Tech House

Tech house keeps house's four-on-the-floor kick and warm low-end but borrows techno's restraint: fewer chords, fewer vocals, more focus on drum programming and small percussive details. Tempos sit at 124-128 BPM, with a clap on 2 and 4 and intricate hi-hat and shaker patterns filling the off-beats. The bass is usually a punchy, slightly distorted single-note pulse rather than a melodic line. Tracks lean on tightly EQ'd low-end and clean, almost dry production rather than the reverb-heavy palette of deep house. Vocals, when they appear, are typically short sampled phrases used as another percussive element.

Tech house took shape in mid-1990s London, with British DJ Eddie Richards using the term on a mixtape around 1995 to describe the kind of set he was playing — a blend of harder house records and softer techno. The Wiggle parties and the Mr. C-led label End Records were early hubs, alongside Terry Francis and Nathan Coles. The sound spread through Ibiza in the 2000s — particularly the DC10 club and the Circoloco party — and producers like Solomun, Jamie Jones, and Hot Since 82 made it one of the dominant peak-time formats of the 2010s European festival circuit. The Hot Creations label, run by Jamie Jones from Los Angeles, has been a major engine for the current generation.

Notice how dry the production is compared with deep house: not much reverb, very little pad, lots of small percussive sounds in the foreground. The bass is almost always a single note pulsing in 16ths or 8ths rather than a melodic line, so it acts as another drum. Vocal samples are typically very short — a single word or phrase looped — and used to mark structural transitions rather than to carry a hook.

For an early reference, Mr. C, 'Speedfreak' (1996). For modern festival-ready tech house, Jamie Jones, 'My Paradise' (2009) and Solomun's 'Customer Is King' (2008).

Eddie Richards has said he named the style on a mixtape almost casually — he was just describing what kind of DJ set he was playing. He didn't expect 'tech house' to become a label that, twenty years later, would dominate weekly Beatport charts.