Dekmantel Podcast 200 - Surgeon

Time sure does fly when you’re having fun, and so it is that we’ve already raced up to podcast number 200. We’ve managed to call upon a suitably large name for the honour; someone who has very much shaped the techno scene over the course of the last 20 years and continues to excite people every time he plays. That man is Surgeon. As a performer, Birmingham’s Anthony Childs was one of the first men to embrace and exploit the possibilities of Ableton Live and Final Scratch. His mastery of that technology made his sets even more improvised and innovative, and over the years he has never compromised his vision. He plays with a sense of devastation and destruction that explores the very outer edges of what is possible, while always keeping the dance floor absolutely locked in. It’s been the same since he founded his hometown’s first techno club, House of God, at the start of the 90s. As a producer—whether solo or in celebrated collaborations with Regis as British Murder Boys or Ben Sims as Frequency 7—he seems to be getting better with age. Right from his first EP on Karl O’Connor’s Downwards in 1994, surgeon has had a hard hitting, linear style that remains to this day. Recent years saw him return to a primitive rave style and incorporate the gritty industrial influences of his youth. But in 2018 he evolved again and served up what many consider to be his best album in years. Luminosity Device features a more rhythmic, playful sense of drum programming next to his meticulously crafted synths and enthralling sense of urgency and future paranoia. The nuance in his tracks is now as intriguing as the visceral power of the kicks, and it all adds up to an album that works as well on headphones, at home, as it does on the dance floor. It’s proper techno by a proper techno head. And so is the mix he has put together for us. Over 1 hour 45 minutes, the man calls upon plenty of pivotal names from Juan Atkins and Oscar Mulero to Donato Dozzy and James Ruskin. There are plenty of twists and turns along the way, so that zoned out passages of dubbed out drums are followed by intergalactic space battles and moments of synth laden intensity. It’s a testament to Surgeon’s skills that he can take you to such far ranging corners of the techno world without ever getting lost.