production
for you.

Tempo

132 – 142

Tonality

None

Track length

6 – 8 min

Where it plays

Raw rooms, afters

The room adds the reverb

A concrete shell with no soft surfaces has a reverb tail of two to four seconds. That is enormous — longer than most plate reverbs anyone would put on a snare. Which means a record that already carries a lot of reverb turns to soup in that space.

So warehouse-oriented techno is mixed dry. Tight, short, almost clinical on headphones. It only opens up when the room does the work.

Less low end, not more

The instinct is that a big raw room needs a bigger kick. The opposite is true: those rooms have standing waves that pile up energy below 80Hz until the low end is a formless rumble. Records made for them push the kick's weight up into the 100–150Hz range, where it stays defined.

Why it is hypnotic rather than euphoric

The afters hour does not want a chorus. It wants something to disappear into. Warehouse techno is usually built as a single idea repeated with tiny variations for seven minutes — the appeal is that nothing happens, at length, on purpose.

Tracks that show it

All written, produced and mixed by Steven Ran Cohen under the name BALIMORE.

• After MidnightHypnotic
• Beyond ControlPeak-time
• No LimitsPeak-time
• Break The SilenceTechno
• Full Style Set54 min · mix

Other guides