Techno/House Bobbins of the past

the best farris is on soma yeah, esp. "get on the floor" on the mainline disco ep -but, roy davis easy win.

Carl Cox Vs. Kevin Saunderson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWAgKaZDwE8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TB_VDYPtjM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja9A8TZhw3o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEIA36Y0pzk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAQ-OuWliZ4

there are a few others, all worth checking out.

wow. articulate!

i realize this isn't "of the past" but can anybody speak about his "contact special" and "one man spaceship" album?

I remember getting slammed for telling people that you wouldn't get it unless you had been to Detroit. I was specifically referring to being a room with him discussing techno. There would be a couple less blog posts on mnmlssgs if those guys did their homework. It all kind of clicks when you hear him discuss it.

One Man Spaceship has it's moments. It's a Jeff Mill's album that sounds like Jeff Mills doing a minimal techno album. It is what it is.

I shouldn't dog it too much. I think the real problem is that I want to hear him mix purpose maker loops with the best parts of Every Dog Has It's Day. I can't really blame him for making a bleepy 909 album but I would love to hear some of the old samba magic from the older axis records.

He is in a tough spot. How do you keep working and progressing after 15 years worth of genre defining records?

Mike i thought you had disowned your "you have to have gone to Detroit" rants:

"goddamn, what the hell was I thinking on March 27th 2003???"

I don't think that was much of a rant.

I think that mnmlssgg blog was a bit absurd. All of the influences existed prior to techno, but they didn't become "techno" until a whole lot of different things got thrown into a blender that was Detroit DJ culture. Techno as it is recognized as a genre came from the people in that scene cooked up.

The point I was trying to make, and perhaps I didn't make as clearly as I should have, I don't think those guy would deny Detroit's place in techno if they actually had to spend anytime in Submerge, or have a dinner discussing it's history with someone like Mills or even go record shopping with some old school heads for an afternoon.

If you wanted to learn about dub reggae you should go to Jamaica in the 70's or 80's. I don't think it is impossible for you to enjoy or be knowledgeable about the music with out visiting or living there, but you would view things in a different light if you had access to the actual location or at least direct access to the people involved. It was a local culture and witnessing it through marketing or media objects does not give a complete picture.

One of Detroit's problems is that it doesn't have the same kind of centralized documentation or commercial infrastructure to really spell out what was accomplished and why it is important. The majors don't own most of the masters and they have no reason to market it. I have been listening to Mill's since 1995 and last night was one of the first times I have seen proper interview footage of him discussing this music as a big picture. Detroit is a myth and it is a shame in some respects because there are a lot of accomplishments that don't get acknowledged today.

Bottom line is Jeff Mills spinning his own electronic rhythm track versions of popular street songs like a hip hop battle DJ with the sensibility of a jazz drummer is techno. It wasn't a tabla rasa, 12" culture started around 1975 and they slotted right into something that was already happening. The important thing is that they put their particular twist on the same records that everybody else had. The Chicago guys did their thing, the NYC guys did their thing, Miami had it's scene...

The other thing about Detroit is how much brilliant music came out of a relatively small city in the US. You could fill a book talking about the first rate dance talent that came out in the 80's and 90's.

Juan, Kevin, Derrick, Mike Banks, Ade Mainor, Marc Kitchen, Chez Damier, Carl Craig, Stacy Pullen, Rolando, Octave One, Terrance Parker, KDJ, Theo Parrish, Mike Huckaby, Deepchord, The Martian, Aux 88, Le Car, Adult, Perspects, DJ Godfather, Hawtin, Kenny Larkin, James Pennington, Scan 7, Rick Wilheit, Anthony Shakir, Dan Bell, John Beltran, Claude Young... for every one of these guys there were 5 other lesser known dudes. How do you name all these people with their own individual style and say that Detroit is just a myth.

there's also this which seems to be pretty crucial if you want to get jeff mills. (it was to me anyway). all of those choice comps are pretty choice.

i have contact special and it is high-quality, but definitely for the fans. it seems like the original 7" format would have served the songs better and it is a bit of a hybrid b/w aggro-mills and soundtrack-mills. i really need to go back and listen again though.

one man spaceship feels vintage and my thoughts after the first listens were almost exactly, "It's a Jeff Mills album that sounds like Jeff Mills doing a minimal techno album".

i am curious about what is meant by "the sensibility of a jazz drummer". been thinking about that one a lot lately as i think it is deeply misunderstood (especially the first time around...i know i didn't get it)

Mills literally is a jazz drummer.

see also: What's with that constant cymbal tapping in jazz drumming?
What's with that constant cymbal tapping in jazz drumming?

