Grovskopa Added by Chris, 1 February 2004

Born and raised in Malmoe, Sweden Grovskopa is one of the most exciting and innovative young DJ/producers to arrive on the techno scene in recent years.

He has been producing since the tender age of 14 and began DJing a year later, eventually graduating to his current three turntable set up at 18 years of age.

Originally drawn to the punk rock scene by its energy, Grovskopa discovered that the rising techno scene also carried this energy, but conveyed it through sounds that were more to his taste than the standard guitar, bass and drums set up which had led the punk scene into cliché. "I listened to a lot of Synth and Punk Rock when I was 10-15. I loved the sounds in Synth and the energy in Punk Rock. So when I heard techno it was the perfect mixture for me", he explains.

Eschewing the purely club-based loop techno which had put many of his fellow-countrymen on the techno map, he gravitated towards the more intricate, menacingly industrial techno coming out of late 90s England, taking his lead from producers such as Surgeon, Regis and James Ruskin.
Simultaneously, Grovskopa developed a taste in some of the inspirations for this sound from outside the techno scene, such as Steve Reich, Throbbing Gristle and Boyd Rice, feeding notions of musicality that strectched far beyond the dancefloor.

Along with his musical partner Archae, Grovskopa formed Emergence records in 2001 as an outlet for his first release, but with the wider intention "to release music on a continuum of change, to support the development and expression of artistic ideas and to create a forum for the new".

Further to this, Grovskopa states, "My biggest vision is to intertwine this 'body music'with the intellectual music making it appealing to listeners of both groups. We work quite much with electro acoustic elements which I find very stimulating."

Taking influences from diverse areas of music and the visual arts to act as an aid to his creativity, subsequent releases have stayed true to this ideal. The tenth release on Emergence will be a full-length album, allowing space to explore this vision more extensively. As Grovskopa says, "conceptualism is entertaining".

A stint at Art School from 1998 to 2001 studying photography and his current English studies at the University of Lund offered new opportunities for artistic expression outside of music.
In between his studies and musical work, he also writes and photographs for Swedish club magazine, Brus.

With the release of remixes by Regis and Christian Wünsch on Emergence and a forthcoming releases on Surface and Surgeon's Dynamic Tension records (previously almost exclusively Mr. Child's own domain), those who may once have been considered heroes are rapidly becoming peers. Treading the difficult path of creating music with conceptual depth and artistic focus,
which still operates as functional dance music, a new techno force is coming out of Sweden to control your mind and your feet!

- Sean Creen

• Reactor, 12 March 2004

  Warehouse 294, Rotterdam