Detroit techno
Encyclopedia
Detroit techno is an early style of electronic music
beginning in the 1980s. Detroit, Michigan
has been cited as the birthplace of techno
music. Prominent Detroit Techno artists include Juan Atkins
, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson
. A distinguishing trait of Detroit techno is the use of analog synthesizer
s and early drum machine
s, particularly the Roland TR-909
, or, in later releases, the use of digital emulation to create the characteristic sounds of those machines.
music was originally thought of as a subset to Chicago
's early style of house
. However, some critics believe that the Detroit techno movement was an adjunct to house
music, named for the new style of music played at a Chicago nightclub called "The Warehouse". Although producers in both cities used the same hardware and even collaborated on projects and remixes together, Detroiters traded the choir
-friendly vocals of House for metallic clicks, robotic voices and repetitive hooks reminiscent of an automotive assembly line
. Many of the early techno tracks had futuristic or robotic themes, although a notable exception to this trend was a single by Derrick May under his pseudonym Is , called Strings of Life. This vibrant dancefloor anthem was filled with rich synthetic string arrangements and took the underground music scene by storm in May 1987. With subtle differences between the genres, clubs in both cities included Detroit techno and Chicago house tracks in their playlists without objection from patrons (or much notice by non-audiophiles).
, Kevin Saunderson
and Derrick May, also known as the "Belleville Three". The three, who were high school friends from Belleville, Michigan
, created electronic music tracks in their basement(s). Eventually, they were in demand at local dance clubs, thanks in part to seminal Detroit radio personality The Electrifying Mojo
. Ironically, Derrick May once described Detroit techno music as being a "complete mistake...like George Clinton
and Kraftwerk
caught in an elevator, with only a sequencer
to keep them company."
, New York. At the age of nine he moved to Michigan
, where he attended Belleville High School
in Belleville
, a town some 30 miles from Detroit. In school he befriended Derrick May and Juan Atkins, both of whom had been born in Detroit but later moved to suburban Belleville.
. We never took it as just entertainment, we took it as a serious philosophy,” recalls May.
Belleville was located near several automobile factories, which provided well-paying jobs to a racially integrated workforce. “Everybody was equal,” Atkins explained in an interview. “So what happened is that you’ve got this environment with kids that come up somewhat snobby, ‘cos hey, their parents are making money working at Ford
or GM
or Chrysler
, been elevated to a foreman, maybe even a white-collar job.” European acts like Kraftwerk
were popular among middle-class black youth.
The segratory stigma attaching to Eight Mile Road was comparable to that dividing lines around Watts in Los Angeles
, The Bronx in New York City
, or Chicago
's South Side. Although the Belleville Three lived outside the city limits, their influence in loft apartment parties, after hours and high school clubs and late night radio united listeners of progressive dance music from above and below Eight Mile Road. Even Techno-friendly regular hours clubs like The Shelter, The Music Institute and The Majestic were incubators Techno's progress from basements and late night radio onto the dancefloors of the world.
During the first wave of Detroit techno scene of the 80s, huge parties were held with upwards to fifty or more competing DJs. Most of the early party-goers were made up of middle-class black youths. However, as Detroit experienced heavy economic downfall, many of the middle-class white families fled to the suburbs in what is called the "white flight" of the early 70s while middle-class black families were displaced by the degentrification of once securely middle-class black districts.
Detroit Techno as a genre created a new-found, integrated club scene in Detroit that had not been felt in a general sense after the Motown label moved to Los Angeles. Television programs like TV62 - WGPR's "The Scene" - featured a racially and ethnically very mixed selection of dancers every weekday after school, but the playlist was typically jammed with the R&B and Funk tracks of the day, like Prince or the Gap Band. Breakouts like Juan Atkins's Technicolor, under his Channel One moniker, eventually found their way onto The Scene, and helped to validate the burgeoning local Techno underground with the urban high school set, college radio programmers and DJs from Chicago to London and beyond. In addition, the advent of a huge circuit of local parties in Detroit spawned competition between a number of DJs, with a week's preparation for a party being common.
The club scene was as much in transition as the city they were in. The widespread popularity of techno across socio-economic lines led to a mixing between West Side and elite high school youths with ghetto and gangster "jits" (abbreviation for "jitterbug"). Unfortunately, the economic problems of Detroit and the prevalent social apathy and desolation led to a proliferation of gun violence
within clubs and by 1986, the techno club scenes were wrought with gun shootings, fights, and acts of violence further compounding the sociological and economic recovery of Detroit.
This wave of violence, economic collapse, and socio-communal atrophy extensively affected the Detroit techno themes. Still influenced by the same Euro sounds, Juan Atkins
and Rick Davis
formed Cybotron producing Detroit hits like Alleys of Your Mind, Techno City, Cosmic Cars, and Clear before signing onto the Fantasy label. However, Cybotron's dominant mood of tech-noir and desolation played into describing the city's decline. "But for all their futuristic mise-en-scene, the vision underlying Cybotron songs was Detroit-specific... from industrial boomtown to post-Fordist wasteland, from US capital of auto manufacturing to US capital of homicide." By the end of the first successful wave of Detroit techno, the city's center had become a ghost town and the techno landscape was evolving into a more hardcore, militaristic frenzy of drug-infused rave and trance scene.