More specifically I meant that they guy plays drums so he is going to think about rhythm a bit differently than a guy who played cello.

PS that comp looks nice, thx for pointing it out.

never knew that!! no wonder i didn't get it. so that is completely separate from "jazz is the teacher" then? and completely separate from jazz "stylings" vs. actual jazz.

in my warped world i think he spins like he's improvising i.e. freedom with rigor

just who is the ornette coleman of techno

"in my warped world i think he spins like he's improvising i.e. freedom with rigor"

and there is this technique of utilizing phrases which i just adore. ok i will go read that other thread now.

Mike, I don't think anyone is trying to deny the massive importance and causal centrality of Detroit to techno. But you and pipecock tend to push further arguments which I just can't accept:

1) That there is a direct and unavoidable link between the influence of Detroit as a geographic location and the quality/nature of the music that is produced there. I have a problem with this only because it's so determinist and because its reductive - I can totally accept that Detroit as a city has had a massive effect on many of its producers and that this can be change how they make their music. But it seems fantastic to suggest that this happens with all techno that comes out of Detroit and that it's something privileged listeners can easily pick up and identify consistently by virtue of having walked the same streets. No music works like that anywhere ever.

2) That techno from Detroit has "soul" and techno from Europe just doesn't - and again this is something that the privileged listener can just hear in the music. This strikes me as a massive, quasi-religious oversimplification of how music works - "soul" becomes a meaningless stand-in for all sorts of things that might actually be going on, much in the same way that "God" does for many people.

3) That Detroit techno is closer to jazz than it is to so-called-techno from Europe. This is mentalist even if Mills approaches techno with the sensibility of a jazz drummer. Pipecock has said this line repeatedly. I can only assume that he dismisses all the jazz influenced house and techno from Europe on the grounds that since they don't have "soul" they can't be part of the great jazz-to-techno lineage even if superficially they are deploying jazz signifiers. Note how all the arguments ultimately rest on this mystic invocation of the undefinable, noumenal soul component at some point.

If we're sticking to the much more limited following claims then I don't think there's an issue - I know Pete Chambers who writes for mnml ssgs and I know he would agree with the following points:

1) That techno as a genre is deeply rooted in Detroit, and that without Detroit techno, electronic dance music would not have developed in the same way that it has (this is different and more measured than saying "no electronic dance music without Detroit").

2) That certain stylistic elements in Detroit techno may have evolved partly through the influence of the experience of living in Detroit.

3) That a lot of Detroit techno feels quite distinct to other music that bears the name of "techno".

4) That certain Detroit techno artists have certain stylistic elements that are modeled on jazz.

I need to work on my grammar.

If you wanted to learn about dub reggae you should go to Jamaica in the 70's or 80's.

This is something that I should clarify. If you want to know about dub you should go there with 10-15 years of the scene's peak because eventually the scene gets buried in time. There are still a ton of people who remember, but time passes. Motown is gone, 70's loft party Detroit is gone, and the techno era is passing on as well as we all get older and more separated by adult life.

I left that sentence in by accident. It was a tangent I didn't mean to go off into.

"If you want to know about dub you should go there with 10-15 years of the scene's peak because eventually the scene gets buried in time. There are still a ton of people who remember, but time passes. Motown is gone, 70's loft party Detroit is gone, and the techno era is passing on as well as we all get older and more separated by adult life."

This is fair enough, but while I've seen you express some humility w/r/t your capacity to understand scenes other than Detroit techno, this is something that, say, pipecock never does. He has supreme confidence in his capacity to understand and explain jazz/soul/2-step garage/whatever. Thus the gatekeeper role adopted vis a vis detroit techno begins to seem both inconsistent and arrogant, merely an excuse to boast about which producers have slept on one's floor and which epochal DJ sets one was lucky enough to witness. It's that kind of stuff which makes detroit techno pietism difficult to bear sometimes.

