They’re Ready and Raving to Put Techno Label on the Map

Philip Blaine has a physics degree from Brandeis University, so he should know about the laws of nature. But Gary Richards, his partner in the new 1200 Records label, a joint venture with A&M; Records aimed at integrating the electronica underground with the mainstream music industry, isn’t as familiar with the concept.

“Our goal is to take the square peg and put it in a round hole,” says Richards, sitting with Blaine in their cramped new offices on A&M;’s Hollywood lot. “When Phil and I go to a club at 4 a.m. and are jumping up and down, that’s what we want to capture. The question is how to play that into the A&M; system the same as something like Blues Traveler.”

Al Cafaro, A&M;’s chairman, is confident enough that they can manage this trick that he put down a reported $10 million to finance the operation. The 1200 Records label, named after a turntable model popular with dance-music deejays, makes its official debut Oct. 7 with “Let’s Get Killed,” the first American release by David Holmes, an Englishman who creates vivid tapestries from a variety of music samples and bits of dialogue he’s recorded in on-the-streets interviews. A tribute album to Depeche Mode and an album by the L.A. act God Lives Underwater are also in the works.

Even with the recent breakthroughs by Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers, electronica music--the electronics-based dance and trance music that has been a major force in Europe but is only now breaking into the U.S. mainstream--is still largely an alien presence in the mainstream. But both Blaine and Richards have a track record of fitting the square electronica peg into some very round holes.

Boston native Blaine, 29, and Washington-born Richards, 26, met in the early ‘90s when each was promoting underground rave events. They shared not only a passion for the electronic music and vibrant culture, but the confidence that there was a wider audience for it.

“Before Nirvana and the Seattle sound came up, I thought techno was going to take over the world,” Blaine says. “But it was pushed back underground, and that’s probably a good thing, since it gave us time to develop.”

Richards, known in the scene as DJ Destructo and as an event organizer under his Double Hit Mickey banner, kicked off 1993 by promoting the massive Rave America at no less a mainstream locale than Knott’s Berry Farm. Among the 18,000 attendees was producer and label owner Rick Rubin, who soon hired the promoter to bring a techno presence to his American Recordings label. The arrangement never resulted in hit records, but Richards’ deals there with God Lives Underwater and England’s XL label (the home of Prodigy, though that group had a separate deal with Elektra at the time) now seem prescient.

Blaine, meanwhile, leaped up from the underground by making a deal for his Kingfish Productions to book and promote concerts at the Hollywood American Legion Hall, where he’s brought in both electronica acts and more conventional rock groups. And last year he oversaw Organic, a rave-based festival that brought 5,000 people to the Snow Summit ski resort in the San Bernardino Mountains. A second Organic, again organized by Blaine, is scheduled for Sept. 20 at the same site.

Through it all, Blaine and Richards managed to gain credibility in the major-label music industry while by and large maintaining respect in the rave scene.

“Phil, especially, was very wise to keep working with underground people to keep his street presence while building the business side where he could come up with the money and larger venues,” says Raymond Leon Roker, publisher and editor-in-chief of the dance-music magazine Urb. “He’s been a good anchor in the scene for delivering quality events that don’t get shut down [by police].”

Still, full respect in the music industry was hard to achieve.

“We always got the same treatment, with the record company people saying, ‘How can you listen to those crazy blips and bleeps?’ ” Blaine says. “They would go, like, ‘This music ain’t never gonna happen.’ ”

Adds Richards, “Now they’re coming back and saying, ‘Hey, you guys were right!’ ”

That means, though, that the stakes have been raised. Even before Prodigy’s recent success, offers to techno acts and labels were inflating as major labels scrambled to get aboard the movement.

“We have realistic expectations, and so does A&M;,” Blaine says, noting plans to press just 3,000 copies at first of an upcoming single by artist DJ Q. “That’s the main reason we came here rather than to another company, and we had offers from several. Other companies just wanted to get into the genre. Here it was, ‘We don’t know about this music. You guys do.’ ”