Roger Sanchez speaks Egotrip and US Bleep
Scratch any “British” form of music and 100 different different international influences will seep out.
Bleep techno may have been one of the first strains of dance music to emerge from the UK that was genuinely different from its American forefathers, skewering Detroit techno’s astral sweep with corpulent sub bass. But its influences were fantastically global, mixing up Detroit techno, Chicago house, Miami Bass, Jamaican dub, hip hop and more with a Northern English steel that chilled the skin as it moved the body.
Perhaps lesser known, though, is the fact that after finding success in the UK, Bleep drifted back over the Atlantic to influence producers in the US - and especially New York.
Matt Anniss, the author of Bleep bible Join The Future, calls Bleep “a good example of the transatlantic techno conversation”. “It made more sense in NYC as there was already a bit of sound-system culture (hip-hop, plus labels like Wackies, and of course the dubby Levan style proto-house from earlier in the 80s),” he explains.
“Lots of the UK records never made it over [to the US], but the ones with good distro did - i.e. you didn’t see Chill releases but you did see Warp ones, Unique 3 when they were on Virgin etc.”
Examples of US Bleep, Anniss says, include the work of brothers Adam X and Frankie Bones, who “were VERY Bleep influenced and Adam told me that Warp records were very popular and available”. “There are a few early Strictly Rhythm releases that in some way nod to it, plus Bobby Konders’ brand of deep house was very reggae sound-system influenced and has some crossover too,” Anniss adds.
In Detroit, Anniss says that some of the earliest UR records featured sounds that “are very Bleep-esque (and more sub than is usually heard on Motor City techno)”. In Join The Future, he specifically names two UR tracks from the Sonic EP - Orbit and predator - as “Motor City translations of bleep and bass”.
“Lots [of people] from San Francisco have told me that the [Bleep] records were played there loads.” Anniss explains. “Adam X claims that he was the first person to play LFO there as his brother brought back TPs from the UK and he nicked them so he could play them!”
It’s a fascinating world of crossover. But I want to concentrate on just one American Bleep record: Dreamworld by Egotrip, a song I discovered on the excellent Boccaccio Life 1987-1993 compilation (the World of Dreams mix, to be exact).
With high-end bleeps meeting rampant sub bass and general air of metallic chill, I assumed the song to be the work of some Northern English producer in the early 1990s. It was a surprise, then, to find out the song was not just the work of an American but of New York DJ and producer Roger Sanchez, who is known for his bright house productions and huge UK hit Another Chance.
The earliest record I thought I knew by Roger Sanchez was Underground Solution’s Luv Dancin’, which is a brilliant deep house number, combining perfectly skipping beats and flute lilt. It’s more underground and Bleep-like than, say, Another Chance is. But the song still sounds a million miles away from the industrial grit and steely terror of LFO, Nightmares on Wax et al.
Dreamworld was actually Sanchez’s first record and it became a big hit in British clubs where Bleep was making its bow. One commenter on Discogs remembers Grooverider playing Dreamworld at Coventry rave centre the Eclipse in 1990, while another recalls Evil Eddie Richards dropping it at Amnesia House in 1990.
Perhaps most pertinently, jolyon on Discogs says that the World of Dreams mix of Dreamworld “was a big record at Leeds Warehouse around the same time as LFO and the early Warp records - fitted in alongside all that bleep stuff”.
There would only be one Egotrip record, featuring four versions of Dreamworld, which was released by Quark sub-label Outer Limits in 1990, although Quark itself would release two new versions of the song (this time credited to Egotrip feat. Roger S) in 1991.
As Egotrip Sanchez remixed a small number of songs, including Luv Dancin’, Deborah Blando’s Boy (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue) and Lose Control by The Rhythm Factor, another Sanchez nom de plume. All of these are excellent - although the latter track is probably the only one I would say that steers close to Bleep.
As Anniss points out in his book, Sanchez also released a number of Bleep adjacent tracks as DV8, with Thoughts of Tomorrow, from DV8’s 1990 Freedom 12”, “one of the most authentic American takes on Warp style bleep and bass, while The Future from 1991’s The Ego Trip EP does a great job in doffing a cap to the bleep-influenced dub/deep house fusions of NYC contemporary Bobby Konders”.
By chance, I interviewed Roger Sanchez in January for an entirely different article I am working on. But I took the opportunity to ask him about Egotrip and the influence of Bleep.
