The story of The Advent traces just about every touchstone of European techno. Cisco Ferreira, the main driver of the group, was originally from Portugal’s small archipelago of Madeira off the coast of Africa. After finishing high school, he joined London’s Jack Trax label, where he cut his teeth as a studio engineer on sessions for Chicago house legends Marshall Jefferson, Adonis and Larry Heard. In the early 1990s, Ferreira relocated to Belgium’s R&S Records, where he co-wrote much of CJ Bolland‘s acclaimed album The 4th Sign, including classics ‘Camargue’ and ‘Mantra.’
It was back in London where Ferreira would meet Colin McBean, a talented DJ with a mean record collection. The pair teamed up with Keith Franklin of Bang the Party and formed the KCC collective, launching the infamous Confusion parties which spewed house and techno through a massive reggae sound system. McBean brought key ingredients to The Advent’s high-tech swagger. He was West Indian descent and steeped in island soul. He also had a sixth sense for swing and helped focus their partnership on what he called “hard funk.” Today, he is better known as Mr. G.
While Ferreira was the studio wiz, McBean was the “hard funk” tastemaker. He brought a DJ sensibility that he picked up as a kid in Derby going to “shebeens,” underground Jamaican sound system parties, heavy on the reggae and the dub: “Music is like a Picasso; less is more. If you’ve got eight amazing sounds, it can’t be bettered. Also, I’m a Reggae man. When I listen to old dub, from the fifties and sixties, just six channels on a crappy mixer, and I hear the weight and sound, I was convinced that was always going to be my way,” he told the journalist John Thorp. “That’s the way I work in the studio … Eventually I end up with a sound and a set where every single sound counts.” Which is to say space is just as important as striation.*
“We’re street people. We like it funky and swinging,” Ferreira told Generator magazine’s Oliver Swanton in late 1995, just before they went into production on New Beginnings. “It’s in our blood,” McBean echoed. “He's Latino and I’m a Black man, so the swing is inborn!” So as not to let the point fade amid the conversation, Ferreira hit it one more time as key to their identity. “Seriously though,” he added, “at the core of every track, no matter how fast or hard, there should always be a nice swing and a groove that really rocks you.” And by “swing” they meant the drifting and rocking across and on and off the beat, or the tug of the beat just so, that elastic space between notes — percussive or melodic — the trance of dance and its visions.
Just two years after their debut double-album Elements of Life, an ambitious effort that took its cue from the angular assaults of early Underground Resistance and Plus 8, they returned with the muscular New Beginnings. The Advent’s update was turbo-charged and anchored by Ferreira’s technical brilliance, giving their sound a tough-as-nails edge over the competition — electro was the flashpoint for their new direction — glimpsed earlier on tracks like ‘Spaceism.’ But now Ferreira and McBean fused tighter arrangements with crackling bruising beats and sneaky sonics. The warped ‘Funkage’ tricked the mind with explosions of bass. Its twisting rhythms tugged with a terse and irresistible riptide. But ‘Stassis’ took the prize — its cavernous drums whipping under rising strings of sine-wave spiritualism. And the delayed end of ‘Stassis (Part II)’ still remains one of the most brilliant goodbyes of any electronic album. To their heroes across the Atlantic, from Jeff Mills to Drexciya, it was indeed a welcome salute.
Electro — going back to Afrika Bambaata and Cybotron — was the crossroads, or endless continent, more accurately, between the breakbeat and the metronome, the tension and release of the machine as first envisioned by Kraftwerk. The Advent were resolutely techno, greatly inspired by Mills and Underground Resistance, but like their heroes, they were equally moved by the roots and routes of hip hop, jazz and rock ‘n’ roll by way of funk and soul. Electro-techno then was the zone that Ferreira and McBean explored and mastered, as can be heard on ‘Call God’ and ‘City Limits,’ Elements of Life standouts that loosened up the potentials of New Beginnings. Critically, those beginnings included dub reggae too and Latin freestyle — the movements that informed their youth and childhoods: bass and beats galore.
“My first ever ‘main’ go to music was electro music, or Latin freestyle and their amazing way of the tape cut and edit,” Ferreira explained to Fifteen Questions. “This form of cutting music, I was obsessed with, and it led to my first ever productions being in this style of music.” And while The Advent’s style was highly technical in nature, harkening back to the edits and cuts of legendary New York freestyle engineers Omar Santana and Jose “Animal” Diaz, Ferreira also believed that technological precision had to be balanced with the “swing” of the human.**
And so — The Advent also stunned with a host of four-to-the-floor stompers. ‘C. Control’ was a fever of technoid psychedelia, its temperature climbing the complex architectures of an invisible city. ‘House Seed’ banged to a relentless groove, its bass line so hulking it belonged in a carrier-class shipyard. The critic Tim Barr described tracks like ‘Nervous Energies’ and ‘Stassis (Part II)’ as a “drag-race through distant galaxies.” The same could also be said for the album’s opener, ‘Armageden,’ which accelerated along the outer rings of Saturn, its crunching beats torquing with a syncopative G-force, slipstreaming and overtaking the competition.
