Stakker Humanoid

The project behind the track started out with Stakker, a collaborative project by the video artists Mark McClean and Colin Scott. They needed music to support their video and contacted Brian Dougans. They sent a demo video tape containing graphics and some music to Morgan Khan who invited Dougans, Scott and McClean to work with Westside Records Producer and Engineer John Laker, who had put together Khan's Ealing recording studio based at the label. Khan played the soundtracks in a meeting with Laker, who had been looking for an Acid House project that would put Westside Records at the centre of the dance floor in newly launched, and packed clubs like Shoom and Enter the Dragon.

The session was unusual but abundantly creative. Captured on sequencers and tape the guys assembled a collage of beats and samples among which was the now infamous sample "Humanoid", taken from the video game Berzerk. Other voice samples were recorded live, including McClean's "Welded Wing" which achieved session infamy, but sadly didn't make it to the final arrangement. Dougans was not particularly productive in those first sessions, possibly due to his excessively heavy use of hashish at the time.

After a couple of days there weren't any discernable compositions but instead a significant palet of sound colour. Over the coming weeks John Laker painstakingky assembled, arranged and mixed the ultimate version. The Humanid break, followed by the 'laser shots' was initially spliced togetger on 1/4" tape! Once in place, the rest of the track built itself around it. Extraordinarily for a dance track, there was no bassline. Dougans was called to the keyboard and eventually the track's opening bassline appeared. Unfortunately he was unable to play the line in key against the track's '303' top-line. Instead of fixing the issue, Laker took the decision to drop the bassline after the first 'Humanoid' break. A bold shout that yielded the first club track ever to exist, without a bassline beyond the intro!

Despite his modest input Dougans tragically more than strategically, took the decision to deny McClean and Scott any recognition for their significant creative input. Signing a sole publishing deal with Pisces Music, Dougans took sole writing credit, even ousting Laker's contribution to the entire arrangement.

Dougans even went as far as altering the name from 'Stakker', to 'Stakker Humanoid' to close a final door on his creative partners, before the track was put out through Morgan Khan's label Westside Records

The track was a hit not just in influential clubs like Shoom and Enter the Dragon in London, but was championed by mainstream stalwarts like radio DJ Bruno Brookes (famously playing it twice in a row on his Radio One drive time show) and DJ/producer Pete Waterman. It went on to reach number 17 in the UK charts in November 1988, and spent 4 weeks at number 1 on the UK Indy Chart. Stakker Humanoid appeared on Top of the Pops on 1 December 1988.[2] A rare cross-over that still retains its credibility, some 35 years later.

Dougans remained involved with Westside releasing an album and a few singles, but with the project's creative fire extinguished, the follow-ups were below par.

Although Dougans eventually went on to reunite with former writing partner, Gas Cobain, as FSOL, contrary to his later claims, Cobain had no involvement at all in the early successes of Humanoid, and hadn't even set foot in Westside's Studio prior to the success of 'Stakker Humanoid'.

In 2011, Noel Gallagher said of the track:

"What a fucking tune 'Stakker Humanoid' is! I didn't realise it was them (Future Sound of London) until we were about halfway through recording. Someone mentioned that track halfway through recording [his collaborative album with Amorphous Androgynous] and I was like, 'You're fucking joking … shut up … get the fuck out of here!' I had to stop and give them a hug. I used to love that tune!"[1]

The soundtrack for the 1989 release Eurotechno (originally written by Dougans) was remixed and overdubbed with new sections added by Colin Scott and Simon Monday in the digital studio that Scott and McClean had set up in the Goldcrest building in Great Pultney Street in Soho. This soundtrack is on the Eurotechno video and on the CD later released by Rephlex Records.

• Composed by Brian Dougans, Mark McClean, John Laker
• Produced, arranged and mixed by John Laker
• Additional production and mix by Brian Dougans
• Engineered by John Laker
• Mastered and Cut by Noel Summerville Digitally mastered by Richard Dowling
• Uses vocal samples from the videogame 'Berzerk'.

• Footage at the Hitman and Her
• 2001 at AllMusic