Detroit - the myth

luka

Well-known member
Techno generally although actually it doesn't apply to the stuff the myth is founded on which trades on romantic, melancholy alienation
 

the ig

Well-known member
…I mean, this was in the days of Swedish hegemony, sub-purpose maker shufflers, sub-axis loops, dawn of mnml, so..
 

the ig

Well-known member
l kind of built up to it in the bedroom tho, listening to Chic & Telex 12”s, Yello, Can, some best of Chicago House cd box sets, usually stoned on my neighbour’s fairly potent skunk...this amongst my sea of Mojo-man 60s/70s classics and noisy American bands y’see. At some point I just had to take this dawning ‘understanding’ of club music / repetition to the floor. Dumped my DMs, bought some light trainers, (for dancing! yeah!) entered the club, that was it, pretty much instant conversion, though my first proper club nights were a bunch of faddish electroclash dos if I remember (my ‘gateway club sound’ as it were, because of the syntpop stuff I was already used to). Becoming a dancer was a sort of rite of passage for me, awkward little twat that I was!
 

the ig

Well-known member
Geroge Butterworth rather mate, PROPPA ’ARDKORE MORRISING!


would never let a stolid chap like Elgar interrupt my jingly flitting about with obligatory handkerchiefs!
 

raljax

Well-known member
Great links in this thread, ta.
There were so many gems in those vinyl exchanges in London, especially in the bins and e.g. that basement in the Soho one. This always makes me think of Freebird in Dublin where there was always a stack of Mark Ambrose/Crayon records on the counter for 50 p each and alot of those are worth tonnes now and Chain Reaction metal boxes in a large bin for pennies...
On Knights of The Jaguar (somehow not calling it 'Jaguar' is important to me) i have mixed feelings. I remember hearing it for the first time in a record shop om the Quays in Dublin and everyone in there was buzzing - listening to it on the shop's system repeatedly. I bought it and it took 5- 6 spins to really get it, which was in itself very curious. It was different. There had been a maasive buzz about it in the build up due to that Rolando 'Atztec Mystic Mix' which was infectious too. But it became so ubiquitous and then there was the Sony thing...I don't agree that it's cheesy euro-trance camouflaged in UR trappings though.
The timing of the release was a big factor in its success and in how it was thought of. Like it wasn't long before bedroom dj types began signalling "there's way better UR tracks and Rolando tracks out there..." (agreed)- but on the other hand, by 1999 you weren't exactly inundated with techno tunes that carried this much euphoria and myth (P Diddy dancing super fast with Jennifer Lopez to it on MTV springs to mind). Compare it to 2000's 'The Man With The Red Face' which also instantly blew up and got flogged to death and it has aged far better than that has.

The first 7/8 timestimes i heard it out it was wonderous in terms of rushing on E but then it was just too much. I only stick it on now at get togethers with mates i raved with because it's a symbol of how we kept going, kept on getting bucked when the returns were diminished to say the least. At the D1 25th party, Eamonn Doyle closed with a Detroit saturated set that was spine tingling - http://beardsofraljax.blogspot.com/2019/03/dont-be-one-traveler-d1-recordings-25th.html
but he didn't play it and i'm glad he didn't. It was imo simply a different era to early UR and it doesn't fit. It's more desperate hedonism than the sounds of a future we were hoping to live in (Ur 003).

On the not needing to now be on E to really love techno - totally agree. But i don't think i'd still love it as much as i do if i hadn't been still on E during those late 90's years when it went all Purpose Maker clones and the Swedish sound started to lose its edge and funk.
 

Leo

Well-known member
my wife was recently looking for music to use during the six-minute workout she does to loosen up before yoga. "Knights of The Jaguar" was one of the tracks I put on the playlist, and she loves it but says it eventually gets too fast, so by the end she's given up on the exercise routine and spends the last minute or so just flailing her arms around.
 

raljax

Well-known member
Yes too much going on after the build up and tbh the intro is the best part Qeztal e..g. Is better
 

the ig

Well-known member
I like some of the Swedish stuff, best of Lekebusch and Beyer esp’y is great, but some of those guys like Samuel L Sessions were banging out endless sub-Mills’n’Hood club tools, and it got rather dull.


There’s great bits to dig up everywhere tho, which is part of the fun with djing, finding yr ‘secret weapons’ hiding-in-plain-sight among the discards, the overlooked penny tunes, the club-fad overproduction piles past.
 
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raljax

Well-known member
Yes Concealed Project is a fave of mine, There are loads of 12 inches with just one good tune on labels like Code Red.
 
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