An artist whose career in techno touched on the early roots of trance has passed away before his time. Pascal F.E.O.S. (real name Pascalis Dardoufas) has died of stomach cancer according to FAZEmag. He was 52 years old.
Dardoufas had reportedly fought a long and difficult battle with cancer for some time. His career in electronic music originated in the Italo disco, EBM and hi-NRG scenes of ’80s Frankfurt and established him as a core personality in techno as well as the trance sound it birthed. Notably, he was part of the duo Resistance D, whose early trance releases found a home on Sven Väth‘s Harthouse imprint.
Remembering Pascal F.E.O.S.
In the early to mid-’90s, a more melodic style of electronic music began to emerge from the techno scene of Frankfurt. As has been detailed in the documentary We Call It Techno!, “trance” initially described a mood curated by disc jockeys such as DJ Dag and Forsten Tenslau at nightclubs like Dorian Gray. Under their Resistance D pseudonym, Dardoufas and Maik Maurice Diehl were among the producers to give the genre a more distinctive shape – perhaps most memorably with the Human EP via Harthouse.
As with many dance music innovators, Dardoufas’ greaterbody of work cannot be confined to a single style. He released trip-hop as part of the group Aural Float and largely techno as Pascal F.E.O.S.
“I am stunned and infinitely sad when I heard that you passed away the other night,” wrote Sven Väth in an impassioned Instagram post. “I am thankful that I spent so many wonderful years with you. We experienced the 1990s very intensively together. You have impressed Frankfurt and the rest of the world with your techno-trance productions.”
“Even though we haven’t been in touch much over the past ten years, Pascal was always present as a cornerstone in our techno scene,” wrote Chris Liebing in his own post. “He helped form, what was later known as the ‘Sound of Frankfurt.’ Our scene would not be where it is today, without his pioneering work.”
Pascal F.E.O.S. reportedly had five solo albums and over 200 releases in addition to hundreds of remixes.
