Oh man, I'm about to make some enemies here. Before I proceed, suffice it to say that I am a huge fan of all music and I'm certainly familiar with a ton of it, electronic music, and otherwise. This track, Spastik, is somehow known as the holy grail of techno music with people. I feel that it's wayyyy too overrated .Sure, I can pick this track out of any DJ set-it's easy to hear once and never forget it. To me though, it's the sound of a 909 aping a marching band, then repeated ad nauseum and filtered here and there for 10 minutes. Nothing amazing, nothing deep or soulful about it, and certainly not very innovative(at least to me). How this song(track), became such a classic and a runaway success while other tracks like Psyche/BFC tracks, Goodbye Kiss-Folwkes, any track by Shake, anything off of Red Planet /UR, All for Lee-Sah, Suburban Knight, and everything by Drexciya, etc., got left behind in the dust, or at the very least, not as championed as Spastik, is beyond me. It's actually my least favorite Hawtin track, and I like a lot of things that he did. Does anybody in the universe agree with me here?

Totally with you, both today and when it came out. like you say, he released many a good record on +8, but wow, this was a bore if not mixed. The good news was, you could mix it with almost anything , as it did not key clash.

I totally get where you're coming from and those tracks you mentioned were classics some more widely worshipped than others. I mean the Red Planet stuff was dropped all over the place in the mid 90s. But I think the reason that this tune is held in such esteem is that there wasn't much else like it in 1993, throw in the fact that it was (is) great to mix with and I think that explains it!

This is also meant to be a DJ tool that you can mix with one or two other tracks.

it's roland tr 808 , layered and layered over the track

i concur my man. although this track holds a place in my heart because of the time period it represents (like you said it's very easy to recognize) it just is not that great after about 2 minutes. i appreciate hawtin but i also like a little soul in my dance music, even my acid, and this does not have it. but i do dig the heavy drums just wish he woulda put some rolling bass lines to accompany the thumping beat. give it some organic connection that some techno is seriously lacking. it's why i tend to gravitate toward tech house, tribal, acid house, acid breaks, etc. check out astrocat 'open systems ep' for some techno with soul.

This classic hit of Plastikman has got samples taken from Diss-Cuss ‎– Pissed Apache: http://www.discogs.com/Diss-Cuss-Pissed-Apache/master/66132

No it doesn't. :) Spastik is a 909 and an 808. No samples have been used at all (except for the little vocal snippet in the beginning of the track).

There was a relatively short time in the realm of techno music where tracks were built on drums and drums only. I have a few examples of these rare "strictly rhythm" tracks and this is one of them - "Spastik" that is. And God is it ever cool! Richie Hawtin legitimately can claim some rights to being called the pioneering innovator of many of techno's innovations. In "Spastik" he used a trick that became horribly over-used later in the evolution of techno but he seemed to do it first (that I heard anyway). The trick is the reverent "mid-range sweep". During the recording of the track (or possibly the remix or mix-down?)he slowly manipulates the "sweepable mids" on his mixer which makes the sound thus "tweeked", which was at one time the backbone of techno. It's also something that seems to have largely disappeared from techno music production. But there it was back in '93 - the "tweeked drums" of Richie Hawtin as Plastikman. Not only was that trick employed but Richie's creative use of composition - building in this case - made for a track that had new tricks around each corner of the track. Were you really ready for that POUNDING 808 kick drum that suddenly comes in after four or five minutes? It will make listeners take notice. I have proceeded to scratch the surface of the tangibles that make "Spastik" so great, but lest we forget the intangibles, the stuff I can't explain - why it's just a great track! Richie was genuinely talented at composition and had a great sense of how to logically construct a track from front to back and keep it interesting. I've said things about Richie in other reviews that may have some of you thinking I'm hypocritical but I assure you - I give Richie the highest props as to his genuine talent and my negative words (as some of you would understand them) relate more to listeners of Richie unfairly and unfoundedly deifying him to unjustly Godly levels and he's not that immensely cool. He's just another talented techno musician that made the genre fun to listen to back in the early '90s. This record showcases some of those talents. Check it out.