"Note how all the arguments ultimately rest on this mystic invocation of the undefinable, noumenal soul component at some point."

what happens when "soul" is replaced with "virtuouso"?

if i had to pick something representative of soul and jazz, it would be alice coltrane's journey io satchidananda. it is interesting to try and come up with techno equivalents from either side of the atlantic.

I don't really feel like addressing your last post. The problem I have with it is that your first three points are only valid if you stretch my opinions to their absolute breaking point. Your points don't line up to my actual opinion.

Your last four points are reasonable statements.

xp tim

I feel my first three points are accurate representations of at least Pipecock's arguments, and partly what I'm trying to do Mike is pressure you into distinguishing yourself from them, which I don't believe you've done openly to date (although as I note in my immediately previous post you express yourself more carefully and consistently than Pipecock does).

If the last four points are more in line with your own attitudes then I don't see where the issue is with mnml ssgs etc. Very few people would balk at conceding all four of them. The criticisms of detroit techno pietism that, say, Pete Chambers is making, is really a criticism of the kinds of arguments expressed in my first three points.

"Virtuoso" is slightly more measurable and, as a consequence, makes it difficult to maintain the claim that all detroit techno is closer to jazz than it is to current house/techno from Europe. "Virtuoso" is still a word that can have a vague meaning - e.g. to what extent does it mean sophistication, to what extent does it mean subtle nods to past achievements, to what extent does it mean "feel" etc. - but it's much more grounded in what the music is actually doing. Whereas "soul" is supposed to be some trans-stylistic quality that transcends any concrete material quality of the music.

So if you abandon "soul" as the operating principle I think it becomes harder to argue that, say, Omar-S is closer to jazz than he is to Ame.

In terms of Journey In Satchidananda equivs, that seems like Vahid's territory. I love that album to bits but stuff that might remind me of it in house/techno is often harder for me to love - something like USG Presents African Blues springs to mind.

Of stuff I do like a lot...Theo Parrish at his most expansive obv (e.g. "Summertime Is Here")... Ian O'Brien? Jacob's Optical Stairway? Pepe Bradock circa 2000? Henrik Schwarz at his deepest (e.g. his remix of Kraak & Smaak)? I've never really had that kind of influence leap out at me when listening to "classic" Detroit techno but I'm willing to provisionally accept that this might be something to do with my ears, maybe I'm not listening for the right thing in that music (just don't tell me that this "thing" is "soul"!!).

There's also a logical inconsistency to the notion that one must have spent time discussing techno over dinner with Mills or gone crate digging with a Detroit DJ in order to understand "Detroit's place in techno".

Surely the whole reason that Detroit is central to techno is that so many Detroit techno records had a massive impact and influence on people worldwide, the vast majority of whom would never end up going to Detroit, would never have dinner with Mills, would never have go crate-digging in Detroit's record stores. If all those elements had been necessary for Detroit techno to become a causal flashpoint in the development of electronic dance music, Detroit techno would never have taken off as a global phenomenon.

I can easily see that such experiences might be immensely useful in understanding Detroit's place in Detroit Techno, or Detroit techno's place in Detroit. I can also see that they would be massively illuminating in terms of understanding how this music came to be, providing clues as to why it was so powerful as music.

But ultimately the quality of the music, as with the quality of any music, has to stand and fall with the music itself. And I'd hope that you'd agree Mike that while such extra-musical experiences might be v. important in terms of understanding the socio-historical backstory, they can't be the litmus test for "getting" the music qua music. If they are, then Detroit techno really should have no place in the story of global electronic dance music outside of Detroit itself. That's obviously not the case, so it suggests that there must be something important about these records as records that exists in addition to their evocation of the experience of living in Detroit.

I felt similarly when people used to claim that you couldn't really tell if a dubstep record was good or not unless you had heard it over loudspeakers at DMZ. If that is the case, then the music had failed as music on every level except as music-to-be-played-over-the-loudspeakers-at-DMZ. Funnily enough, this argument faded away once dubstep became relatively popular globally...

"1) That there is a direct and unavoidable link between the influence of Detroit as a geographic location and the quality/nature of the music that is produced there."

it has nothing to do with location. who ever said that? it has to do with culture. that culture is only located in a very specific location, so if that is what you mean then i guess it is true. if you live in suburban detroit, your culture is almost 180 degrees opposite from someone who lives inside the city.