, Kraftwerk
, Bootsy
, Parliament
, Prince
, and The B-52's
. The electronic and funk sounds that influenced the Belleville Three came primarily from a 5-hour late-night radio show called The Midnight Funk Association, broadcast in Detroit by DJ Charles "Electrifyin' Mojo
" Johnson on WGPR
. Juan Atkins was inspired to buy a synthesizer
after hearing Parliament. Atkins was also the first in the group to take up turntablism, teaching May and Saunderson how to DJ.
to investigate the house music
scene there, particularly the legendary Chicago DJs Ron Hardy
and Frankie Knuckles
. House was a natural progression from disco music, so that the trio began to formulate the synthesis of this dance music with the mechanical sounds of groups like Kraftwerk, in a way that reflected post-industrialist Detroit. An obsession with the future and its machines is reflected in much of their music, because, according to Atkins, Detroit is the most advanced in the transition away from industrialism.
, Atkins met Rick Davis
and formed Cybotron with him. Their first single “Alleys of Your Mind”—recorded on their Deep Space label in 1981—sold 15,000 copies, and the success of two follow-up singles, “Cosmic Cars” and “Clear,” led the California-based label Fantasy to sign the duo and release their album, Clear. After Cybotron split due to creative differences, Atkins began recording as Model 500 on his own label, Metroplex, in 1985. His landmark single, “No UFOs,” soon arrived. Eddie Fowlkes
, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson also recorded on Metroplex.
, and James Pennington
—were a close-knit group who shared equipment and studio space, and who helped each other with projects, friction developed. Each member of the Belleville Three branched off on his own record label. May's Transmat
began as a sublabel imprint of Metroplex. Saunderson founded KMS based on his own initials. They set up shop in close proximity to one another, in Detroit’s Eastern Market district.
. Juan Atkins has been lauded as the "Godfather of Techno" while Derrick May is thought of as the "Innovator" and Kevin Saunderson is often referred to as the "Elevator"
. It allowed for collaboration, and helped inspire what would become the second wave of Detroit-area techno, which included artists whom the Belleville Three had influenced and mentored.
was held, and in 2004 May assumed control of the festival, renamed Movement. He invested his own funds into the festival, and "got severely wounded financially." Kevin Saunderson helmed the festival, renamed FUSE IN, the following year. Saunderson, May, and Craig all performed but did not produce the festival in 2006, when it was again called Movement. Saunderson returned to perform at the 2007 Movement as well.
The Belleville Three continue to tour internationally. All three maintain popular MySpace pages promoting their music and performances. Derrick May says that his mission continues to be "to save the world from bad music."
and Chez Damier, and clubs like the Shelter
and the Music Institute. At the same time, the European rave scene embraced the Detroit sound, thanks to Kool Kat Records's release of a number of Detroit records. May's Strings of Life achieved "anthemic" status in 1989, several years after its recording.
Once Detroit Techno became a full-fledged musical genre, a second generation of regional artists developed into techno icons themselves; Jeff Mills
, Richie Hawtin
(aka Plastikman), Carl Craig
, and Octave One
to name just a few. Mills began his career as "The Wizard" on Mojo's nightly broadcast, showcasing his turntablist skills with quick cuts of the latest underground tracks and unreleased music from local labels. What began as a Europhile fantasy of elegance and refinement, ironically, by the early 90s, British and European techno transformed into a "vulgar uproar for E'd-up mobs: anthemic, cheesily sentimental, unabashedly drug-crazed.", as British journalist Simon Reynolds
puts it. Detroit embraced this maximalism and created its own variant of acid house and techno. The result was a harsh Detroit hardcore full of riffs and industrial bleakness. Two major labels of this sound were Underground Resistance
and +8, both of which mixed 80s electro, UK synth-pop and industrial paralleling the brutalism of rave music of Europe.
Underground Resistance's music embodied a kind of abstract militancy by presenting themselves as a paramilitary group fighting against commercial mainstream entertainment industry who they called "the programmers" in their tracks such as Predator, Elimination, Riot or Death Star. Similarly, the label +8 was formed by Richie Hawtin
and John Acquaviva
which evolved from industrial hardcore to a minimalist progressive techno sound. As friendly rivals to Underground Resistance, +8 pushed up the speed of their songs faster and fiercer in tracks like Vortex. However, it was the drug-fueled dynamic of Ecstacy and amphetamine abuse that drove Detroit's hardcore techno scene to the extremes of "brain-dead brutalism". What had started as a value system of elegance over energy, restraint over abandon shared by "purists" of traditional Detroit techno evolved through mutation into a mind-spinning, hardcore mix of trance, jungle, and bleep-and-bass.
In the mid-to-late 1990s, Detroit Techno producers experimented with extended aural soundscapes featuring sparse, ambient underscores punctuated with sporadic, cyclical periods of percussion. Extended length vinyl projects like those under Hawtin's Plastikman façade are particularly clear examples of this period. Atkins Sonic Sunset CD in 1994 also delivered this new tradition of Detroit techno. This new variant also included new connections to African percussions. The racial politics of Detroit Techno gave rise to a new form of African-American expression, "the link to African drumming and its emphasis on polyrhythms can't be ignored." One such example by a white artist, Richie Hawtin
, is "Afrika" which produced a connection between African drums and percussion with Techno minimalistic programming.
On Memorial Day weekend of 2000, electronic music fans from around the globe made a pilgrimage to Hart Plaza on the banks of the Detroit River
and experienced the first Detroit Electronic Music Festival
. In 2003, the festival management changed the name to Movement, then Fuse-In (2005), and most recently, Movement: Detroit's Electronic Music Festival (2007). The festival is a showcase for DJs and performers across all genres of electronic music.
