Artist description technoir's music is melancholic, dark, melodic and mostly dancefloor oriented. The recipe: mix cold electronic sound elements with emotionally driven harmonies, combine with great female vocals, out comes technoir creating deep and honest songs about desire, failure, lust, and hope. Technoir covers quite a range from industrial to synth pop. No matter whether it is harder dancefloor or a ballad, there are typical elements that you can find in all technoir songs: atmospheric synth pads, always combined with melodies written in minor keys, and electronic percussion. The songs combine atmospheric sounds, strong melodies, with a warm charming voice, which is hard to find in the electro scene.

Music Style Electro-Pop

Musical Influences Depeche Mode, Front 242, Deine Lakaien

Similar Artists Depeche Mode

Artist History The bandname "technoir" came into Steffen´s mind while watching the film "Terminator", in which a club with this name played a role. In the following time he produced the album "Sea Level" in his homestudio. "Sea Level" features dark, almost frigthening hard electro-sounds, but has never been released. Together with Stephan Kalwa from Plastic Noise Experience the very atmospheric instrumental album "Eigenspace" was recorded, also unreleased. Knowing not to create something new with hard electro and dark and distorted male voices, Steffen started looking around for a female singer which he found in Julia Beyer that he learned to know in ´99 on a concert of the band Inside (no longer existing project of Psyche-singer Darrin Huss) were Julia was singing background vocals. With a lot of both musical and live experience made prior to Technoir, Steffen and Julia began developing new songs as a team. The first song they recorded was "Last Tears". Julia had been singing in several bands before joining technoir (e.g. Inside) where she could make use of what she learnt from many years in a professional choir. Steffen is not a newcomer on the scene either: He has been live-keyboarder for electro-heroes Plastic Noise Experience and comes from a real musicians family in which a classical piano education is both obligatory and cherished. Shortly after sending out the first demos, they found a partner in the german label Bloodline. The first releases „Requiem“ (MCD – 27.08.2001) and „Groundlevel“ (CD – 15.10.2001) broke the german alternative charts immediately, also the press showed themselve impressed. This also attracted the attention of bigger companies and so Sony published a very danceable Coverversion of the Killing Joke-Song „Love Like Blood“ under the project name „Blacklight feat. Technoir“ which was released on vinyl and is featured on the current Dream Dance-Compilation 25. In the same year the duo could present themselves on bigger festivals like the Eurorock Indoor and the Wave-Gotik-Treffen. Julia has now also joined the reborn Eternal Afflict as a singer whereas Steffen supports again the Band Plastic Noise Experience at live gigs after a long break. Now the band is giving concerts throughout Europe and is working on new material which shows a harder and darker touch.

Group Members Julia Beyer (vocals, lyrics) / Steffen Gehring (compositions, productions, lyrics, live keys) / Stephan Altengarten (additional live keys)

Instruments No Guitars.

Albums Requiem (MCD, 2001), Groundlevel (CD, 2001)

Location Hamburg/Gelsenkirchen, Hamburg, NRW - Germany

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