After a few years away, Julien Bracht returns to making techno with his new EP ‘Rave Flower’.
Julien Bracht’s studio is now based in the South of Spain. Despite hailing from Germany, his new home on the Iberian Peninsular allows him to watch across the ocean while making melodic, synth-laden techno. It’s inspired him to widen and open sounds like never before. We asked him to talk through his new Rave Flower EP.
Across The Ocean
I wanted to create something emotional and ravy at the same time. I love to have this rave energy and dancefloor functionality combined with some timeless melodies.
I started playing around with my Prophet 6, searching for some nice bass patterns, that gave the ground floor to the track. I normally always start by creating sounds on that synth.
After some hours I was doing more and more stuff and at some point lost the track, left the studio and listened back, only to realize that these sounds I did at the very start were the ones shining. That gave me a massive vibe to keep going.
Once the kick and bass were done, I wanted a melody that would give me a trancy vibe and freshness to the track, that was the SH-101, one of my favourite synths also.
The most important part for me when producing is the drum recordings I always do at the end. I recorded it with 2 Octava Mics in AB stereo. It works perfectly for me on a lot of occasions, as I don’t need direct mics on snare, hit or kick.
Don’t Chase Your Enemies
This track was really influenced by fast techno and this typical dark rave feeling.
Again, starting to play around with the SH 101, I was looking for a nice techno bassline, that would go through the track and carry all sound elements.
Once I got that together with the kick and rumble, it was fun to play around and I felt the right energy and mood. I’m always looking for some light, even in dark techno tracks. So I added a plug sound from the new Arturia plug In, called Pigments. It gave it the light I was looking for.
For the percussion sounds, I went down to the garage and recorded everything out of metal I could find. The main metal clap is me hammering on a leather. All hi-hats and shakes are made with rakes and other tools.
In the end, I was arranging and adding some other tremolo pads, that would give another layer of emotion to the track.
Mode Flower Rave/ Rave Gene
I made these two tracks on the same day. I was recovering from 2 weeks of sickness from Covid and feeling energized.
I started looking for some banging rave kicks and tweaked around until I had the perfect one to add a 303 bassline. I was looking for a classic acid vibe here and just pure rave energy. All drums are made with the 909 from Behringer, which I really fell in love with. The best replica for me.
After I had this really nice acid power, I found this one plug-in called Rave Generator, which is basically a sampler from old 90s stabs. It’s really creative and fast. So I played around with it until I found the melodies and then this was it basically. For Rave Gene I recorded some acoustic drums, to give it another layer.
While You’re Here…
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