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
beginning in the 1980s. Detroit, Michigan
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
has been cited as the birthplace of techno
Techno
Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...
music. Prominent Detroit Techno artists include Juan Atkins
Juan Atkins
Juan Atkins is an American musician. He is widely credited as the originator of techno music, specifically Detroit techno along with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson...
, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson
Kevin Saunderson
Kevin Saunderson is an American electronic music producer. At the age of nine he moved to Belleville, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit where he attended Belleville High School and befriended two students, Derrick May and Juan Atkins...
. A distinguishing trait of Detroit techno is the use of analog synthesizer
Analog synthesizer
An analog or analogue synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses analog circuits and analog computer techniques to generate sound electronically. The earliest analog synthesizers in the 1920s and 1930s such as the Trautonium were built with a variety of vacuum-tube and electro-mechanical technologies...
s and early drum machine
Drum machine
A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the sound of drums or other percussion instruments. They are used in a variety of musical genres, not just purely electronic music...
s, particularly the Roland TR-909
Roland TR-909
The Roland TR-909 Rhythm Composer is a partially analog, partially sample-based drum machine built by the Japanese Roland Corporation in 1983. The brainchild of Tadao Kikumoto, the engineer behind the Roland TB-303, it features a 16-step step sequencer and a drum kit that aimed for realism and...
, or, in later releases, the use of digital emulation to create the characteristic sounds of those machines.
History
Detroit technoTechno
Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...
music was originally thought of as a subset to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
's early style of house
Chicago house
Chicago house is a style of house music, a genre of electronic dance music which emerged in Chicago in the mid-1980s. Stylistically, Chicago house has no widely accepted definition, but generally includes the first house music productions by Chicago-based artists throughout the 1980s, and any later...
. However, some critics believe that the Detroit techno movement was an adjunct to house
Chicago house
Chicago house is a style of house music, a genre of electronic dance music which emerged in Chicago in the mid-1980s. Stylistically, Chicago house has no widely accepted definition, but generally includes the first house music productions by Chicago-based artists throughout the 1980s, and any later...
music, named for the new style of music played at a Chicago nightclub called "The Warehouse". Although producers in both cities used the same hardware and even collaborated on projects and remixes together, Detroiters traded the choir
Choir
A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
-friendly vocals of House for metallic clicks, robotic voices and repetitive hooks reminiscent of an automotive assembly line
Assembly line
An assembly line is a manufacturing process in which parts are added to a product in a sequential manner using optimally planned logistics to create a finished product much faster than with handcrafting-type methods...
. Many of the early techno tracks had futuristic or robotic themes, although a notable exception to this trend was a single by Derrick May under his pseudonym Is , called Strings of Life. This vibrant dancefloor anthem was filled with rich synthetic string arrangements and took the underground music scene by storm in May 1987. With subtle differences between the genres, clubs in both cities included Detroit techno and Chicago house tracks in their playlists without objection from patrons (or much notice by non-audiophiles).
The Belleville Three
The three individuals most closely associated with the birth of Detroit techno as a genre are Juan AtkinsJuan Atkins
Juan Atkins is an American musician. He is widely credited as the originator of techno music, specifically Detroit techno along with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson...
, Kevin Saunderson
Kevin Saunderson
Kevin Saunderson is an American electronic music producer. At the age of nine he moved to Belleville, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit where he attended Belleville High School and befriended two students, Derrick May and Juan Atkins...
and Derrick May, also known as the "Belleville Three". The three, who were high school friends from Belleville, Michigan
Belleville, Michigan
Belleville is a city in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 3,991 at the 2010 census. It is the sister city of Machynlleth, Wales. Belleville is southeast of Ann Arbor and southwest of Detroit.-Geography:...
, created electronic music tracks in their basement(s). Eventually, they were in demand at local dance clubs, thanks in part to seminal Detroit radio personality The Electrifying Mojo
The Electrifying Mojo
The Electrifying Mojo is an American radio personality. He was a disc jockey based in Detroit, Michigan whose on-air journey of musical and social development shaped a generation of music-lovers in Detroit and throughout southeastern Michigan and Canada and was of importance to the development of...
. Ironically, Derrick May once described Detroit techno music as being a "complete mistake...like George Clinton
George Clinton (funk musician)
George Clinton is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and music producer and the principal architect of P-Funk. He was the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and early 1980s, and launched a solo career in 1981. He has been cited as one of the foremost...
and Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
caught in an elevator, with only a sequencer
Music sequencer
The music sequencer is a device or computer software to record, edit, play back the music, by handling note and performance information in several forms, typically :...
to keep them company."
Origins
Kevin Saunderson was born in BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York. At the age of nine he moved to Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, where he attended Belleville High School
Belleville High School (Belleville, Michigan)
Belleville High School is a public high school located in Belleville, Michigan and the only zoned high school in the Van Buren School District.- History :...
in Belleville
Belleville, Michigan
Belleville is a city in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 3,991 at the 2010 census. It is the sister city of Machynlleth, Wales. Belleville is southeast of Ann Arbor and southwest of Detroit.-Geography:...
, a town some 30 miles from Detroit. In school he befriended Derrick May and Juan Atkins, both of whom had been born in Detroit but later moved to suburban Belleville.
