Last August Altern 8 visited Los Angeles courtesy of TR-99’s Trauma party. It was a great honor meeting these guys, as Altern 8 unalterably shaped rave culture by ways of the massive impact of their music and persona. I lucked into a thorough interview (hence the delay in upload) with Mark Archer and Josh Doherty before they would play that night, and here is what they had to say…
How about a history lesson on what you were doing in the late ’80s – early ’90s that made Altern-8?
Mark: It started in ’89 working with Chris Peat, one of the original members of Altern-8. We were working together as ‘Nexus 21’. I was heavily influenced by Detroit Techno at the time. We were owed some studio time where we were working, Blue Chip Studios, Stafford. We went in, and made about nine or ten tracks. It had further influences than just Detroit Techno, so we didn’t want to call it Nexus 21. That way it wouldn’t dilute what we were doing as the other group.
We were going to call ourselves Alien-8, because Chris was in a rock band called Alien-8. When the label sent the tune to be pressed, they didn’t do any DJ promos, anything like that, came back with all the sleeves. They phoned us up and said, “The records are here.” Drove down to Birmingham where the label was based, opened the box, pulled it out, it said ‘Altern-8’ on the top. The name came round by mistake, really.
It was just originally as a side-project, but the first EP had eight tracks on it, so a lot of DJs were buying it purely because there wre eight tracks you could play rather than one 12-inch that maybe had one mix that you could play, so it was really good value for money. When we did a follow-up, a lot of the DJs were already waiting for the follow-up, which was Infiltrate 202. It just went from there. We did that, and then we needed a follow-up, then we did Activ-8. Activ-8 got in the UK charts, so we started touring around the UK and around the world, and it took off a bit.
I remember you guys were on the cover of magazines, even here in the States and in Canada. What was the hysteria all about? Why were people so into you at the time?
Josh: Activ-8, I think, had sold enough copies that it would have gone to number one most weeks of the year, but it happened to be released the same week as the biggest British comedy act doing a thing, I think, and the new Michael Jackson single, so we got stuck at number three. Whereas a week earlier, a week later, it would have been a number one hit. There was a massive amount of hype around that time.
Mark: I think it was because we had the suits, which wasn’t planned. There was something really mysterious about the fact that people didn’t know who was making all the techno back then. There was very little known about it, so we took it to the ultimate by having the suits on. You couldn’t see who we were at all. There was a lot of hype and we did a lot of pranks, like giving away hot air. We were in a hot air balloon, and we were throwing Christmas puddings from it. There was the whole thing about the record label boss’s daughter, who was three at the time, saying, “Top one, nice one, get sorted” on the record, which was a phrase about people going out to raves.
Josh: Also, the rave scene was the last time that there was a huge social movement connected with a music scene in the UK. The government was really “anti-rave” and our look was “anti-establishment” as well, so people really connected with it.
How did you get into this? How did you find yourself in that wave of history?
Mark: There seemed to be a natural progression from early ’80s electro, soul, funk etc. People who were into that were, say, into like the early Chicago House stuff, including hip-hop. It kind of went hand-in-hand; banging to De La Soul and Public Enemy respectively. Then it went on to Acid House. After ’88, there was a lot of backlash about Acid House, but it kept progressing each year. ‘89 saw the arrival of Detroit Techno: the Belgians were making a lot of music and the Italians did this “Italo” House thing. There were so many influences at one time.
You were making music at that time?
Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I was making stuff in ’88, we were doing Acid House and stuff different names.
There was something where you guys were running for office?
Mark: That was just another way to get your name in the papers. If you have a single out, people will be promoting it, but when you don’t they won’t write about you. Every time, we had a prank, it was just a way to get your name out there so people remembered you between each single. The elections were going on, so Chris ran for the local elections in Stafford.
Josh:He didn’t come last, did he?
Mark: No. There’s a party called the Natural Law Party, and we actually beat them and they were being serious, and there we were.They were pissed.
Why is he not part of Altern-8 now?
