Creator Portrait · Mickey Nox
Mickey Nox and Green Fetish Records: Hard Industrial Techno from Melbourne
When the clubs reopened after the lockdowns, techno got faster, harder and more distorted. For a lot of people that was a new sound. For Mickey Nox it was just another Tuesday.
The Melbourne producer, DJ and label boss made hard, industrial techno his agenda back in 2013, when he founded Green Fetish Records. By the end of 2019 the label had more than 50 releases out, vinyl included, plus a European tour that went all the way to Tresor New Faces in Berlin.
We have been working with Green Fetish since 2023, and in that time a lot of kicks from Melbourne have gone through our monitors. Time for the first creator portrait on the SINEE blog: who Mickey Nox is, how his label came about and why nothing he does sounds accidental.
Who is Mickey Nox?
According to his RA biography, Mickey Nox has been active in Melbourne since late 2007, with his first listed gigs dating from early 2009. His roots are not in polished clubs but in warehouse parties, on festival stages and at illegal raves he threw himself. In an interview with Under The Radar he describes those parties, with some understatement, as "quite infamous".
The spark came from a Paul Woolford track that, in his own words, simply blew him away at 17. Early on he shared the decks in Melbourne with international names, such as Jonas Kopp in 2014 and Christian Wünsch in 2015. That same year he headlined DV1 Club in Lyon.
Live, Mickey is a hardware person. In 2019 his setup ran an Analog Rytm through the HEAT, plus modular, along with an openly admitted weakness for the MS-20. Today he also passes on what he has learned from that work, in his own masterclasses on kick drums, distortion and referencing.
Green Fetish Records: Hard Techno Since 2013
Green Fetish Records launched in September 2013. Before that, Mickey had run a label for another Melbourne club, which came to an end when the club closed. After that, as he puts it in the interview, he wanted one thing above all: "total control of art, music and direction".
The name is a nod to two influences: "Green" from Green Velvet, "Fetish" from Paul Woolford's track of the same name. The label describes itself on Bandcamp as "dark, different & odd forms of music for real music lovers". Dark, different, odd. Fair enough.
A year after launch, in October 2014, the label celebrated its first birthday at Rubix Warehouse in Melbourne. In 2015 and 2016 it ran its own label nights, such as "12 Hours Of Horsepower" at the Hotel Railway. 2015 also brought the first vinyl: Mickey's The Mule EP, pressed on green wax, and since 2017 the label has had its own vinyl series, GFRV. That includes the compilation series "Fucking Hammers", whose three books came out on vinyl between 2020 and 2022. The title leaves little room for interpretation.
The artist roster was international from early on. Oliver Rosemann released his Skunk EP on the label in 2014, Dave Tarrida followed in 2016, and later came names like Lado, Kode, Kracht as well as Patrick DSP and Diarmaid O'Meara. Since 2020 the roster has included Claas Herrmann, Stromtod, O.B.I. and Etrigan, among others. According to its own website the label now counts more than 100 releases, with the catalogue at GFR109. And the artist with the most entries? The boss himself.
Hard Before It Was Cool: The Road Before 2020
The core claim of this portrait can be backed up with numbers. Discogs lists 51 Green Fetish releases up to the end of 2019, and in May 2019 Mickey himself spoke of more than 50. His first listed track, "Wedge", came out in October 2013 and is filed there under hard techno and hardcore. Industrial shows up as a style from 2015 onwards.
In 2018 and 2019 his tracks appeared on South London Analogue Material, RIOT Radio Records, Obscuur, Pitch Dark and PLS.UK. In the summer of 2019 he toured Europe: BASIS in Utrecht, Corsica Studios in London, Moog in Barcelona and, on 7 August, Tresor New Faces at Globus, part of the Tresor complex in Berlin. That same year Under The Radar called him "a formidable force in Melbourne's techno scene".
For comparison: Mixmag places the big shift towards harder techno in the period after clubs reopened in summer 2021, with the first tempo increases from late 2019. By then, Green Fetish had already been releasing this sound for six years.
To be fair: before 2020, Mickey Nox was an established name in Melbourne with a growing network in the international underground, not a global headliner. His biggest milestone, the release on Perc Trax, only came in July 2020. But that is exactly what makes the story interesting. This is someone who did not react to a trend. He simply kept going until the rest of the scene caught up.
