Because it's now accepted as undeniable history that Carl, Kevin, Derrick and Juan Atkins somersaulted dance and electronic music beyond disco, electro, Kraftwerk, Eno, Kraut Rock, P-Funk, New Romantic and New Order into something new. At the time they called it techno.
Derrick May once described techno as "just like Detroit, a complete mistake. It's like George Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator."
Detroit is generally considered as the place of birth of techno.
In the world of electronic dance music, "Detroit" is a word that carries as much aesthetic baggage as "Memphis" does to the genre of soul music, or "Chicago" to the blues. Simply put, Detroit equals techno, and those who choose to delve into that field labor in the shadow of Detroit techno pioneers such as Derrick May and Juan Atkins, as well as second-generation producers like Carl Craig, Stacey Pullen, Jeff Mils, and the Underground Resistance crew. All of which tends to obscure the work of Detroit's deep-house producers; isn't house from Chicago? Still a host of house talent is diligently puttering away in their Motor City studios: Theo Parrish, Moodymann, Terrence Parker, to name just a few. --By Brett Sokol
DJ Rolando aka The Aztec Mystic, grown up in the Mexican area of south-west Detroit, is one of the flag-bearers of the Underground Resistance crew, alongside founders ‘Mad’ Mike Banks’ and Jeff Mills. A collective of revolutionary techno-producers who react against all form of commercialisation. Last year he reached a peak with the whole ‘Knights of the Jaguar’-controversy. A rip-off version of this Rolando classic was released illegally by Sony Germany and than sold on to BMG. But this could not defy the strength of the Detroit collective and its underground-philosophy, built upon four key words: struggle, resistance, hope and anger. In search of their true descent the UR-producers fall back on the spiritual African/Indian/South-American roots, not avoiding regular deflections from the conventional 4/4-beat. A good example being DJ Rolando on ‘Jaguar’, released earlier this year: new remixes of the title-track by Jeff Mills, Octave One and Mad Mike, completed with previous ep’s ‘Mi Raza’ and ‘Atzlan’. -- http://www.5voor12.com
Alongside Rick Wilhite and, of course, the ever mysterious Moodymann, Theo Parrish represents a new style of Detroit house. Slower and more experimental than its Chicago counterpart, it’s a sound that looks mainly to African-America’s rich musical heritage for inspiration. Theo Parrish juxtaposes elements of soul, jazz, disco, funk and techno with simple but often hypnoticallt funky 4/4 house rhythms. Discover his unique sound on his ‘First Floor’-album (Peacefrog).--http://www.5voor12.com
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There are obviously ethical considerations here --it's easy to understand James Brown's outrage as his uncredited beats and screams underpin much of today's black music-- but at its best, today's new digital, or integrated analog and digital, technology can encourage a free interplay of ideas, a real exchange of information. Most recording studios in the U.S. and Europe will have a sampler and a rack of CDs: a basic electronic library of Kraftwerk, James Brown, Led Zeppelin --today's Sound Bank.
Rap is where you first heard it --Grandmaster Flash's 1981 "Wheels of Steel," which scratched together Queen, Blondie, the Sugarhill Gang, the Furious Five, Sequence, and Spoonie Gee --but what is sampling if not digitized scratching? If rap is more an American phenomenon, techno is where it all comes together in Europe as producers and musicians engage in a dialogue of dazzling speed.
At the same time, Kraftwerk bought a Moog synthesizer, which enabled them to harness their long electronic pieces to a drum machine. The first fruit of this was "Autobahn," a 22-minute motorway journey, from the noises of a car starting up to the hum of cooling machinery. In 1975, an edited version of "Autobahn" was a top 10 hit. It wasn't the first synth hit --that honor belongs to Gershon Kingsley's hissing "Popcorn," performed by studio group Hot Butter-- but it wasn't a pure novelty either.
The breakthrough came with 1977's Trans-Europe Express: again, the concentration on speed, travel, pan-Europeanism. The album's center is the 13-minute sequence that simulates a rail journey: the click-clack of metal wheels on metal rails, the rise and fade of a whistle as the train passes, the creaking of coach bodies, the final screech of metal on metal as the train stops. If this wasn't astounding enough, 1978's Man Machine further developed ideas of an international language, of the synthesis between man and machine.
More surprisingly, Kraftwerk had an immediate impact on black dance music: as Afrika Bambaataa says in David Toop's Rap Attack, "I don't think they even knew how big they were among the black masses back in '77 when they came out with 'Trans-Europe Express.' When that came out, I thought that was one of the best and weirdest records I ever heard in my life." In 1981, Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force, together with producer Arthur Baker, paid tribute with "Planet Rock," which used the melody from "Trans-Europe Express" over the rhythm from "Numbers." In the process they created electro and moved rap out of the Sugarhill age.
Derrick May once described techno as "just like Detroit, a complete mistake. It's like George Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator." "I've always been a music lover," says Juan Atkins. "Everything has a subconscious effect on what I do. In the 1970s I was into Parliament, Funkadelic; as far back as '69 they were making records like Maggot Brain, America Eats Its Young. But if you want the reason why that happened in Detroit, you have to look at a DJ called Electrifying Mojo: he had five hours every night, with no format restrictions. It was on his show that I first heard Kraftwerk."
Atkins and 3070 called themselves Cybotron, a futuristic name in line with the ideas they had taken from science fiction, P-Funk, Kraftwerk, and Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave. "We had always been into futurism.
By 1985, Atkins hooked up with fellow Belleville High alumni Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. The three of them began recording together and separately, under various names: Model 500 (Atkins), Reese (Saunderson), Mayday, R-Tyme, and Rhythim is Rhythim (May). All shared an attitude toward making records --using the latest in computer technology without letting machines do everything-- and a determination to overcome their environment; like May has said, " We can do nothing but look forward."
The trio put out a stream of records in the Detroit area on the Transmat and KMS labels: many of these, like "No UFO's," "Strings of Life," "Rock to the Beat," and "When He Used To Play," have the same tempo, about 120 bpm, and feature blank, otherworldly voices --which, paradoxically, communicate intense emotion. These records --now rereleased in Europe on compilations like Retro Techno Detroit Definitive (Network U.K.) or Model 500: Classics (R&S Belgium)-- were as good, if not better, as anything coming out of New York or even Chicago, but because of Detroit's isolation few people in the U.S. heard them at the time. It took English entrepreneurs to give them their correct place in the mainstream of dance culture.
Like many others, Neil Rushton was galvanized by the electronic music coming out of Chicago mid-decade, which was successfully codified in the English market under the trade name "house." A similar thing happened in Chicago as in Detroit: away from the musical mainstream on both coasts, DJs like Frankie Knuckles and Marshall Jefferson had revived a forgotten musical form, disco, and adapted it to the environment of gay clubs like the Warehouse. The result was a spacey, electronic sound, released on local labels like Trax and DJ International: funkier and more soulful than techno, but futuristic. As soon as it was marketed in the U.K. as house in early 1987, it because a national obsession with No. 1 hits like "Love Can't Turn Around" and "Jack Your Body."