Network 23 (from Break/Flow 1, 1996)

An early review article from Break/Flow 1 (1996) about the underground record label and distribution operation Network 23, set up by members of Spiral Tribe in 1994.

What is Underground?

Underground has long become a dubious term as marketing strategists have used it to sell records, to shift units. It would be easy to come up with classic examples, a good one is the ‘underground issue’ of i-D which under this banner featured Goldie, Richie Hawtin and Mixmaster Morris. All of these just happened to have records on big, if not major, labels out that month.

Using the term has become either shameless or naive. Nevertheless it can describe something, or a multitude of things, and for the time being we can pretend it makes sense. It is a cultural movement that exists removed from the so called ‘main stream’, the visible culture.

The ‘underground’ is therefore largely invisible, often illegal, and attacking and subverting the values of the ‘main stream’.

This dualism will only bring us so far – inevitably we’ll have to revise it later, but let’s use it for the moment.

The ‘underground’ is often seen as a pool of obscure activities from which the mainstream culture can draw energy, talent, creativity. However even in the 1990s there are examples of underground currents that largely remained ‘hardcore’, i.e. didn’t offer themselves too easily for exploitation through market forces. On the other hand of course the pretence of being underground and hardcore could be used to justify a rather lame attitude. And also there is never one underground, there are a lot of little currents and movements, sometimes in competition, sometimes in collaboration, sometimes completely isolated.

As techno progressed over the last few years it became more and more diverse as well as becoming commercially viable for the majors to step in and exploit the new noises. The conventional music press started making up their personalities and stars and increasingly managed to deal with dance music as if it was rock’n’roll. Advertising money changes hands and the hypes are paid for.

In this climate it made more sense than ever, in fact it became a (even economic) necessity to look out for alternative ways of distribution. With the establishment of international networks of like minded activists in the scene this became more and more a possibility, to a large degree aided by the fact that there are a number of Teknivals happening all over Europe every summer now. To do record stalls at festivals and parties has helped a lot to bypass the commercial distribution networks where often of the £7 you pay for a 12” only £2 actually go to the label and artists while the remaining £5 go to the various middle men who often have no real interest in the music other than in the number of units they can shift.

From Spiral Tribe …

Spiral Tribe, sick of expensive pay-parties, organised a large number of free ‘illegal raves’ and took over festivals in late 1990 until summer 1992, culminating In the famous Castlemorton Common Festival that brought 13 members to trial to get acquitted two years later. In the following period during which the British government prepared & introduced the Criminal Justice Act, Spiral Tribe went abroad, stayed and did parties in Berlin, Prague and Vienna. In the early days in England they were confrontational, aggressive, played the media, landed a major record deal…

These spectacular shock tactics – successful as they were – led to a confrontation with the system that left the tribe clearly shattered and concentrating on a more grassroots organisation; this could either be a good move or a sign of implosion.

… to Network 23

After initiating/instigating the Teknivals In France, some members decided to stay in Paris to set up Network 23 as a label and distribution network, first of all for the sounds produced in the moblle studio that moved around all over Europe, but also to create an alternative to the usual ‘commercial’ networks for everybody else involved with the techno underground.

Participants in this include Den Haag’s Unit Moebius, who released three records on Network 23 so far and for example the recent collaboration between Somatic Responses and Caustic Visions released as Malignant Earth, along with the more directly Spiral Tribe associated artists who have so far provided the majority of titles, creating an impressive body of work, even if sometimes a stringent quality control has been suspended.

The best releases in this context are the Stormcore and Crystal Distortion ones. Another shade of the network aesthetics is represented by the breakbeat and jungle productions ~ a minority but of a consistent high quality.

Rather than becoming the alternative to the established independent distribution companies for what’s left of underground techno, on the whole Network 23 clearly develops as a highly efficient outlet for Spiral Tribe inspired material with guest productions, but also forging links with other networks and labels that operate on a similar level of retaining as much control as possible over the whole process of production, manufacturing and distribution. Needless to say this is something to be encouraged with all small labels, and already a sub-economy of labels swapping records world-wide and selling them direct to people is forming. Far removed from what the more mainstream media even notice.

For them hard house is “underground”, or – as quoted earlier – products on major labels that need to be sold to a receptive audience for whom “underground” has a romantic connotation of rebellion and resistance, which is quite shamelessly used by the sales strategists. Why not try the real thing?

Rather than proclaim all this as a ‘pure’ alternative, | see this, well, underground, as a Grey Zone that is in constant flux, where the possibilities that techno offered the first time around are still being explored, a scenery that is incredibly heterogeneous and whose main enemy is the competitiveness and non-communication in some sectors. Its force is that it remains closer to the core.

Christoph Fringeli

• Other articles by Christoph Fringeli on datacide-magazine.com
• Network 23 discography on discogs.com

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