As the founder of Birmingham’s House of God club nights, Anthony Child (aka Surgeon) was one of the first DJs to import techno into the UK scene during a golden era for the genre. Always keen to develop his technique and get to grips with new technologies, Child was also one of the first to introduce CDJs, Ableton Live and Final Scratch into his DJ sets.
Child moved into production in the early ’90s with his seminal debut EP Surgeon (1994) introducing a tough, industrial slant. A constant presence on the techno scene, his uniquely sophisticated production style has developed to incorporate elements of funk and dub across a catalogue of influential releases for labels such as Tresor and his own Dynamic Tension.
In recent years, Child has increasingly investigated ways to switch-up his creative process. Turning his attention to the spontaneity of live performance, Crash Recoil – Child’s first album in five years – sees the producer transpose the self-limiting constraints of his live set to a home studio setting. The result is a raw, crunching and untethered techno album that, nevertheless, sounds unmistakeably Surgeon.
You started producing at a time when industrial music was reaching its peak. Did you set out to create a toughened version of techno that would borrow from that scene?
“In retrospect, I feel that I may have misunderstood what industrial music was. For some people, industrial music is Ministry or the American rock version, which has never really appealed to me. I grew up with bands like Coil, Psychic TV and Throbbing Gristle and was influenced by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s cut-up techniques. When I make music I never approach it thinking I’m going to make an industrial or disco track, I work in a more intuitive and improvisational way and follow where the feeling is. I’m trying to make something come to life rather than set out from the perspective of a particular idea.”
In what way were Gysin’s cut-up techniques important to you as a producer?
“I was very young when I came across Gysin.
