Detroit - the myth

mms

sometimes
URs preposterous over-serious galactic announcements, lost as some kind of church to the kick drum filled with hawtin clones and not nearly enough girls in fluffy bikinis. rich material indeed.

hawtins not from detroit though and the whole self-mythos of ur was fantastically imaginative, esp drexciya.
must admit that mid 90's i did switch some of my allegiance to jungle but there were and still are some amazing records coming out of Detroit.
 

Client Eastwood

Well-known member
Some Detroit records effect me in a way most of the newer stuff simply doesn't.
desire - 69
winter on the boulevard - derrick may
i wanna be there - model500
urban tribe - covert action
can easily put a lump in my throat, even from the very first listen. so its not a sentimental thing.

The percussion and the strings has a lot to do it. So there is something that those guys manage to capture. but and its a big but, it does not mean that that vibe is exclusive to Detroit. Aril Brika, The Black Dog, B12, Kirk Degregario etc can all touch it too. Skream did it with Emotionally Mute, that tune is a 'king badman!

I dont mind all the scifi and mythos. It just helps with the context like the Drexicyans being ocean living offspring of Africans thrown of slave ships on the way to America. I see it as an affirmation of black identity on techno music.

Cliff Thomas of Submerge has responded to the original poster here . . .

http://mnmlssg.blogspot.com/2008/06/back-to-detroit-part-4-of-3-part-series.html
 

bassnation

the abyss

that was a joke btw, although i do think lost sums up the indie student side of dance music, theres something about those mega-serious techno nights that exclude any kind of glamour. i'm not one of those people who think clubbing is just about music (or drugs come to that). lost seems very monochrome to me, but what would i know. everytime i've been there i've lasted an hour before leaving to go somewhere more interesting.
 
Detroit's produced some of the best house music ever made in the last 10+ years. The Three Chairs axis- Theo Parrish, Omar S, Rick Wilhite, Marcellus Pittman, KDJ etc etc. Pretty much all the FXHE and sound signature 12"s are great, and its not a sound you find elsewhere. Plus there have been some decent UR 12s in the last year or two that show them broadening out their palette a little.
A fair amount of the myth i suppose is predicated on the conditions and appearance of the city itself. A kind of living ghost town.
 

bassnation

the abyss
Some Detroit records effect me in a way most of the newer stuff simply doesn't.
desire - 69
winter on the boulevard - derrick may
i wanna be there - model500
urban tribe - covert action
can easily put a lump in my throat, even from the very first listen. so its not a sentimental thing.

yeah and its precisely those strings that sound fucking tired to me. its like the producer wants a pavlovian response "this tune is supposed to be emotional". its as lazy a signifier as any other hoary old cliche in dance music. techno from elsewhere is way more alien and twisted imo. its not burdened with a sense of its own importance.
 

mms

sometimes
that was a joke btw, although i do think lost sums up the indie student side of dance music, theres something about those mega-serious techno nights that exclude any kind of glamour. i'm not one of those people who think clubbing is just about music (or drugs come to that). lost seems very monochrome to me, but what would i know. everytime i've been there i've lasted an hour before leaving to go somewhere more interesting.

god i don't think detroit techno fans are indie students - quite the opposite!
My experience at university was total hostility to the music,

agree about hardcore monochrome of any shade, any style, i've never actually been to lost and yet i like detroit techno - probably for those very reasons you state, very serious idolatary, but i don't think lost is particularly good at showing off what it is Detroit has to offer and that's a fair few shades of techno.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
yeah and its precisely those strings that sound fucking tired to me. its like the producer wants a pavlovian response "this tune is supposed to be emotional". its as lazy a signifier as any other hoary old cliche in dance music. techno from elsewhere is way more alien and twisted imo. its not burdened with a sense of its own importance.
I agree. That's what I meant about prissy neo-Detroit fetishists, still using M1 string sounds or whatever. It's just an unreal form of expression. What those guys were doing in the early days of techno was a product of how they felt and the kind of cheap 80s equipment they had. I know of real people who don't consider stuff to be 'proper techno', or even good music unless it totally follows those same patterns, sounds and keys. It's just the same as old rockers who can only listen to Elvis or something.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
alien and twisted

I know what you're saying, but it's sooo easy to make something sound alien and twisted, I'm just like 'oh well done, you made a poo', y'know? What did you want that poo to mean and do, that's what I like hearing, the perpetual shock of the new wears very thin.
 

bassnation

the abyss
Detroit's produced some of the best house music ever made in the last 10+ years. The Three Chairs axis- Theo Parrish, Omar S, Rick Wilhite, Marcellus Pittman, KDJ etc etc. Pretty much all the FXHE and sound signature 12"s are great, and its not a sound you find elsewhere. Plus there have been some decent UR 12s in the last year or two that show them broadening out their palette a little.
A fair amount of the myth i suppose is predicated on the conditions and appearance of the city itself. A kind of living ghost town.

well, some of that stuff you mention is awesome and some of it so-so (everything moodyman has done since that planet e comp is distinctly patchy and every album is slightly weaker than the last imo) but the best house music ever? not a chance in hell. that stuff is a technoheads idea of house music. it would take too long to namecheck all the US house dons and everyone knows who they are anyway - marshall jefferson, frankie knuckles, larry levan, phuture (and esp. dj pierre) etc etc. people who aren't afraid to do proper songs as well as tracky loopy shit.

of course, the wildcard in all this is carl craig - there you can easily make the case that the paperclip people project has produced some of the best house ever.
 
