EBM / New Beat

early 1980s (EBM), 1987 (new beat) · Wuppertal and Dusseldorf, West Germany, and Antwerp, Ghent, and Brussels, Belgium

Punk aggression welded to sequencers in early-1980s Germany and Belgium, slowed by a 1987 Antwerp DJ accident into new beat (Red Bull Music Academy, DJ Mag).

The sound

A rigid 4/4 drum machine pulse under a repetitive sequenced bassline, shouted or deadpan vocals, and almost no melody. Belgian DJs then slowed that same pulse into a lurching, hypnotic crawl and called it new beat.

Listen for: The bassline never swings or fills, it just repeats, so all the tension comes from the vocal and the mix, not the groove itself.

Things to know

  1. Front 242 named the genre in the liner notes of their 1984 album No Comment, credited as 'Electronic Body Music Composed and Produced On Eight Tracks,' even though Kraftwerk and DAF had used similar terms earlier.

  2. New beat was born in Antwerp in 1987 when a Belgian DJ, most often named as Dikke Ronny, played A Split-Second's 45rpm EBM record Flesh at 33rpm with the pitch control at +8, turning it into a slow, hypnotic crawl.

  3. R&S Records, the Ghent label at the center of Belgium's move from new beat to techno, tested new productions at the Boccaccio club before releasing them, and the first twenty releases on its UK offshoot Outer Rhythm all reached the UK Top 50.

Key tracks

Family tree

  • Techno: Belgium's new beat clubs turned into techno labs. At Boccaccio near Ghent, DJs started playing techno imports at full speed instead of the pitched-down crawl, and R&S Records tested its new productions on that same floor. CJ Bolland's early singles came out of exactly this scene, and DJ Mag notes even Jeff Mills' 1990 Final Cut record leaned heavily on EBM.
  • Trance: Early trance came out of Frankfurt in the early 1990s, around Sven Vath and clubs like Dorian Gray and Omen, and it's consistently described as a blend of three things: techno's driving basslines, synth-pop's lush harmonies, and EBM's swirling arpeggios. That third ingredient is this node. Strip the shouting off a Front 242 sequence and you can hear trance coming.
  • Italo Disco / Synth-pop: These two are cousins, not parent and child. Italo disco and new beat grew up in parallel from the same European well: Giorgio Moroder's sequencer disco, which Front 242's Daniel Bressanutti named as a direct influence on EBM. Discodromo's Giacomo Garavelloni puts it plainly, calling Italo "the first cousin of new beat." They share the same roots but not the same temperament.

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