Function / Sandwell District

One of tech­no’s true under­ground heroes, Func­tion (Dave Sum­n­er) has been DJing and mak­ing music for over 25 years. He is a found­ing mem­ber of the Sandwell Dis­trict col­lec­tive, Ostgut record­ing artist and own­er of Infrastructure.

Hail­ing from New York, he was seduced by tech­no when Jeff Mills held res­i­den­cy (as well as his own first) at Lime­light in the ear­ly 90s. Pro­duc­ing from the mid-90s onward, he released his first 12“s on Damon Wild’s Synewave and his own Infra­struc­ture imprint. A chance meet­ing in 1996 brought him togeth­er with Reg­is (Karl O’Con­nor). The two worked as Por­tion Reform, releas­ing uncom­pro­mis­ing music on Down­wards, mak­ing him the only non-Birm­ing­ham pro­duc­er to appear on the label. He lat­er moved to Berlin in 2007, still work­ing with Reg­is, and now Silent Ser­vant (Juan Mendez), putting his focus on Sandwell Dis­trict. Since, the label come col­lec­tive, sky­rock­et­ed into cult sta­tus — decen­tral­iz­ing the artist ego, blur­ring the lines between the artist, label and dj; re-arrang­ing the DNA of mod­ern dance music.

Ini­tial­ly releas­ing records under their own iden­ti­ties, as the label’s suc­cess grew, it came to be seen increas­ing­ly as a col­lec­tive enti­ty, releas­ing tracks and albums anony­mous­ly part­ly in revolt against the increas­ing­ly celebri­ty-ori­ent­ed DJ cul­ture of the time, cul­mi­nat­ing in its 2010 col­lec­tive album Feed For­ward. Their sound has been high­ly influ­en­tial across the fol­low­ing gen­er­a­tion of tech­no musi­cians, and has informed a major shift in world tech­no. By the time the label announced its ​“glo­ri­ous death” in 2012 (con­tin­u­ing only as a per­form­ing act) the Amer­i­can Bill­board mag­a­zine would write that ​“Sandwell Dis­tric­t’s influ­ence on under­ground tech­no can hard­ly be overstated.”

fabric 69 - Sandwell District [Function & Regis] (2013) Mix CD