Ville Virtanen, who goes by the name ‘Darude’, began his musical career producing happy hardcore with tracker software. He would go on to collaborate with Jaakko ‘JS16’ Salovaara, and the first product of their efforts was what is perhaps the most important piece of electronic music of all time.
Sandstorm is an instrumental trance composition, released in Finland 26 October 1999, [1] which has evolved in its reception from a global sensation perpetuated by the nascent internet music distribution scene, to the definitive perennial techno track. Not by far the first techno track, Sandstorm may be considered the culmination of techno music into musical maturity. In its infancy, techno had not yet achieved an essential compositional style, and artists were borrowing from rock, blues, and pop, as they developed techniques for the new tools of music they had chosen to express themselves with. Sandstorm changed that; in it we find something not prefigured in earlier techno - a pure form which laid the foundations for the future of electronic music composition. It has been said that ‘a work of art is not finished when nothing more can be added, but rather, when nothing more can be taken away from it without destroying it entirely’. Sandstorm found this point of balance, and developed into the north star of electronic music, by which all later efforts would find their way.
Micheal Cui of the Steveston-London student newspaper writes, “Most songs in this genre, electronic dance, always have some vocals, but not Sandstorm. Darude knows what he is doing with instruments and he managed to make a lyricless but recognizable song… Overall, Sandstorm could be arguably the best song in electronic dance music.”[2] We are talking about a track which people recognize instantly by the very first note. However, the public reception of this track was not only positive and enduring, but eventful: more than a decade after its release, it was discovered once again by the younger generations when, possibly due to the elemental and timeless quality it possesses, Sandstorm became a capital-m Meme.
The event can clearly be seen rippling across the sphere of consciousness in the google analytics reference, occurring on 22 June 2013 [3]. Why it happened at this time and not another time is impossible to say. The birth of a Meme is perfectly unpredictable, the product of a psychic cacophony amplified by instantaneous communication over the internet and emerging into awareness (see: the spike on 29 March 2015) according to chaotic principles and undercurrents beyond the ken of the human mind. In brief, whenever someone asks, ‘what song is that’, you say ‘Sandstorm’. That sounds dumb, and it is, but you might as well try to describe the Mona Lisa to someone as explain a Meme to them. We will refrain from the metaphysics of ‘a thing whose name is the name of all things’, and simply point out that corollary search terms were for the sheet music and the piano versions of Sandstorm. We can infer thusly that people recognized the significance of this track just as much a decade after its release as they did upon its arrival. And not only its significance, but that on the merit of its notes.
It’s safe to say that there are detractors by default, especially for music of the electronic persuasion. Sandstorm is an exception to this only in that there have been few vocal detractors, who seem to perceive a warmer reception for their cynical dismissal than actually exists. Gawker, always a respectable source of reason and rationality (sarcasm) published an article by an Andy Cush, on 12 September 2014 [4]. Describing it as ‘goofy’ and ‘blunt’ and referring to techno as ‘ridiculous, overhyped’, he states that “in its garishness, it provides a reassuring contrast: next to Darude's dated production, a sugary megahit like Aviici's "Levels" sounds tasteful, almost austere.” Let it be known that initial charting of Sandstorm as not hitting the ‘Hot 100’ is disingenuous considering it was released in Finland, and was in the top 10 in over ten countries in Europe. The unfortunate critic of this unfortunate review does not, apparently, discover the answer to his question, ‘why do you people like sandstorm so much?’. Andy Cush now spends his time on twitter, discussing current problems that the community of people sexually attracted to cartoon animals are having with neo-Nazism in their ranks.
Sandstorm is the jediel of techno, the paragon; one might better view it as a formula rather than a mere track [5]. In the eighteen years that have passed since its release, the respect and interest in this precious musical revelation has only grown, and the rave still goes bonkers when they hear ‘that’ high sustained tone fading in. That’s impressive, for a genre not even forty years old. What is more important, is that in comparing the musical information of Sandstorm to the electronic music that followed, you might not find a single track which did not follow the rules which Sandstorm burned into the collective unconscious. It is a musical work of that rarest sort which can only appreciate with time.
[1]
https://web.archive.org/web/20010306183715/http://www.findance.com/english/darude/index.html[2]
https://slsspress.wordpress.com/sep-oct-2014/song-review-darude-sandstorm/[3]
https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=sandstorm%20darude[4]
http://gawker.com/how-darudes-sandstorm-enveloped-the-web-1648636266[5]
https://musescore.com/user/318756/scores/286911