Geography
The location of Belleville was key to the formation of the Belleville Three as musicians. Because the town was still “pretty racial[ly prejudiced] at the time,” according to Saunderson, “we three kind of gelled right away.” The suburban setting also afforded a different setting in which to experience the music. “We perceived the music differently than you would if you encountered it in dance clubs. We'd sit back with the lights off and listen to records by Bootsy and Yellow Magic OrchestraYellow Magic Orchestra
Sakamoto first worked with Hosono as a member of his live band in 1976, while Takahashi recruited Sakamoto to produce his debut solo recording in 1977 following the split of the Sadistic Mika Band...
. We never took it as just entertainment, we took it as a serious philosophy,” recalls May.
Belleville was located near several automobile factories, which provided well-paying jobs to a racially integrated workforce. “Everybody was equal,” Atkins explained in an interview. “So what happened is that you’ve got this environment with kids that come up somewhat snobby, ‘cos hey, their parents are making money working at Ford
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...
or GM
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
or Chrysler
Chrysler
Chrysler Group LLC is a multinational automaker headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, USA. Chrysler was first organized as the Chrysler Corporation in 1925....
, been elevated to a foreman, maybe even a white-collar job.” European acts like Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
were popular among middle-class black youth.
The segratory stigma attaching to Eight Mile Road was comparable to that dividing lines around Watts in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, The Bronx in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, or Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
's South Side. Although the Belleville Three lived outside the city limits, their influence in loft apartment parties, after hours and high school clubs and late night radio united listeners of progressive dance music from above and below Eight Mile Road. Even Techno-friendly regular hours clubs like The Shelter, The Music Institute and The Majestic were incubators Techno's progress from basements and late night radio onto the dancefloors of the world.
During the first wave of Detroit techno scene of the 80s, huge parties were held with upwards to fifty or more competing DJs. Most of the early party-goers were made up of middle-class black youths. However, as Detroit experienced heavy economic downfall, many of the middle-class white families fled to the suburbs in what is called the "white flight" of the early 70s while middle-class black families were displaced by the degentrification of once securely middle-class black districts.
Detroit Techno as a genre created a new-found, integrated club scene in Detroit that had not been felt in a general sense after the Motown label moved to Los Angeles. Television programs like TV62 - WGPR's "The Scene" - featured a racially and ethnically very mixed selection of dancers every weekday after school, but the playlist was typically jammed with the R&B and Funk tracks of the day, like Prince or the Gap Band. Breakouts like Juan Atkins's Technicolor, under his Channel One moniker, eventually found their way onto The Scene, and helped to validate the burgeoning local Techno underground with the urban high school set, college radio programmers and DJs from Chicago to London and beyond. In addition, the advent of a huge circuit of local parties in Detroit spawned competition between a number of DJs, with a week's preparation for a party being common.
The club scene was as much in transition as the city they were in. The widespread popularity of techno across socio-economic lines led to a mixing between West Side and elite high school youths with ghetto and gangster "jits" (abbreviation for "jitterbug"). Unfortunately, the economic problems of Detroit and the prevalent social apathy and desolation led to a proliferation of gun violence
Gun violence
Gun violence defined literally means the use of a firearm to threaten or inflict violence or harm. Gun violence may be broadly defined as a category of violence and crime committed with the use of a firearm; it may or may not include actions ruled as self-defense, actions for law enforcement, or...
within clubs and by 1986, the techno club scenes were wrought with gun shootings, fights, and acts of violence further compounding the sociological and economic recovery of Detroit.
This wave of violence, economic collapse, and socio-communal atrophy extensively affected the Detroit techno themes. Still influenced by the same Euro sounds, Juan Atkins
Juan Atkins
Juan Atkins is an American musician. He is widely credited as the originator of techno music, specifically Detroit techno along with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson...
and Rick Davis
Rick Davis
Richard Dean Davis is a retired American soccer midfielder, and former captain of the U.S. National Team for much of the 1980s...
formed Cybotron producing Detroit hits like Alleys of Your Mind, Techno City, Cosmic Cars, and Clear before signing onto the Fantasy label. However, Cybotron's dominant mood of tech-noir and desolation played into describing the city's decline. "But for all their futuristic mise-en-scene, the vision underlying Cybotron songs was Detroit-specific... from industrial boomtown to post-Fordist wasteland, from US capital of auto manufacturing to US capital of homicide." By the end of the first successful wave of Detroit techno, the city's center had become a ghost town and the techno landscape was evolving into a more hardcore, militaristic frenzy of drug-infused rave and trance scene.
Influences
The three teenage friends bonded while listening to an eclectic mix of music: Yellow Magic OrchestraYellow Magic Orchestra
Sakamoto first worked with Hosono as a member of his live band in 1976, while Takahashi recruited Sakamoto to produce his debut solo recording in 1977 following the split of the Sadistic Mika Band...
, Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
, Bootsy
Bootsy Collins
William Earl "Bootsy" Collins is an American funk bassist, singer, and songwriter.Rising to prominence with James Brown in the late 1960s, and with Parliament-Funkadelic in the '70s, Collins's driving bass guitar and humorous vocals established him as one of the leading names in funk...
, Parliament
Parliament (band)
Parliament was a funk band most prominent during the 1970s. It and its sister act Funkadelic, both led by George Clinton, began the funk music culture of that decade.-History:...
, Prince
Prince (musician)
Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of...
