Harthouse (record label)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Harthouse is a German record label specializing in techno music; during the early 1990s it was one of the biggest labels in the "techno-trance" scene that was the precursor to modern trance music.

The label has been responsible for many success stories in the electronic world including Oliver Lieb, Eternal Basement, Hardfloor, Sven Väth and Koxbox.

The company was founded by Sven Väth in the early 1990s. Harthouse took on the techno trend and explored the darker, more pulsating flavors of this music, soon becoming one of the front-figures of european techno. Like Väth, the Harthouse artists soon chose a more intellectual approach to music compared to some of the more rave- and party-oriented electronic music at that time.

Harthouse CDs, like the vinyl records, came in a subtle glossed cardboard casing printed with color variations of the same dark, monochromatic science fiction theme, much in style with the music itself. Each publication sported a cryptic name.

Experimentation seems to have been encouraged within the company, and Harthouse artists like jiri.ceiver took this angle to a funky extreme, approaching the level of abstract art. On the other hand, artists like Koxbox took the experiments in the dancefloor direction, and Harthouse, among others via Koxbox finally moved more and more towards the psychedelic trance genre, and many will probably consider Harthouse part of building up this genre. The development resulted in the later Harthouse CDs having a more "maximalist", energetic sound with emphasis on the distorted TB-303 lead.