Mark: In late ’93, I was recording under the name DJ Nex, Xen Mantra, I was doing House stuff with Danny Taurus under the name Slo Moshun. I was doing loads of different things, while Chris was getting more into computers. We had musical differences also. I wanted to go a certain direction – he was just interested in computers – so we stopped doing Altern-8 and revived Nexus 21. That didn’t happen so we stopped working together. I carried on DJ’ing ever since, recording under different names, but not recording any new material as Altern-8, Then in 2008, I played at a party Josh promotes in London called ‘I Love Acid’, and from there we started talking again. Now we’re doing the Altern-8 live shows again.
Are you going to come out with new Altern-8 music?
There’s a track in the [Trauma] live set which is brand new, right bang in the middle. We’re also working on an album.
Are you going to team up with any artists from back in the day?
Mark: Yeah, I’ve been working with some guys from Unique 3, Forgemasters, LFO, Rhythmatics, under the name The Originators.
There was something extra imbued into the Altern-8 sound that wasn’t just in all the other rave music. There seemed to be some bigger ideas behind it. Was that my imagination or was that actually going on?
Josh : A lot of that’s got to do with where some of the samples and the sounds are sourced from. There’s lots of really soulful House and Detroit Techno and bit and pieces like that that have gone in there. There’s something a little bit extra in them. I fucking love most of that old Hardcore, people like DJ DMS and stuff like Production House, but the source material of what they’re sampling was often other rave tunes, and it didn’t really reach back much further. The Altern-8 stuff just had a little more reach in where it was pulling tracks from. That’s my opinion, anyway.
Mark: At the time, I was just making tracks that I liked the sound of. The fact that people liked them was just … we just seemed to be doing something right and carried on doing it.
Are you just doing this one track?
Mark: Oh no, we’re going to be working on an album, get Full On … Mask Hysteria remixed and re-mastered. Get that out, and then work on new material for the new album.
Are you going to aim this material at the old schoolers, or are you going to aim it at kids?
Josh: We’re just going to write tunes that we like.
Mark: There’s no point trying to follow trends or push it to a certain market. Just like we did back then, you just made tunes that you liked and you hoped worked on the dance floor.
Josh: Both of us are producing other stuff anyway, so if we end up writing something Housey or Techno or something, it will just end up going under one of the other aliases. You don’t even have to go into the studio and go, “Must be Breakbeat,” because if something else works, then you just do something else with it.
Is there anything that you wish you could do over from that time? Or wish that you could do now?
Mark: If I had known how well the gig we played out here in ’92 went down … It was only after we were getting letters from people in LA, saying how good … from where we were on the stage, I didn’t think we did that well. At the end of our gigs, we used to come to the front of the stage and greet fans, but because it didn’t look like we did well, we just scurried off stage. Apparently, we blew that many people’s heads. If we somehow knew, we could’ve enjoyed it a hell of a lot more, gone out and met people etc. That’s probably the only thing.
What’s been your best memory throughout your musical journey?
Mark: The first time we played Downingtown Park, UK. That was our first big gig, and it was in a massive warehouse.
Josh: I played at a festival called Bloc in 2009, and the crowds were singing along to all the tunes. This was coming on after Skream & Benga, they were doing a dubstep thing, which was the most hyped music at the time. I was thinking, “I’m playing a bunch of old-school records after they just absolutely smashed it. I’m going to go down like a lead balloon.” But it just went off. This year, we ended a stage on Sunday night at Glastonbury, amid like 30,000 people
So what can we look forward to tonight?
Josh: All the classics, but they’ll be mashed up and changed a bit. The lucky thing is that the technology now is better than it was.
Mark: You’d have to take on a full studio on stage back in the day, whereas now you don’t have to.
Josh: A couple of laptops. There’s only so much that we can bring up. 303s and stuff stay at home.
Mark: All the tunes that hopefully people will remember. Different versions and a few surprises, and obviously the new tune in the middle.
All right then, top one, nice one, get sorted on iTunes!
From there, Altern 8 then prepped their set and later rocked and wowwed the crowd at Trauma.
Additional editing was done by DJ Daybreaker.
All photos in this article were shot by Peter Vincent.