, and The B-52's
The B-52's
The B-52's are an American rock band, formed in Athens, Georgia in 1976. The original line-up consisted of Fred Schneider , Kate Pierson , Cindy Wilson , Ricky Wilson , and Keith Strickland . Following Ricky Wilson's death in 1985 Strickland switched to guitar...
. The electronic and funk sounds that influenced the Belleville Three came primarily from a 5-hour late-night radio show called The Midnight Funk Association, broadcast in Detroit by DJ Charles "Electrifyin' Mojo
The Electrifying Mojo
The Electrifying Mojo is an American radio personality. He was a disc jockey based in Detroit, Michigan whose on-air journey of musical and social development shaped a generation of music-lovers in Detroit and throughout southeastern Michigan and Canada and was of importance to the development of...
" Johnson on WGPR
WGPR
WGPR is an FM radio station in Detroit, Michigan brodacasting a Mainstream Urban format. Owned by the International Free and Accepted Modern Masons and operated under local marketing agreement by Radio One, the station operates on 107.5 MHz....
. Juan Atkins was inspired to buy a synthesizer
Synthesizer
A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
after hearing Parliament. Atkins was also the first in the group to take up turntablism, teaching May and Saunderson how to DJ.
Early careers
Under the name Deep Space Soundworks, Atkins and May began to DJ on Detroit’s party circuit. By 1981, Mojo was playing the record mixes recorded by the Belleville Three, who were also branching out to work with other musicians. The trio traveled to ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
to investigate the house music
House music
House music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...
scene there, particularly the legendary Chicago DJs Ron Hardy
Ron Hardy
Ron Hardy was an instrumental DJ in the development of house music. An innovator and originator of the genre, he is highly regarded not only for his iconic performances at the Muzic Box, a Chicago house music club, but for his pioneering edits and mixes of disco, soul music, funk and early house...
and Frankie Knuckles
Frankie Knuckles
Frankie Knuckles is an American DJ, record producer and remix artist. He played an important role in developing house music as a Chicago DJ in the 1980s and he helped to popularize house music in the 1990s, with his work as a producer and remixer...
. House was a natural progression from disco music, so that the trio began to formulate the synthesis of this dance music with the mechanical sounds of groups like Kraftwerk, in a way that reflected post-industrialist Detroit. An obsession with the future and its machines is reflected in much of their music, because, according to Atkins, Detroit is the most advanced in the transition away from industrialism.
First wave of Detroit techno
While attending Washtenaw Community CollegeWashtenaw Community College
Washtenaw Community College is a community college located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Founded in 1965, WCC welcomes more than 13,000 people from over 100 different countries for study each year and grants certificates and degrees to over 1,400 students annually...
, Atkins met Rick Davis
Richard Davis (techno artist)
Richard Davis is a composer and producer of techno music from Detroit.A veteran of the Vietnam War, he and Juan Atkins met while students at Washtenaw Community College. Following this, they formed the group known as Cybotron in the early 1980s. Davis also released music of his own under the...
and formed Cybotron with him. Their first single “Alleys of Your Mind”—recorded on their Deep Space label in 1981—sold 15,000 copies, and the success of two follow-up singles, “Cosmic Cars” and “Clear,” led the California-based label Fantasy to sign the duo and release their album, Clear. After Cybotron split due to creative differences, Atkins began recording as Model 500 on his own label, Metroplex, in 1985. His landmark single, “No UFOs,” soon arrived. Eddie Fowlkes
Eddie Fowlkes
Eddie "Flashin'" Fowlkes is a techno DJ from Detroit, Michigan, influential to the early Detroit techno scene.Fowlkes began his career as a DJ in high school, and attended business college briefly before turning full-time to a career in music...
, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson also recorded on Metroplex.
Collaboration
Although the Detroit musicians—the Belleville Three and other early pioneers like Eddie FowlkesEddie Fowlkes
Eddie "Flashin'" Fowlkes is a techno DJ from Detroit, Michigan, influential to the early Detroit techno scene.Fowlkes began his career as a DJ in high school, and attended business college briefly before turning full-time to a career in music...
, and James Pennington
James Pennington
James Pennington, also known as Suburban Knight, is an artist and DJ and Producer with Underground Resistance , an independent record label based in Detroit, USA...
—were a close-knit group who shared equipment and studio space, and who helped each other with projects, friction developed. Each member of the Belleville Three branched off on his own record label. May's Transmat
Transmat
Transmat is the record label of techno music pioneer Derrick May, started in 1986. For years the label "released the tracks that would fuel the Techno boom" .....
began as a sublabel imprint of Metroplex. Saunderson founded KMS based on his own initials. They set up shop in close proximity to one another, in Detroit’s Eastern Market district.
Names
All of the Belleville Three have worked under many different names and titles. Derrick May saw great success under the name is , his moniker when he released his landmark “Strings of Life.” Kevin Saunderson’s most commercially recognized projects was Inner City with vocalist Paris GreyParis Grey
Paris Grey is an American singer, most known for her work with the Detroit-based techno-music producer Kevin Saunderson, as Inner City...
. Juan Atkins has been lauded as the "Godfather of Techno" while Derrick May is thought of as the "Innovator" and Kevin Saunderson is often referred to as the "Elevator"
The Music Institute
Inspired by Chicago's house clubs, May, Atkins, and Saunderson started a club of their own in downtown Detroit, named the Music Institute. The club helped unite a previously scattered scene into an underground "family," where May, Atkins, and Saunderson DJed with fellow pioneers like Eddie "Flashin" Fowlkes and Blake BaxterBlake Baxter
Blake Baxter is an American techno musician, associated with the first wave of Detroit techno. Allmusic called him "perhaps the most underrated figure" of the early Detroit techno scene....