Perc Trax, SLAM, Pure Hate: The Key Releases
A selection of milestones, all documented on Discogs:
- 2013: Wedge (Brooklyn Fire), the first listed release
- 2015: The Mule EP (Green Fetish, green vinyl) and Famous Munks EP (Variance)
- 2017: True Sailing Is Dead (Green Fetish)
- 2018: Addiction Inheritance EP (Obscuur) and PDR016 (Pitch Dark)
- 2019: Mad As A Cut Snake (RIOT Radio Records), MMSVT (PLS.UK) and Let The Wheels Burn (South London Analogue Material)
- 2020: Filtered Metal on the compilation "Forever 2" on Perc Trax, plus the Thats Not A Knife EP on vinyl on SLAM
- 2021: Give Up Your Vows EP (Mindcut)
- 2022: Chrome Horse Diplomat EP (Pure Hate)
- 2024: Hammerhead (RIOT Radio Records)
- 2025: Unknown Certainties EP and Market Recap EP (Green Fetish)
On top of that there are remixes, for Blush Response among others, and contributions to labels such as Warg, Märked and Nulleins. Listen your way through this list and you will quickly notice that the signature has barely been diluted in twelve years.
The Kick as a Signature: What Green Fetish Industrial Techno Sounds Like
Hard techno often gets reduced to a loud kick. At Green Fetish the kick is more like the foundation everything else stands on: metallic percussion, noise, dark atmospheres and synths that have no interest in being nice. The label's own tagline sums it up as "odd, dark & hard techno music". How broadly that is meant shows in the sample packs that have come out of the label. Alongside the kick packs there are Offensive Noise, Sonic Scapes and Cinematic Techno.
Still, the kick is where you recognise Green Fetish fastest. A hard industrial kick is rarely a single sample. It is built in layers: a clean low end, mids with body, a transient that cuts through and a rumble that fills the room. On top of that comes distortion as a creative tool, not a rescue job. These are exactly the topics Mickey takes apart in his masterclasses Kick Drum Deep Dive and How To Use Distortion. If you want to go deeper into rumble, our German-language article Die Anatomie des Techno Rumbles covers it in detail.
New at SINEE: Kick Builder, Techno Muscle, Hard Rave Destruction and The Power of Referencing
Since October 2026 there are five new Green Fetish products in the SINEE shop. Two of them follow exactly the layering principle from the previous section.
- Kick Builder Vol. 1 by RVOLT breaks the kick down into full kick, low cut, mid range, transient and rumble loops. 315 samples in total, plus one-shots from industrial to 909.
- Kick Builder Vol. 2 is Mickey's own follow-up with 378 samples and six loop layers, including kick gallops and vox layer kicks. In the tutorial video he shows how he puts the layers together.
- Techno Muscle Vol. 2 comes from SKODEN in the UK: 646 samples for peak-time techno, from layered kicks to psy bass and rave stabs.
- Hard Rave Destruction Vol. 1 delivers 330 samples and 60 MIDI files for the fast end of the spectrum: drum loops with rolling toms, basslines and melodic loops with the key in the file name.
- The Power of Referencing is Mickey's new masterclass. In 85 minutes he shows how he uses reference tracks for ideas, arrangement and the final mix. Recorded in Ableton Live 11, in English, in SINEE Studio.
Want to have a listen first? We also have free hard techno samples for you.
FAQ: Mickey Nox and Green Fetish Records
Where is Mickey Nox from?
Melbourne, Australia. According to his own biography, he has been active there as a DJ, producer and promoter since late 2007.
When was Green Fetish Records founded?
In September 2013. The name combines Green Velvet and Paul Woolford's track "Fetish".
What is the difference between industrial techno and hard techno?
The lines are blurry, and definitions vary. Roughly speaking, hard techno is the umbrella term for fast techno with distorted kicks. Industrial techno puts more emphasis on metallic percussion, factory textures and a dark overall mood. Green Fetish sits right where the two overlap.
Which labels has Mickey Nox released on?
Besides Green Fetish, on Perc Trax (compilation), South London Analogue Material, Pure Hate, RIOT Radio Records, Obscuur, Pitch Dark and Mindcut, among others.
Which Green Fetish products are available at SINEE?
New are Kick Builder Vol. 1 and 2, Techno Muscle Vol. 2, Hard Rave Destruction Vol. 1 and the masterclass The Power of Referencing. They join earlier packs full of hard techno samples, such as Industrial Hard Techno Vol. 1, Techno Muscle Vol. 1, Hardware Pressure and Kicks To Krack The Safe.
Conclusion
Mickey Nox did not wait for the moment when hard techno was in demand. He founded a label for it in 2013, put out more than 100 releases and played his way from Melbourne warehouses to the Tresor complex. Green Fetish stands for more than loud kicks: a dark, odd, industrial sound with a clear attitude. If you want to produce this sound, you can learn from someone who was making it back when nobody cared.