"But it seems fantastic to suggest that this happens with all techno that comes out of Detroit and that it's something privileged listeners can easily pick up and identify consistently by virtue of having walked the same streets. No music works like that anywhere ever."

it isn't "all" techno that comes from Detroit, only a ridiculously high percentage of it. and honestly, why is it so hard to believe that cultural differences lead to differences in sound? i think with something like hiphop where vocals are so dominant that it is easier to pick out music made from outside of the typical American hiphop culture based solely on lyrics, accent, etc. but the same thing can exist in instrumental music, especially with something like techno that comes from Detroit and has such a distinct feeling that even the most technically gifted producers from outside of it can't copy it exactly. trying to define what creates that feeling is difficult, i am not sure that it is exactly possible to pinpoint it. really though, if you go to Detroit it all starts to make more sense, and the more time you spend there the more it makes sense. you can get the feeling of the city in the records.

"2) That techno from Detroit has "soul" and techno from Europe just doesn't - and again this is something that the privileged listener can just hear in the music. This strikes me as a massive, quasi-religious oversimplification of how music works - "soul" becomes a meaningless stand-in for all sorts of things that might actually be going on, much in the same way that "God" does for many people."

i do not agree that everything about music can be analyzed scientifically. it has nothing to do with your brain, it has to do with how it FEELS. and if you can suddenly explain feeling and how it works, i am sure there are a bunch of scientists who would like to know exactly how to do that.

"3) That Detroit techno is closer to jazz than it is to so-called-techno from Europe. This is mentalist even if Mills approaches techno with the sensibility of a jazz drummer. Pipecock has said this line repeatedly. I can only assume that he dismisses all the jazz influenced house and techno from Europe on the grounds that since they don't have "soul" they can't be part of the great jazz-to-techno lineage even if superficially they are deploying jazz signifiers. Note how all the arguments ultimately rest on this mystic invocation of the undefinable, noumenal soul component at some point."

using a jazz sample has nothing to do with jazz music. using a jazzy beat has nothing to do with jazz music. the reasons techno are so similar to jazz has more to do with the improvisation (in jazz it was done live, in techno it was done by a person or two on studio hardware) and the nearly limitless ability to make a song in the genre despite the actual sound. you know that Sun Ra's music is jazz even though people who don't understand jazz might call it "noise". in the same way, techno is easily identifiable. it doesnt have to do with the beat pattern, the instruments used, or really anything else. Tony Drake is techno despite never using a 4 on the floor kick, much in the way of synthetic sounding textures, etc. shake is the same way, he probably shares more in methodology with a hiphop producer, but his sound is 100% techno.

"I know Pete Chambers who writes for mnml ssgs"

ahhhh, now things are starting to make sense to me.

"1) That techno as a genre is deeply rooted in Detroit, and that without Detroit techno, electronic dance music would not have developed in the same way that it has (this is different and more measured than saying "no electronic dance music without Detroit")."

since electronic dance music existed before Detroit techno, i do not understand how anyone would ever make that claim. i have never heard anyone make it. name me one person who has.

"2) That certain stylistic elements in Detroit techno may have evolved partly through the influence of the experience of living in Detroit."

wrong. most stylistic elements in TECHNO evolved through the experience of living Detroit culture. almost every aesthetic in any of techno's spawned subgenres was done originally in Detroit, and usually much better than in the later music too.

"This is fair enough, but while I've seen you express some humility w/r/t your capacity to understand scenes other than Detroit techno, this is something that, say, pipecock never does. He has supreme confidence in his capacity to understand and explain jazz/soul/2-step garage/whatever."

jazz and soul are mostly american urban music, why would i not be able to understand them? that is the environment in which i grew up and continue to live. 2-step and jungle were so interesting to me because of their heavy leanings on american music, specifically jazz, hiphop, funk, and soul. i grew frustrated with the bits that didn't make sense to me such as the consistant movement of UK dance music into simplified dark grinding music, and i gave up on them.

i love jamaican music. i know most of the people involved locally in the music who are of Jamaican descent. i know it is not the same as living the culture in Jamaica. there is nothing wrong with continuing to like the music, but i do not feel it would be appropriate to try to make reggae and take credit for it as if it was my own thing. it is not my culture to do that with.