Adhering to a more tech-centric palette and highly syncopated rhythms, tracks like the half-time tripper ‘Runners’ and the brooding high-hat prowler ‘Pro II’ throbbed in an endless space of the mind-body connection, unlocking mysteries by the second. The exhilarating ‘Testing’ pulls up alongside everyday perceptions with flashes on the periphery, little galaxies and comets flickering on the window glass of an interstellar spaceship, engines banging to a jockey whip, spinning off into infinity as ‘Standers’ wobbles to alien signals, hypnotizing neural networks into a recon sweep of distant moons. And ‘Insight’ buzzes to the space invasion of insectoid hivers, recolonizing Planet Earth before ‘Stassis (Part II)’ bumps to a revolutionary humanoid consciousness with its controls set for the eternal quantum escape.
The sci-fi funk themes on New Beginnings were intentional and effective. This was music fit for a space armada, its far-out time traps creaking open wormholes, while charting the hidden order of the universe. The album’s neo-gothic artwork by graffiti illustrator Jason McFee perfectly matched the superstitious vibe, with its sly traces of H.R. Giger’s mystical bio-mechanical aesthetic, depicting Ferreira and McBean waking to cosmic discovery, uncovering new dimensions in a long hibernating humanity. Decades on, from start to finish, New Beginnings remains timeless.
“Machines and mistakes are what make the magic happen,” noted Ferreira, drawing a line from The Advent’s sci-fi futurism to their highly personal and authentic style. “A turn of a switch can make or break the session or vibe ... stumbling upon unknown sounds and weird sequences that you never tried, then you usually hit the spot ... human touch is important to get the most out of any machine — we are the programmers. They serve us and our needs, not the other way round.”
That fearless devotion to the future would inspire The Advent’s next moves. Dropped from a dying Internal Records, they didn’t miss a beat — releasing a steady stream of vinyl E.P.’s on their own Kombination Research label. The uncompromising ‘Program Da Futur’ belongs to this intense run, its metallic riff ricocheting with a killer shadow Doppler effect — marking an innovative peak in modern electro techno. Other trippy electro gems included ‘Future City,’ ‘Factors,’ ‘Work Dat’ and ‘Digitize You’; and their heady remixes of New Order‘s ‘Everything’s Gone Green’ also demanded attention. And a compilation, Kombination Phunk, an expert selection of like-minded artists including tracks and re-edits by The Advent, remains a benchmark of the genre.
Renowned for their banging live shows, Ferreira and McBean also set dance floors ablaze throughout Europe in the 1990s. But in the new millennium, tired of touring, McBean decided to split off and pursue a quieter solo career, releasing the solid Still Here as Mr. G in 2010 — he would cast more tech-house magic with 2012’s excellent State of Flux, and the dynamic Personal Momentz and A Good Place…? Ferreira would also consistently knock out quality, including fantastic albums like Light Years Away and Life Cycles, both modern electro classics; and romping house as G-Flame.***
“Everybody has a reason and a purpose to do what they aspire to, be it art or not art, spoken word, etc, etc. Since an early age, music was always in my path and always a dream to make it full time,” Ferreira reasoned years later. “To finally do this as my main occupation has been years of hard work. With art you need time to develop your craft; it can be used as a powerful tool if done right, especially in today’s world, where musicians are just as important and powerful as leaders of the world.”
“It’s about hunger,” McBean told Mixmag’s Stephen Worthy in 2020. “I’m a digger. Every Thursday I go to London to buy records, sneakers, art, clothes. At 58, I’m the oldest swinger in town at a club. But I don’t ever want to be like those people above me who are stars, but aren’t at their best. I want to be the guy who’s still a firework … On it. Tight. Dancing, doing, destroying. And that takes work. I have that hunger more than ever.” McBean cried when he left Ferreira, but he has thrived.
Though apart, the two remained friends — McBean was the best man at Ferreira’s wedding — but the dramatic power of their multiracial partnership, best heard on New Beginnings, is now absent. Even so, Ferreira carries on The Advent name at his Akoma Workx studio and continues to ply his craft with prolific vigor. Living again in Portugal, his house by the sea and raising a family, Europe’s hard funk maestro was still hurtling wicked bolts of techno magic, his meteors flashing across the horizon. The techno faithful watching, and London calling, they awaited his return.
Track Listing:
1. Armageden
2. Runners
3. Funkage
4. Testing
5. House Seed
6. Pro II
7. Stassis
8. Nervous Energies
9. Standers
10. C. Control
11. Insight
12. Stassis (Part II)
*The importance of the West Indian experience and its immigrant impact on British culture cannot be overstated. Known as the “Windrush” generation, the most significant wave came after World War II as the British Empire receded.
Previous Afro-Carribean immigrants came to England before the 1900s, but it was the Windrush generation that shifted English society in a more multicultural direction, along with Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan and Chinese immigrants. Musically, the Windrush wave brought reggae and dub into British cities and towns.
