We head to 2014 when the business was taking over Techno and an obscure artist came out of Den Haag with the alternative
“Follow your leader, zombie machine!” Who is the leader and what is the zombie machine? Gesloten Cirkel (real name Alex Kislitsyn) keeps those details to himself, but what the obscure artist divulges through the auditory tirade that ensues is that he is no zombie machine and this record won’t acquiesce to any leader.
“Zombie Machine Acid” is the first track from Submit X Gesloten Cirkel’s debut LP, released ten years ago. Coming via Dutch label, Murder Capital it channelled the brooding dystopian sounds of Techno’s origins and, with a smirk, it delivered one of the best outlier records of its time. It sits outside of any canon, incorporating elements of Electro, Disco and even Rock in its extensive sonic disposition on Techno. What we’re left with is a record that sounds like it could have been made in the nineteen eighties, or today.
To understand this record however, we need to understand the history of electronic music in Den Haag, Netherlands and specifically a man called Interr-ference aka I-f (real name Ferenc E. van der Sluijs). It was he, through Murder Capital (Viewlexx subsidiary) that brought Gesloten Cirkel to the fore, but even before he was even aware of the nascent artist, I-f coined the name, Gesloten Cirkel. Taken from a documentary a decade before the LP; “When I sold my soul to the machines” features a younger I-f talking about the insidious pattern of social conformism that he called “a members only club, a closed circle (Gesloten Cirkel)” that people like him were locked out of.
Through I-f’s various efforts as a label owner, internet radio developer and club-music figurehead, he and some like-minded people like Guy Tavares (Bunker records) and Legowelt established a scene out of the Den Haag in the late nineties that was diametrically opposed to the blatant consumerism that was infiltrating the scene. Genres like Trance, which was all about accessibility and conformism, brought this underground music to the masses in sterile versions of its roughly hued ancestors. Legowelt called it “a freaked out scene made out of little niches,” and it resembled something like Detroit in the early nineties, but with a bunch of people truly living on the fringes of society.
Their domain stretched all the way from Disco to Techno with characters like Intergalactic Gary to DJ Overdose and labels like Viewlexx and Bunker establishing a healthy scene in a very punkish and brutalist sonic aesthetic. It was DIY, and based on those original sounds of Techno coming out of Detroit.
By the time that Gesloten Cirkel arrives at the door of I-f however much of that scene has already dissipated – even ten years before the filming of that documentary it had largely dissolved. The steadfast characters behind it like I-f remained however and they continued to be the alternative to whatever was happening in the mainstream and garnering some success too. Their physical records would sell-out and some of those artists became big draws in the clubbing community as DJs.
Submit X and Gesloten Cirkel were the direct descendents of that. As a person Alex Kislitsyn refused to give interviews, but in one rare and seemingly very reluctant interview he had with Juno at the time, he suggests that much of his “taste in sound” was “influenced” by what he was hearing on Intergalactic FM radio (I-f’s Internet radio station that is still going strong today). “Mostly I tune into Murder Capital radio and it plays all sorts of dark and industrial and minimal sounds – especially on Black Mondays.”
According to the Internet, Kislitsyn is of Russian descent, but he seems to have moved around a lot in his life. In a second rare appearance for Ableton’s online magazine (from this year, in fact), he mentions that he was a “teenager in Seoul in the 90s”. It’s likely that he might have been in Den Haag at some point in his life, especially if a family member had some diplomatic duties. Either way, it doesn’t appear to be any physical relationship with a scene that laid the groundwork for his associations with Den Haag, but rather a connection via the internet.
According to the Juno interview, he would spend a lot of time on Intergalactic FMs message boards and it was through that portal where he would investigate the process behind the music being released, but never with the intention of copying anything contemporary. He would “hear some old Paul Johnson or Armani record,” and “these artists would feel really far away and from another planet.” Instead of trying to figure out how they were made, he would use them as inspiration to make my own versions.”
In what was his first release, “Twisted Balloon” it was also Intergalactic FM that played a vital role. “I put that track in a mega mix that was for a contest on IFM. The Murder Capital boss (I-F) liked it and I sent him some versions,” he explained of its origins. That track came out on the self-titled EP, but there was much more to come. In the same week he made “Twisted Balloon” he also made “Stakan,” a track that solidified the idea for an album after he got some positive feedback from a live show in Den Haag (again suggesting he lived in Den Haag for a while).
“Feat. Liette” followed shortly afterwards and “with two tracks kind of done, I said I am going to do an album.” Submit X was the result. It was a raw powered Techno monolith, sounding like nothing else from that time. There were things like high energy Disco influences, creeping through in the running synth bass lines and a monstrous sound quality that sounded like it belonged in an arena rather than a DJ booth.
The double LP was an underground success with Resident Advisor calling it “an absurdly badass techno record“ and the Quietus adding “it blends the downright weird with the irrepressibly fun.” Irresistibly fun, might be a bit of a stretch, but there is a glimmer of some dark dystopian humour throughout. “I like tracks to have character,” he told the Juno’s writer. “Be it a sound or melody or solo,” Submit X is dotted with either a vocal or some melodic device that cheers the soul, before a kick drum or bass-line evokes despair again.
“I think that’s the magical thing, to play with your audience and give them unexpected things that still make sense,” he told Ableton about his production techniques and it’s these unexpected turns in terms of the way it sounds that give this record its character still. A synthesised vocal that has something otherworldly to it, a bass guitar that sounds out of place, or a legacy instrument kick drum that is processed in quite unusual ways; all these things make Gesloten Cirkel and Submit X unique.
It’s one of those records that you can pull out and it never feels anything but contemporary. It does have some relationship to that punkish style of Techno that artists like Helene Hauff and labels like L.I.E.S perpetuated around that same period, but like those other records it never really had the intentions of becoming a trend and was regulated to a curiosity by the business end of Techno.
It never went away however, and the artists making and playing that kind of Techno still prevail, including Gesloten Cirkel. Although he’s always called it a hobby he never stopped making and releasing music and as of last year, he’s also played a few more live shows as an artist. He seems less inclined today to remain an obscurity and has even re-issued Submit X as Gesloten Boekwerk (closed book) with more tracks from that period added in 2021. Even though the title of that record suggests that he wants to close that chapter, his music continues to live in the same sonic landscape, with his latest EP “I Live in the Midwest” conjuring many of the same moods and sounds of Submit X.
There is a sincerity to the new record and Submit X that is explained by the artist’s attitude to making music; “I have to be confident in the package to release it with a price tag.” His output has been considered, and he’s clearly somebody not trying to exploit his own successes. It might have helped this record fall into obscurity, a curiosity for the alternative.
“I am happy if one person almost enjoyed it,“ he told Juno, and it certainly did that and more. It might not go down in history as a classic installed in the history of legendary Techno records, but that’s why it’s so significant. It was an outlier when it was released, right at the cusp of business Techno’s beginnings and it remains an outlier, which sets it apart from everything else. You could listen to it, or you could “follow your leader, zombie machine”