. It allowed for collaboration, and helped inspire what would become the second wave of Detroit-area techno, which included artists whom the Belleville Three had influenced and mentored.
Success abroad
In 1988, due to the immense popularity of American electronic music in Great Britain, dance music entrepreneur Neil Rushton approached the Belleville Three to license their work for release in the UK. To define the Detroit sound as being distinct from Chicago house, Rushton and the Belleville Three chose the word "techno" for their tracks, a term that Atkins had been using since his Cybotron days ("Techno City" was an early single). However, the trio from Belleville had some reservations about the culture that surrounded the drug-filled techno subculture abroad. Derrick May in particular continues to advocate that drugs are not necessary to participate in good music.Recent work
Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, and Derrick May remain active in the global music scene today. In 2000, the first annual Detroit Electronic Music FestivalDetroit Electronic Music Festival
The Detroit Electronic Music Festival , and its successors comprise an annual series of electronic dance music showcases held in Detroit each Memorial Day weekend since 2000...
was held, and in 2004 May assumed control of the festival, renamed Movement. He invested his own funds into the festival, and "got severely wounded financially." Kevin Saunderson helmed the festival, renamed FUSE IN, the following year. Saunderson, May, and Craig all performed but did not produce the festival in 2006, when it was again called Movement. Saunderson returned to perform at the 2007 Movement as well.
The Belleville Three continue to tour internationally. All three maintain popular MySpace pages promoting their music and performances. Derrick May says that his mission continues to be "to save the world from bad music."
Second wave
The first wave of Detroit techno had peaked in 1988-89, with the popularity of artists like Derrick May, Kevin SaundersonKevin Saunderson
Kevin Saunderson is an American electronic music producer. At the age of nine he moved to Belleville, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit where he attended Belleville High School and befriended two students, Derrick May and Juan Atkins...
and Chez Damier, and clubs like the Shelter
The Shelter (Detroit, Michigan)
The Shelter is a music venue in Detroit, Michigan. It is located below Saint Andrew's Hall at 431 E. Congress St. A venue of the same name is featured in the film 8 Mile. Notable artists such as Eisley, Queens of the Stone Age and The Hives have performed at The Shelter....
and the Music Institute. At the same time, the European rave scene embraced the Detroit sound, thanks to Kool Kat Records's release of a number of Detroit records. May's Strings of Life achieved "anthemic" status in 1989, several years after its recording.
Once Detroit Techno became a full-fledged musical genre, a second generation of regional artists developed into techno icons themselves; Jeff Mills
Jeff Mills
Jeff Mills is an American techno DJ and producer.-Career:Starting in the early 1980s, Mills, using the name "The Wizard", was a recurring guest DJ on "The Electrifying Mojo" radio show on WJLB...
, Richie Hawtin
Richie Hawtin
Richard Hawtin is an English-Canadian electronic musician and DJ who was an influential part of Detroit techno's second wave of artists in the early 1990s and a leading exponent of Minimal techno since the mid 1990s...
(aka Plastikman), Carl Craig
Carl Craig
Carl Craig is a Detroit-based producer of techno music, and is considered to be one of the most important names in the Detroit second generation of techno producers and DJs...
, and Octave One
Octave One
Octave One is a group of American Techno musicians composed of siblings Lenny Burden and Lawrence Burden, sometimes associated with their three other brothers, Lorne Burden, Lynell Burden and Lance Burden. In 1989, The band debuted on Derrick May's Transmat record label with the single "I Believe"...
to name just a few. Mills began his career as "The Wizard" on Mojo's nightly broadcast, showcasing his turntablist skills with quick cuts of the latest underground tracks and unreleased music from local labels. What began as a Europhile fantasy of elegance and refinement, ironically, by the early 90s, British and European techno transformed into a "vulgar uproar for E'd-up mobs: anthemic, cheesily sentimental, unabashedly drug-crazed.", as British journalist Simon Reynolds
Simon Reynolds
Simon Reynolds is an English music critic who is well-known for his writings on electronic dance music and for coining the term "post-rock". Besides electronic dance music, Reynolds has written about a wide range of artists and musical genres, and has written books on post-punk and rock...
puts it. Detroit embraced this maximalism and created its own variant of acid house and techno. The result was a harsh Detroit hardcore full of riffs and industrial bleakness. Two major labels of this sound were Underground Resistance
Underground Resistance
Underground Resistance is a musical collective from Detroit, Michigan, in the United States of America. They are the most militantly political example of modern Detroit Techno, with a grungy, four-track musical aesthetic and a strictly anti-mainstream business strategy...
and +8, both of which mixed 80s electro, UK synth-pop and industrial paralleling the brutalism of rave music of Europe.