He seemed happy to be asked. “That was the very first release that I ever did and I did it on my own imprint that was done through Quark Records,” he said, down the Zoom line. Sanchez, incidentally, has an immaculate smile. “The name of the label was Outer Limits Records and Egotrip was the name of a party series that I was doing in New York at the time,” he continued. “I had done this track and was shopping it around to different labels because I was also a Billboard-reporting DJ going around picking up records from different labels.
“Curtis Urbina [who ran Quark] was very receptive. He said, ‘Okay, bring me something.’ So I played him a track. He listened to it and said, ‘Well, the track itself is okay, but there's this section in the middle that I think could be really cool. Why don't you take that and expand on it?’ So I took that direction, went back and created an entire track around this break that I had done and Dreamworld came out of it.”
I asked him if LFO had been an influence. “I was playing things like LFO and a lot of the Warp stuff but that wasn't what was on my mind when I made that track,” he said. “Interestingly enough, I think it was more Mr. Fingers and the early deep Chicago sound. Fingers Inc. and Larry Heard were definitely big influences on that track.”
He was, however, aware of the impact that Dreamworld had “in the northern part of the UK, especially in Scotland”. “Of all things, it became part of the techno and rave underground, which was the furthest thing from my mind when I made the track,” Sanchez said. “But music does what it does. Like I said, we're vessels [this was something we had been talking about before]; it needed to come through me and that's what it became there. I may revisit that track at some point in time. I just have to think about how I want to do it.”
“You basically found the beginning of my production career,” Sanchez added before he rang off. “That literally is the inception of everything that I am now; it started from there.”
Some listening
Zora Jones’ comeback single, Beef, probably isn’t about the brilliant Netflix series with which it shares a name. And yet it could be, such is the drama, poise and sense of outrage contained within its very well-tended grooves. The vocal cut-up, alone - all teasing and funky, just like Todd Edwards demands - has installed Beef into the cranium and I suspect it won’t leave. Add this to a beat that hits like diamond mines and synths that seem to waver in the bright sunlight and you have a banger indeed.
billy woods - Funny Games (feat. Fatboi Sharif)
Picture Portishead covering the James Bond theme tune in the Twin Peaks Black Lodge; add two of the hottest underground MCs in the game; marinate and - voilà - you have Funny Games, a masterpiece of Gothic scene setting and rap dramatics that I can - and have - listen to over and over again.
Underground Resistance - When Angels Speak (feat. Saul Williams)
It wasn’t so long ago on this Substack that I pondered how on hell electronic musicians could cover / remix / adapt the work of Sun Ra. Underground Resistance and Saul Williams - which, come on, is exactly the combination you want to do a Sun Ra cover - provide an excellent answer to that conundrum here, with Williams intoning one of Ra’s poems over UR’s moody cosmic techno, the production slipping around like nitroglycerin oil, before some free jazz-ing saxophones come in right at the last minute.
Simo Cell & Abdullah Miniawy - Living Emojis
Scrape back the bathroom crud of history back to 2002 when Wayne Wonder released No Letting Go and suddenly the Diwali rhythm was the hottest beat on the planet, in all its complex, yet perfectly satisfying, clapped glory.
Living Emojis, the first single from Dying is the Internet, the intriguingly named new album from Simo Cell & Abdullah Miniawy, is kind of Diwali coded, being driven along by a popping, stomping clapping beat. But to this the duo add tortured electronic squeals, the odd burst of synthetic strings and Miniawy’s heavenly voice, which seems to sing of an infinite sadness.
Things I’ve done
Our guest on the Line Noise podcast this week is Maara-Louisa Dunbar aka Maara, a Montreal producer and DJ whose brilliant new album Ultra Villain was released by NAFF last week. We talked about being a villain, narrative albums, misunderstanding, what the hell “home” means, Madonna, trip hop and more, in a very open-hearted interview.
I spoke to Palestinian singer songwriter Zeyne at the recent ActxPalestine concert in Barcelona, after her absolutely fantastic live song. And you can watch that here.
The playlists
It’s 2026 and that means A NEW PLAYLIST, cataloguing the best new music of this year: you can follow that on Apple Music here: The newest and bestest 2026.
And on Spotify here: the newest and bestest 2026.
The old classics remain in place, too:
Apple Music: The newest and the bestest
Spotify: The newest and the bestest.
Paid subscribers get bonus podcasts, you know.
