When I was 21 years old I worked on the Promenade at a juice place. It was on that Island I think near Santa Monica or Arizona and Third where Gelato is now served. The guy I worked with was A super fit British guy and he constantly drank juice. When our shift ended he’d pump up techno music when we were cleaning up the place. He said it would help us work faster.
So now sometimes when I feel like my brain is dragging I put on some techno. My favorite is Aphex Twin. Right now I have the classics album on. See, I’m at heart, a rock and roll guy. But sometimes the lyrics and the emotional components of a song are too much for me, too distracting. When I’m running it doesn’t matter. But when I’m trying to focus on writing or cleaning, I heartily recommend Techno. Sometimes I’ll just google fastest techno song or whatever.
Another thing that got me interested in Techno was the movie PI. I got the soundtrack and used to drive around listening to it- that’s why I got into Aphex Twin. There’s a lot of good stuff on there, especially the Massive Attack stuff.
Oh! Another fascinating Techno story. When I was in India 21 years ago I found a cassette tape in a hut I was staying in in Auroville near Pondicerry in Tamil Nadu. It had all these great songs on it and it was all I listened to for a while. But I lost the tape and I never knew the name of the song I loved the best. Well, about 6 years ago I was with my friend Jake Davies who’s a producer and knows a lot of Dance music. I tried to describe the song to him and he finally said, “I think it’s ‘Water from a Vine Leaf’ by William Orbit.”
I looked up the song on Youtube and he was right! That’s one of my favorite songs. I put it on sometimes when I’m Ubering because I think it has a calming affect for my passengers. Even for people who aren’t necessarily fans of electronica music, there’s no way you can’t like that song.