Last edited:

bassnation

the abyss
I know what you're saying, but it's sooo easy to make something sound alien and twisted, I'm just like 'oh well done, you made a poo', y'know? What did you want that poo to mean and do, that's what I like hearing, the perpetual shock of the new wears very thin.

your poo is alien and twisted? ;)

yeah of course, too much of anything good is erm, bad. but personally thats what i like. of course you need something to throw the alien shit into sharp relief which is why the chicago house djs always trump their detroit counterparts. songs and fucked up mentalism. what more could you ask for?

plus emotive strings all night long make me want to puke. sorry, but they do.
 

sodiumnightlife

Sweet Virginia
thing is though, while the detroit purists are horrible and boring, the people who make the music generally aren't quite like that. I mean, you get a few, but if you listen to Parrish djing then it's very very far from emotional strings all night. I'm ultra suspicious of any mythologising really, but Detroit puts out enough good records to make it someplace special in my mind. However, it doesn't blot out every other city in the world ever, and that's where the purists get it wrong...

The good detroit techno was always about pulling on a load of diverse references and making it sound like some completely new shit, and I think some detroit producers still do that, especially Omar S.
 

dubble-u-c

Dorkus Maximus
your poo is alien and twisted? ;)

yeah of course, too much of anything good is erm, bad. but personally thats what i like. of course you need something to throw the alien shit into sharp relief which is why the chicago house djs always trump their detroit counterparts. songs and fucked up mentalism. what more could you ask for?

plus emotive strings all night long make me want to puke. sorry, but they do.

who in detroit only plays emotive strings on all of their tracks?
 

mms

sometimes
your poo is alien and twisted? ;)



plus emotive strings all night long make me want to puke. sorry, but they do.

you don't need to as no detroit dj has ever done that.
also you're really stereotyping a small part of detroit techno in a way - from a long time ago - it's a much broader church than that, - there aren't even that many detroit tracks with emotive strings - - it's the electronic funk that 's the coining element of the detroit sound
 
Last edited:

stelfox

Beast of Burden
i've just been listening to stardancer off the martian's red planet 2 ep. no matter how canon-smashing you want to be, this is possibly one of the best records ever made, as is the riot ep, as is mills' seawolf as world power alliance, as is robert hood's first minimal nation EP, as is jaguar and so much more. hell, the interstellar fugitives comp is one of the strongest showings for techno in history - and it's as funky you like, too. whether some of its fans are idiots or not, detroit is maybe, just perhaps a little bit important.
 
Last edited:

luka

Well-known member
how come london doesn't have a myth like detroit techno and new york hiphop? thats my favourite city for music over the last almost 20 years by a long way. i think london kills it.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
What Detroit managed to achieve was giving the impression of having a definable zero point, a moment where a new future vision was born. I guess a lot that came from the Electrifying Mojo but Cybertron were brilliant realtime mythologisers. In fact that's almost what defines all those Detroit guys, how aware they were of creating mythologies.

Clear our display
Clear, today

London's myths are so big you can barely see them, and multiple. Where does London as music city start, soho jazz clubs in the 50s?
 

mms

sometimes
how come london doesn't have a myth like detroit techno and new york hiphop? thats my favourite city for music over the last almost 20 years by a long way. i think london kills it.

course it does but not to the uk
 

bassnation

the abyss
i've just been listening to stardancer off the martian's red planet 2 ep. no matter how canon-smashing you want to be, this is possibly one of the best records ever made, as is the riot ep, as is mills' seawolf as world power alliance, as is robert hood's first minimal nation EP, as is jaguar and so much more. hell, the interstellar fugitives comp is one of the strongest showings for techno in history - and it's as funky you like, too. whether some of its fans are idiots or not, detroit is maybe, just perhaps a little bit important.

i love those records too - i'd add to that sex in zero gravity by eddie flashin fowlkes, a track that does bring me to tears actually but not because of mawkish strings, but more such a powerful wave of nostalgia for times lost (and how different my life is now in comparision) that its almost like a punch to the guts. people laud nostalgia but its not always a pleasant feeling.

so yeah i love all that, and i am not arguing that they don't deserve plaudits. but not to the extent where uncritical worship allows those artists to churn out shit and people lapping it up, which lets be honest is the state of play for some (but by no means all). you know some people have their year zero with paul oakenfold et al "discovering house music in ibiza". some people have it in detroit, some people chicago, or paradise garage. picking any one moment as the root of everything, the baseline standard with which all subsequent music is judged is always going to be full of holes, maybe its not the point. maybe i'm as guilty of that as anyone else is, except of course mine is hardcore and i am right where others are wrong (natch).

don't really like jaguar either, its a late synthesis of those mawkish elements that might have seemed real ten years earlier - its probably the most cynical record to come out of the UR stable and i tend to leave clubs when it drops because the difference between that and euro trance is ZERO. i've got loads of UR and related tracks here in front of me, on vinyl, but there was definitely a moment where it jumped the shark. i still buy their stuff sometimes, but its no longer "buy on sight" which is a pity. as abe duke so memorably said, "detroit - what the fuck happened?"
 
Last edited:

bassnation

the abyss
you don't need to as no detroit dj has ever done that.
also you're really stereotyping a small part of detroit techno in a way - from a long time ago - it's a much broader church than that, - there aren't even that many detroit tracks with emotive strings - - it's the electronic funk that 's the coining element of the detroit sound

when you say electronic funk, do you mean stuff like hi tech jazz? cos that was the turning point where i stopped loving their output.

i'm not down totally on techno, i reckon i've been to the same places as you over the years, loved the same djs and probably bought many of the same records. this is the kind of criticism only someone who cares can give. i am just turned off by pomposity and self-aggrandisment in any genre.
 
Top