On Sep 7, 2004, at 3:49 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
This is the detroit techno list right? It suddenly occured to me that
what
I call Detroit Techno may be a bit different to what other people
think.
When someone says to you "Detroit Techno", what do you immediately
think
of?
a) the hard industrial vibe "hard music for a hard city"?
or
b) the melodic mid-tempo beats of say, World to World, or Never On
Sunday
or something.
there is such amazing variety, that's why the term 'detroit techno'
means so much. it's a loaded term. there's the quiet/gorgeous/lush
slow 69 tracks, stuff like Kenny Larkin's midtempo and downtempo cuts.
there's the classic transmat era definitive dancefloor funk like Nude
Photo, Icon, Kaos, etc... there's housier stuff like R-Tyme, KDJ,
Andres, 3 Chairs. There's electro like Cybotron / m500 and
computer-muzik roboty sounding stuff like Nite Drive Thru Babylon,
Dopplereffekt, Drexciya, some UR. Even within UR look at the amazing
range and variety of labels under one roof. There's the hammering of
Axis stomper warehouse techno anthems, and the quiet/contemplative side
of Mills in some of the Millsart / Metropolis stuff. There's Rob Hood
as minimal microscope funky atom examiner of "pure" distilled techno,
then you've got Hood in his stuff on Duet and Floorplan, totally lush
and different... And 'nighttime world'! The same producer(!)
Amazing.. Then there's cool out jazzy things like The Detroit
Experiment project, which is something I can play on a sunday morning
and still get a deep detroit vibe. There's funk/nu soul stuff like
Amp Fiddler, Dwele, Innerzone Orchestra.
All these are very different sides of the music (not even just 'dance'
music) spectrum and that's why detroit electronic music is so great, it
soooo varied. You can get a complete diet of quality electronic music
from hard raw stompers to deep future music to laid back modern
blues/house to just about anything in between, and never leave the
'detroit' section of the crates. :)
an interesting question. people i talk to get into "detroit" techno
through one door, and then find all these OTHER doors of detroit sounds
opening as they look around inside. Dumb metaphor, but i hope you know
what i mean.... it's so much bigger than just one sound, yet there's
this intangible thing that ties the mood together... it's powerful.
--
Matt MacQueen
http://SonicSunset.com
