Vainqueur

by Jason BirchmeierFollowing the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the rise of electronic dance music, Rene L?we immersed himself in the records he found at the Hard Wax record store. When Detroit artists began frequenting Berlin in the early '90s to collaborate and DJ, L?we became close with Eddie Fowlkes in particular, who helped him set up his own studio. It was at this time that L?we took on the French name Vainqueur. After having met the two men behind the Hard Wax store -- Moritz von Oswald and Mark Ernestus -- during one of their live performances at Waschhaus (a club where L?we spun), he soon found himself on the duo's M label. This debut record as Vainqueur, 1992's Lyot, became a techno anthem, propelled by its dense, pounding percussion and a catchy riff, exploited to perfection on the Maurizio mix of the song. In May 1995 L?we produced the music that would eventually appear as the first Elevation record on Hard Wax's most ambitious label yet, Chain Reaction. Rather than take a traditional approach to techno -- emphasizing percussion -- he decided to focus instead on the sequencing of the track, resulting in an epic ambient track composed of individual sounds traveling through elaborate sequencing -- a journey through the slow metamorphosis of a sound. He soon followed this record with others, eventually compiling his Chain Reaction canon on the Elevations CD in 1997, which featured further previously unreleased variations of the sound he explored on the first Elevation record. Though L?we hasn't released a gigantic body of work, his landmark productions remain important in the revisionist camp of techno associated with labels such as Chain Reaction and Mille Plateaux.