"Thus the gatekeeper role adopted vis a vis detroit techno begins to seem both inconsistent and arrogant, merely an excuse to boast about which producers have slept on one's floor and which epochal DJ sets one was lucky enough to witness. It's that kind of stuff which makes detroit techno pietism difficult to bear sometimes."

so basically you just feel left out? i feel so sorry for you. don't be angry about it, be proactive. go visit detroit.

"I feel my first three points are accurate representations of at least Pipecock's arguments"

especially since you made arguments that not only I have never made, but ones that i have never seen anyone make. so good job on that one.

"'Virtuoso"' is slightly more measurable"

so 500 years ago, before we could measure them, radio waves didn't exist? nor did sound waves? the idea that you can measure everything that is real is pretty ridiculous.

"Whereas 'soul' is supposed to be some trans-stylistic quality that transcends any concrete material quality of the music.

except of course that any fan of soul music would disagree with that.

"So if you abandon 'soul' as the operating principle I think it becomes harder to argue that, say, Omar-S is closer to jazz than he is to Ame."

all you can go by are your ears. i truly do feel sorry for you.

"In terms of Journey In Satchidananda equivs, that seems like Vahid's territory.

Of stuff I do like a lot...Theo Parrish at his most expansive obv (e.g. "Summertime Is Here")... Ian O'Brien? Jacob's Optical Stairway? Pepe Bradock circa 2000? Henrik Schwarz at his deepest (e.g. his remix of Kraak & Smaak)? I've never really had that kind of influence leap out at me when listening to "classic" Detroit techno but I'm willing to provisionally accept that this might be something to do with my ears, maybe I'm not listening for the right thing in that music (just don't tell me that this "thing" is "soul"!!)."

you dont think that Derrick May's work had that kind of influence in it? or Carl Craig's, even from the beginning? seriously man, i don't know what to say. i agree with your other choices here though, they make the influence a little more obvious in sound, but that was something that was there from the beginning. Shake was a huge jazz head, way before he did anything related to techno and he was there from day 1 working with Juan, Derrick, Octave One, etc.

"There's also a logical inconsistency to the notion that one must have spent time discussing techno over dinner with Mills or gone crate digging with a Detroit DJ in order to understand "Detroit's place in techno"."

no one MUST do those things to understand it. but i agree that if people did, there would be far less nonsense being spouted about Detroit dance music.

"Surely the whole reason that Detroit is central to techno is that so many Detroit techno records had a massive impact and influence on people worldwide, the vast majority of whom would never end up going to Detroit, would never have dinner with Mills, would never have go crate-digging in Detroit's record stores. If all those elements had been necessary for Detroit techno to become a causal flashpoint in the development of electronic dance music, Detroit techno would never have taken off as a global phenomenon."

this is pretty obvious. but the problem lies in the fact that cats from the UK and Europe started making records. and in the beginning, they made a lot of good ones. but in time, the newer producers and deejays became less and less influenced by the original music and the sound started to shift into something much less funky and to me, much less interesting. it does not register with me culturally.

in fact, this is something i have been thinking about a little bit more since the discussion on mnmlssgs. i think the problem is that in the US, house and techno culture existed before rave culture. they were their own stand alone cultures with roots and customs. in the UK and Europe, their music was imported and used in a completely foreign culture. you can see the classic Detroit and Chicago deejays discuss this in many of their old interviews. in the UK and Europe, it seems like the rave scene recontextualized techno into something it never was before. there was undoubtedly some reaction to that as rave hit the US, even from within the existing techno and house cultures. but that never really resonated with mostly black urban audiences here and quickly fell out in most cases, and to this day the perception of dance music as "rave" music persists in the US despite that not being its roots at all.

"But ultimately the quality of the music, as with the quality of any music, has to stand and fall with the music itself. And I'd hope that you'd agree Mike that while such extra-musical experiences might be v. important in terms of understanding the socio-historical backstory, they can't be the litmus test for "getting" the music qua music. If they are, then Detroit techno really should have no place in the story of global electronic dance music outside of Detroit itself. That's obviously not the case, so it suggests that there must be something important about these records as records that exists in addition to their evocation of the experience of living in Detroit."

good music is good music, but understanding that music beyond what you hear with your ears is pretty damn important. your ears can mishear things, but when you are culturally conditioned to understand one thing and you are exposed to something else that SOUNDS the same but doesn't FEEL the same, that is going to be painfully obvious.