Underground Resistance's music embodied a kind of abstract militancy by presenting themselves as a paramilitary group fighting against commercial mainstream entertainment industry who they called "the programmers" in their tracks such as Predator, Elimination, Riot or Death Star. Similarly, the label +8 was formed by Richie Hawtin
Richie Hawtin
Richard Hawtin is an English-Canadian electronic musician and DJ who was an influential part of Detroit techno's second wave of artists in the early 1990s and a leading exponent of Minimal techno since the mid 1990s...
and John Acquaviva
John Acquaviva
John Acquaviva is an Italian-born Canadian second-wave techno artist and club DJ from London, Ontario. His friend Richie Hawtin co-founded the Plus 8 record label with him in 1990.In 2006, Acquaviva reached #22 on the ....
which evolved from industrial hardcore to a minimalist progressive techno sound. As friendly rivals to Underground Resistance, +8 pushed up the speed of their songs faster and fiercer in tracks like Vortex. However, it was the drug-fueled dynamic of Ecstacy and amphetamine abuse that drove Detroit's hardcore techno scene to the extremes of "brain-dead brutalism". What had started as a value system of elegance over energy, restraint over abandon shared by "purists" of traditional Detroit techno evolved through mutation into a mind-spinning, hardcore mix of trance, jungle, and bleep-and-bass.
In the mid-to-late 1990s, Detroit Techno producers experimented with extended aural soundscapes featuring sparse, ambient underscores punctuated with sporadic, cyclical periods of percussion. Extended length vinyl projects like those under Hawtin's Plastikman façade are particularly clear examples of this period. Atkins Sonic Sunset CD in 1994 also delivered this new tradition of Detroit techno. This new variant also included new connections to African percussions. The racial politics of Detroit Techno gave rise to a new form of African-American expression, "the link to African drumming and its emphasis on polyrhythms can't be ignored." One such example by a white artist, Richie Hawtin
Richie Hawtin
Richard Hawtin is an English-Canadian electronic musician and DJ who was an influential part of Detroit techno's second wave of artists in the early 1990s and a leading exponent of Minimal techno since the mid 1990s...
, is "Afrika" which produced a connection between African drums and percussion with Techno minimalistic programming.
On Memorial Day weekend of 2000, electronic music fans from around the globe made a pilgrimage to Hart Plaza on the banks of the Detroit River
Detroit River
The Detroit River is a strait in the Great Lakes system. The name comes from the French Rivière du Détroit, which translates literally as "River of the Strait". The Detroit River has served an important role in the history of Detroit and is one of the busiest waterways in the world. The river...
and experienced the first Detroit Electronic Music Festival
Detroit Electronic Music Festival
The Detroit Electronic Music Festival , and its successors comprise an annual series of electronic dance music showcases held in Detroit each Memorial Day weekend since 2000...
. In 2003, the festival management changed the name to Movement, then Fuse-In (2005), and most recently, Movement: Detroit's Electronic Music Festival (2007). The festival is a showcase for DJs and performers across all genres of electronic music.
Notable Detroit area producers
- Aaron-Carl RaglandAaron-Carl RaglandAaron-Carl Ragland better known simply as Aaron-Carl was an American electronic dance musician....
- Anthony ShakirAnthony ShakirAnthony "Shake" Shakir, who also uses the aliases Sequence 10 and Da Sampla, is an American techno producer, best known for his contributions to Detroit techno....
- Aux 88AUX 88AUX 88 is an electro group from Michigan, USA. AUX 88 is composed of Tom Tom and Keith Tucker The group was originally formed as "RX-7" in 1985. The group also formed another project known as Sight Beyond Sight, before forming AUX 88 in 1993. In 1995, Tucker went solo and Hamilton continued as...
- Blake BaxterBlake BaxterBlake Baxter is an American techno musician, associated with the first wave of Detroit techno. Allmusic called him "perhaps the most underrated figure" of the early Detroit techno scene....
- Carl CraigCarl CraigCarl Craig is a Detroit-based producer of techno music, and is considered to be one of the most important names in the Detroit second generation of techno producers and DJs...
- Claude YoungClaude YoungClaude Young Jr. is a techno DJ from Detroit. Known for his mixing style that includes scratches, juggles and cuts, Claude Young has played in clubs all around the world....
- D Wynn
- DJ RolandoDJ RolandoDJ Rolando is a Latin American techno DJ and producer from Detroit, Michigan, United States. He released music with the groups Underground Resistance and Los Hermanos...
- DJ BONE
- Derrick May
- DopplereffektDopplereffektDopplereffekt is an electronic music act which has been active since at least 1995 . It is named after the German word for the Doppler effect...
- DrexciyaDrexciyaDrexciya was an electronic music band from Detroit, Michigan. The late James Stinson was the only officially identified member of Drexciya, but it was considered an open secret that he had a partner, Gerald Donald.- Style :...
- Eddie Fowlkes
- James PenningtonJames PenningtonJames Pennington, also known as Suburban Knight, is an artist and DJ and Producer with Underground Resistance , an independent record label based in Detroit, USA...
- Jay Denham
- Jeff MillsJeff MillsJeff Mills is an American techno DJ and producer.-Career:Starting in the early 1980s, Mills, using the name "The Wizard", was a recurring guest DJ on "The Electrifying Mojo" radio show on WJLB...
- Juan AtkinsJuan AtkinsJuan Atkins is an American musician. He is widely credited as the originator of techno music, specifically Detroit techno along with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson...
- K Hand
- Kenny LarkinKenny LarkinKenny Larkin is an American techno producer from Detroit. He has been described by Allmusic as "massively influential" on American, British, and German techno....
- Kevin SaundersonKevin SaundersonKevin Saunderson is an American electronic music producer. At the age of nine he moved to Belleville, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit where he attended Belleville High School and befriended two students, Derrick May and Juan Atkins...