Of course Bob Marley and other early Reggae stars like Peter Tosh had a major influence on British popular music directly from Jamaica. But it was in the immigrant enclaves and then semi-integrations (many of them troubled by racism and pushback against immigrants), that this more soulful and polyrhythmic instinct took hold, eventually influencing everything from British house and techno to jungle and dubstep, with breakbeat and drum ‘n’ bass in between.
For non-Brits, it’s harder to fully appreciate the criticality of this cultural synthesis. But it is of course everywhere you look and listen. There is the UK reggae of Birmingham for example with UB40 and Steel Pulse. There is Ashley Beedle, Grooverider, Fabio, Goldie, 4 Hero, Dillinja, Moody Boyz, Shut Up & Dance, Mad Professor, Jah Shaka, Shara Nelson, Billy Ocean, Culture Club’s Mikey Craig, and The Real Thing.
There is of course the famed Bristol scene, with its trip hop and drum ‘n’ bass roots anchored in reggae and dub as well as hip hop, house, and funk — including Tricky, Roni Size, Krust, Massive Attack’s Daddy G and Mushroom. Then further north was Manchester’s A Guy Called Gerald and Yargo; Sheffield’s Robert Gordon; Leeds’ Neville Staple, Nightmares On Wax, and Martin Williams of LFO fame.
London’s On-U Sound, African Head Charge, Aswad, Maxi Priest, LTJ Bukem, the Thompson Twins’ Joe Leeway and others speak to the multicultural universe of London itself. For example, On-U Sound had a major influence on the likes of Underworld and Leftfield. And even as far north as Scotland, African descent innovators like Keith Robinson formed the Desert Storm acid house group — important purveyors and groundbreakers of techno across Europe.
**Latin freestyle is a less well known genre of electronic music given the bigger shadow of electro and hip hop, but as a branch of the same milieu and given its own set of innovations — as Ferreira points out in terms of its edit style — its importance is still considerable. Hispanic Americans and Italian Americans were also the main proponents of the genre, though not solely.
Originating in New York and then spreading to Philadelphia and Miami, it was a subcultural reaction to Afrika Bambaata & the Soul Sonic Force’s ‘Planet Rock,’ which in turn sampled Kraftwerk. In New York, Shannon’s ‘Let the Music Play,’ produced by Chris Barbosa and Mark Leggitt, used a TR-808 and the TB-303, along with reverb and clever drum programming, to move music into a new “dance pop” era following the backlash against disco. In the studio, engineers and editors, and hence remixers like Omar Santana and Jose “Animal” Diaz also transmuted similar sounds in new ways, their rhythmic edits emphasizing a syncopated and percussive style that brought in subtle Latin influences to hip hop, electro and pop records.
Freestyle also influenced the likes of Todd Terry, Man Parrish and the production team of Tommy Musto and Frankie Bones, who worked with freestyle artists early on and in turn produced intense rhythm and breaks edits that would make their way to the UK, in turn influencing DJs like Carl Cox, Grooverider and Fabio. In Miami, there was also of course the emergence of the Miami Bass sound, much of it driven early on by pioneers like the Black electro team, Free Style.
One other critical cross-point of these electronic and rhythmic chain reactions was Jellybean Benitez, who started his DJ residency at the famed Funhouse in New York City. It was there that he played electro and freestyle heavily, helping break ‘Planet Rock’ and ‘Let the Music Play.’ The Funhouse is also where younger cohorts like Santana and Bones first took their lead. Obviously, Ferreira was paying attention.
***For fans of The Advent, it can help to understand why two of your favorite artists decide to part ways. While it is my understanding that both Ferreira and McBean are still pals, they did finally come to a fork in the road around 2000. Ultimately, Ferreira felt like he was doing most of the studio work, putting in long, intensely focused hours. And McBean also felt constrained, because he didn’t have the full studio exposure that Ferreira had, and that he desired to grow as an artist. In 2016, he described it to Skiddle’s Thorp this way:
“Well, Cisco and I had our differences. He was more the studio man, where as I’d bring the samples and the ideas. But towards the end, I wanted something more. And I had to take something to get started. So I thought, yeah, I’ve worked on the MPC, and then spent two years locked away in a box learning the machine. And I still probably don’t use it like anyone else in the world.”
For his part, Ferreira described it similarly, in that their parting was mutual and essentially natural, though there is obviously a difference between the McBean era of The Advent and the post McBean era. Both are excellent solo artists, but there was certainly a great mixture of influences and instincts as The Advent duo. Ferreira:
“It was complicated in the end as it always is but also frustrating from my side, as I was putting in all the studio work. I guess it just felt like our time was coming to an end. I had other ideas I wanted to try out and other artists I wanted to collab with. So, I decided to carry on the Advent solo but helped him set up his label and taught him some tricks on the Akai MPC2000 to get that G Sound.”