"I felt similarly when people used to claim that you couldn't really tell if a dubstep record was good or not unless you had heard it over loudspeakers at DMZ. If that is the case, then the music had failed as music on every level except as music-to-be-played-over-the-loudspeakers-at-DMZ. Funnily enough, this argument faded away once dubstep became relatively popular globally..."

despite my reservations about the entire genre of dubstep due to my previous experiences with UK dance music, i don't disbelieve that understanding dubstep is aided greatly by being in its place of origin. you can read a whole bunch about a culture, listen to the records in your house or at your local club, etc etc and still not totally understand it. some things need to be experienced, not analyzed.

"it has nothing to do with location. who ever said that? it has to do with culture. that culture is only located in a very specific location, so if that is what you mean then i guess it is true."

Same thing isn't though. You acknowledge as much when you say "you can get the feeling of the city in the records." Which as far as it goes is fine. Note that I wasn't saying that Detroit techno isn't distinct from other forms of techno, just that the notion it's automatically better than other stuff because of its, er, let's say geo-cultural roots, needs better back-up, and much better back-up than you're providing here. Really the sorts of techno and house that are related to Detroit (from Derrick May to Jeff Mills to ghetto tech to Theo Parrish) are massively diverse, and the notion that all of these nonetheless express some singular central truth about life in Detroit that is massively distinct from similar truths about life in other cities strikes me as really difficult to maintain. For example, Detroit techno strikes me as incredibly aspirational in mood; ghetto tech is the exact opposite - sure both musics can say things about the experience of being working class in Detroit, but the things they're saying are quite different.

I'm happy to accept that Detroit has been an incredibly fertile creative breeding ground for all sorts of producers of house and techno. And yes, the concentration of talent is deeply impressive. But talent calls to talent, and surely the very fact of moving in the same circles as other Detroit techno and house producers is as important if not more important than this whole spirit of the streets thing.

"jazz and soul are mostly american urban music, why would i not be able to understand them? that is the environment in which i grew up and continue to live. 2-step and jungle were so interesting to me because of their heavy leanings on american music, specifically jazz, hiphop, funk, and soul. i grew frustrated with the bits that didn't make sense to me such as the consistant movement of UK dance music into simplified dark grinding music, and i gave up on them."

So you'd accept me saying you fundamentally don't "get" jungle or 2-step and telling you to STFU about them? Would it be similarly legitimate for someone to say Detroit techno interested them insofar as it took cues from Kraftwerk, but went bad when it moved away from that?

"trying to define what creates that feeling is difficult, i am not sure that it is exactly possible to pinpoint it. really though, if you go to Detroit it all starts to make more sense, and the more time you spend there the more it makes sense. "

How convenient.

"i do not agree that everything about music can be analyzed scientifically. it has nothing to do with your brain, it has to do with how it FEELS. and if you can suddenly explain feeling and how it works, i am sure there are a bunch of scientists who would like to know exactly how to do that."

Ha ha you don't think there isn't a lot of scientific work in this area? Lots of people devote their entire careers to this sort of thing. And no, I don't pretend to analyse it scientifically, but it's not just a choice between science and religion you know.

"I know Pete Chambers who writes for mnml ssgs"

"ahhhh, now things are starting to make sense to me."

Well the last time I spoke to Pete he was stoked that you were writing something for the blog. I told him he was barking up the wrong tree and he defended you pretty massively.

"you dont think that Derrick May's work had that kind of influence in it? or Carl Craig's, even from the beginning? seriously man, i don't know what to say. i agree with your other choices here though, they make the influence a little more obvious in sound, but that was something that was there from the beginning."

So impliedly the link with jazz is not "obvious in sound" in most Detroit techno? Then why stress it so much, apart from the cultural cache such an analogy might provide? Why should people need to be told that Anthony Shakir is a huge jazzhead (although actually with the Shake stuff I know I can here it). Anyway I can hear some nods to jazz in a lot of first gen Detroit techno, just not enough that it's the first thing that springs to mind when I'm listening to Derrick May or whatever.

"since electronic dance music existed before Detroit techno, i do not understand how anyone would ever make that claim. i have never heard anyone make it. name me one person who has."

