Charlie May – Madhouse – Recommended Techno

For a couple of years now, I have been moving over to Bandcamp with more music purchases, mainly because of their ethos. Bandcamp gives the artist a much larger % of sales and has introduced days were the entire revenue share goes to the producer, which at times like these are needed now more than ever.

On Saturday night while enjoying some of the finest 420 our galaxy has to offer, I went on the lookout on Bandcamp for some new music from one of my fav go-to producers from the last 3 decades; Charlie May.

When we think about music it really shouldn’t have a shelf life and Charlie May’s productions prove that he is without peers in the ever-changing techno scene, a true pioneer in multiple genres of electronic music.  

I first came across his music in the early 90s under his Spooky guise with Duncan Forbes. My introduction to their genius was Dr. Atomic – Schudelfloss (High On Hedonism Mix) a beautiful mind-bending production that samples HAL-9000 from one of my favorite movies ‘2001 a Space Oddysey’ by Stanley Kubrick on William Orbit’s legendary Guerilla Records, since then their music has stuck with me throughout my life. 

There are many wonderful productions I could go on about, for example, Spooky’s monumental remix of Sven Vath’s ‘An accident in Paradise’ on Eye Q records, which still is a breathtaking journey through sound design.

In the late 90s, he went about collaborating/co-creating, Sasha’s Expander, and ‘Air Drawn Dagger’ album. Charlie has a brilliant knack of making adventurous emotive memorable technology-based music. He has remixed everyone from Orbital, The Chemical Brothers to Lana Del Ray with James Lavelle.

The original version of ‘Madhouse’ appeared on John Digweed’s ‘Bedrock 10 Past Present and Future’ in October 2008 under the alias ‘Pindrop’ and this newer version appeared in August 2019 on Charlie’s Bandcamp page. Super clean percussion and wonky evolving rhythmic delays meander through an infectious bassline, leading to some breathtaking chords that swirl around a 303 style lead. Charlie’s music always communicates a story which sometimes is missing in a lot of today’s music productions, do yourself a favor, sit back, relax and turn off your phone and enjoy the genius of his studio prowess.

There is a link at the bottom of this review to check out his many spellbinding productions. Make sure you check back soon for an exclusive interview we recently did with Charlie.

Credits