I wasn't attributing that opinion to you, although fair enough I guess it almost reads that way. i've heard and read many people claim this at least in relation to dance music that could be defined as "post-techno" (e.g. jungle, IDM, "hardcore" in the broad sense etc.), which is what i meant, though I expressed it sloppily I'll agree. You may agree with that more carefully worded version perhaps.

"so basically you just feel left out? i feel so sorry for you. don't be angry about it, be proactive. go visit detroit."

I don't feel left out, pipecock, I just think you make the whole experience of being connected to Detroit and the Detroit techno scene sound like a hideously empty thing, with no purpose other than to shore up your own ego. But I'm positive that that says more about you than it does about Detroit. To his credit, Mike hardly namedrops at all.

"so 500 years ago, before we could measure them, radio waves didn't exist? nor did sound waves? the idea that you can measure everything that is real is pretty ridiculous."

So you're claiming that soul is something scientific now?

"this is pretty obvious. but the problem lies in the fact that cats from the UK and Europe started making records. and in the beginning, they made a lot of good ones. but in time, the newer producers and deejays became less and less influenced by the original music and the sound started to shift into something much less funky and to me, much less interesting. it does not register with me culturally."

I'd like more specificity here pipecock. Like, does French house occur before or after the flight from Eden?

"good music is good music, but understanding that music beyond what you hear with your ears is pretty damn important. your ears can mishear things"

Personally I place my trust in my ears and then look for extra-musical information that can better explain what it is that my ears are hearing. Anything else just seems like asking to be indoctrinated.

GEIRCOCK

To hear people criticizing others for their music having no soul is disheartening. All music has the soul of its creator within it, and the environment from whence it came is there through osmosis. Its not about who slept on who's floor, and who knew who. The man who's track record consists of the sleeping on someone's sofa should be reticent about the criticizing of the creator of a piece of music. The piece of music has more soul than the sleeping on a floor

Its not about who you knew. Its about what you make yourself. This music comes from Sofia Detroit Dusseldorf Lyon Accra Rangoon and Lima, it always has it always will.

It is in Petre Inspirecu the way it is in Vassilis Tsitsanis and Francis Bebey its in all streets of all cities. Listen to this music it is in their souls. Listen to the music you make yourself you can hear it there too. Lets not talk of who stayed on our sofas. Lets not talk of dinner. Lets talk only of great music and how it inspires us in the making of our own music and in other things and remember what it is we love.

To criticize the creation of something is one thing, to say it is without soul is perhaps the most heinous of insults

^^^ long overdue

there's a toxicity to dance music discussions of late, at least in the small corners of the net I read.

where's the youth/fun/joy/life? all you see is massive protracted discussions and if people really want to send a message or "fight the good fight", WHATEVER music they like or whatever music that is then please start writing with some verve and enthusiasm and smash this "a bunch of concerned dudes discussing history" thing that's built up.

I mean seriously......Omar S to Ame to fucking Tiesto, any music deserves better than this, treat it with the magic and passion it deserves if you actually have the time to spend all day talking about it online.

God knows I currently don't but everybody needs to. If you have information, share it, make it as accessible as possible, spread it, talk about it, bring it to people. It's really fucking grim reading around the net at the moment.

For me, the notions of authenticity and purity that are being alluded to and assigned to Detroit techno above are wrong-headed. Like culture more generally, all specific scenes and genres of music are influenced by a myriad of different sources, and in turn go on to influence other types of music. To say that any one type of music is "pure" and that subsequent related genres are somehow degraded or bastardised is to kind of miss the point.

These may be truisms, but worth repeating I think.

It's the Burial thread all over again

I remember getting slammed for telling people that you wouldn't get it unless you had been to Detroit.

-- Display Name

you probably got slammed for this because it doesn't logically make sense. aren't mills' big stated influences over the last 10 years commes des garcons, black and white silent movies and conceptual art? isn't his day-job running a european-style clothing boutique featuring belgian and japanese designers?

there is obviously so much more to the guy's intellectual profile than "oh hey i'm a just brother bringing the realness from detroit" that it seems nasty and reductive to boil it down to that.

also reminds me of simon reynold's great QED-bodyslam on kirk degiorgio: "don't you realize he made hard-and-fast friends w/ the detroit crew because those guys basically aspired to be white european aesthetes LOL"

"i think the problem is that in the US, house and techno culture existed before rave culture. they were their own stand alone cultures with roots and customs. in the UK and Europe, their music was imported and used in a completely foreign culture. you can see the classic Detroit and Chicago deejays discuss this in many of their old interviews."

^^^ urgent & key, but all music does this to some extent. it's a dialogue!

http://www.plong.com/MusicCatalog/V/VA%20-%20Tresor%20Compilation%20vol.2%20-%20Berlin-Detroit%20A%20Techno%20Alliance/VA%20-%20Tresor%20Compilation%20vol.2%20-%20Berlin-Detroit%20A%20Techno%20Alliance.jpg

Detroit Techno could only come from Detroit.
Chicago House could only come from Chicago.
UK Hardcore could only come from the UK.
Sheffield Bleep could only come from Sheffield.
Memphis Soul from Memphis.
New Jersey House from New Jersey.
Eurodance from Frankfurt.
Italo Disco from Italy (and some other places).
Munich Disco from Munich.

I really don't understand what there is to be won in claiming a certain music developped at a certain place and a certain time. It did. So what?

i came to say this thread sunk from being a celebration of wonderful music that has touched us into some pedantic petty bullshit, but then 24 unagi plaza came and said the same with much better words.

anyways - soul ii soul 'african dance'! dope!

it's so slow

ok so i listened to contact special again and it is excellent so i need to amend my comment upthread.

the narrative arc is abduction/levitation/lift-off (first half or so) followed by struggle, inquisitiveness and finally, a kind of acceptance or contentment (not acquiescence). the music is mostly economical mills (if you want to talk comme des garçons, rei kawakubo's mottos are "strength" and "never repeat yourself"; mills' might also be strength and a kind of refinement through repetition and deep knowledge of his reduced musical tools.) the sonic palette is is mostly 909s and trademark millsian synth leads (the phrasal stuff i gush about), but there are a few housier cuts/cut-ups. nothing feels as willfully portentous as some of the soundtrack work and the album does really flow together contrary to my "it would work better as the singles" comment. it would have been exciting to collect the singles as there's a kind of chapter aspect to the flow.

my friend was at that jeff mills talk at Sonar and apparently he genuinely believes the age of aquarius is going to arrive in 2069. and that techno is paving the way for it.

Right now I have an overwhelming urge to listen to Timewriter...

This review of Sonar over at FACT FACT amused me. Proves that the Detroit camp are capable of spouting just as much bull as Richie and his minus cohorts:

The other big deal on the first proper Sónar by Night was M—nus Records presents Contakt. I’m not sure anyone who wasn’t actively involved knew everything that was going on, but the basic premise was that Magda, Gaiser, Troy Pierce, Mark Houle and Heartthrob rotated between their laptops, a bit like when you played round the world table tennis at school, and Richie Hawtin made new tunes up from different bits of their tunes on his cube. It was total Computer World, a bit like when Hot Chip make the songs up in front of you, but a thousand times more grandiose, space age and camp, right down to the outfits in the promo shots. Compare it to Jeff Mills and Mike Banks the next night, whose X-102 return was billed as ‘a conceptual tour de force which explores all the aspects of this mysterious planet (Saturn), including its rings and moons, at the classic co-ordinates of UR’ and actually resulted in a guff performance (Mills reckons that for electronic music to develop ‘we need to stop dancing, it gets in the way’), and it’s clear which techno luminary's having more fun with his vast amounts of spare time.

Mills reckons that for electronic music to develop ‘we need to stop dancing, it gets in the way’

FFS x 10,000,000,000,000

I was about to duck in and ask where just really enjoying dancing to music comes in, and I think that just got non-answered in brave new ways

Proves that the Detroit camp are capable of spouting just as much bull as Richie and his minus cohorts

c'mon you must've read some D May quotes from '89-'90?

but i wish we could talk more about specific old tracks here and what makes them so distinctly great (inc technical/musical talk, usually fun to geek on), as opposed to this wider picture stuff which is pretty circular

Start it!

(not meant to sound snide or anything--you know I always like what you have to say).

i'm including myself in that 'we', sadly

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3242075/The-Disco-Handbook

well okay let's talk joy here: i put 'girl from botany bay' on my ipod shuffle, and it came on when i was in a shit mood, and i was elevated all over again.

also, i've been listening to Lindstrom again because of the new album. and i can't decide whether he's a totally amazing one-trick pony or has actually progressed quite a bit in the last few years.