- Los HermanosLos HermanosLos Hermanos is a rock band from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The group was formed in 1997 by Marcelo Camelo , Rodrigo Amarante , Rodrigo Barba , and Bruno Medina...
- Martin Bonds
- Mike BanksMike Banks (musician)Michael Anthony Banks, better known as "Mad" Mike Banks, is an American techno producer. He is the co-founder, along with Jeff Mills, of US record label Underground Resistance and was a key player in the "second generation" of Detroit techno....
- Mike Huckaby
- Mike GrantMike GrantMichael Grant was a Canadian ice hockey defenceman who played for the Montreal Victorias in the AHAC.-Playing career:...
- MoodymannMoodymannMoodymann also known as Kenny Dixon Jr or KDJ for short, is a Techno/House musician based in Detroit, Michigan.He creates a thoroughly hybrid form of techno/house dance music, jazz, soul, disco and funk via his innovative use of reworked riffs, samples , and grooves taken from...
- Octave OneOctave OneOctave One is a group of American Techno musicians composed of siblings Lenny Burden and Lawrence Burden, sometimes associated with their three other brothers, Lorne Burden, Lynell Burden and Lance Burden. In 1989, The band debuted on Derrick May's Transmat record label with the single "I Believe"...
- Orlando VoornOrlando VoornOrlando Voorn is a Dutch DJ and electronic music producer. As a solo artist he has released work since the early 80s under a large amount of aliases containing Balance, Frequency, Baruka, Basic Bastard, Fix, Dope Dog, Boy, Stalker and The Nighttripper...
- Richard DavisRichard Davis (techno artist)Richard Davis is a composer and producer of techno music from Detroit.A veteran of the Vietnam War, he and Juan Atkins met while students at Washtenaw Community College. Following this, they formed the group known as Cybotron in the early 1980s. Davis also released music of his own under the...
- Richie HawtinRichie HawtinRichard Hawtin is an English-Canadian electronic musician and DJ who was an influential part of Detroit techno's second wave of artists in the early 1990s and a leading exponent of Minimal techno since the mid 1990s...
- Robert HoodRobert HoodRobert Hood is an American electronic music producer and DJ. He is a founding member of group Underground Resistance as a 'Minister Of Information' with Mad Mike Banks & Jeff Mills. He is often considered to be one of the founders of minimal techno....
- Scan 7
- Sean DeasonSean DeasonSean Deason is an American techno producer from Detroit. His aliases include Project X, Sounds Intangible Nature, Freq, and X-313....
- Seth TroxlerSeth TroxlerSeth Troxler is an American born electronic music producer and DJ now residing in Berlin, Germany.-History:Seth Troxler was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan but grew up in suburban Detroit. As a child, thanks to godfather S.F...
- Suburban Knight
- Stacey PullenStacey PullenStacey Pullen is an American techno musician based in Detroit.Pullen was raised in Detroit, where he became interested in electronic music early in his life. He began working on the Detroit techno scene in 1990, studying with Derrick May and working with him on business ventures. He used the...
- StrandStrandA strand is a beach, a geological formation consisting of loose rock particles along the shoreline of a body of water.Strand or "the Strand" may also refer to:-Geography:British Isles...
- Terrence Dixon
- Terrence ParkerTerrence ParkerTerrence Parker is a house deejay and music producer from Detroit, Michigan, United States.Parker has a long career in deejaying. In 2010 he celebrates his 30th music anniversary. He has been actively deejaying in hundreds of cities around the world. These events range from night clubs to music...
- Theo ParrishTheo ParrishTheo Parrish is a techno/house musician based in Detroit, Michigan. He was born in Washington, DC. He grew up in Chicago, Illinois listening to jazz musicians like Miles Davis, Nina Simone, and George Gershwin. He graduated from the Chicago Academy of the Arts and went to study at the Kansas City...
- The Burden Brothers
- The MartianThe MartianThe Martian, by George du Maurier, published in 1898 is a long , largely autobiographical, novel that describes the lives of two bosom friends, Barty Josselin and Robert Maurice, starting from their school days in Paris in the 1850s...
- Thomas BarnettThomas BarnettThomas P.M. Barnett is an American military geostrategist and Chief Analyst at Wikistrat.-Education and career:Barnett was born in Chilton, Wisconsin, and grew up in Boscobel, Wisconsin. A distant cousin, Major General George Barnett , was Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps during World War I...
- Trackmaster Lou
Notable Detroit area record labels
- 430 West Records430 West Records430 West Records is an independent record label based in Detroit, MI USA formed in 1990 by Lawrence Burden, Lenny Burden, and Lynell Burden just months after recording their debut record for Derrick Mays' Transmat label. 430 West was formed as an outlet for the Burden Brothers' own productions...
- AxisAxis RecordsAxis Records may refer to:* A record label which is operated by Jeff Mills which releases most of his work* The former name of 4AD, a record label which was started in 1979 as Axis Records by Ivo Watts-Russell and Peter Kent, but quickly renamed when it was discovered that Axis Records already...
- Detroit Techno Militia
- FragileFragile RecordsFragile Records is a sub-record label of Transmat from Detroit....
- MetroplexMetroplex (record label)Metroplex is a techno record label in Detroit, founded in 1985 by techno pioneer Juan Atkins. Juan Atkins did most of his work for the label under the pseudonyms Model 500 and Infiniti.-Discography:* M-001 Model 500 - No UFOs/Future...
- Planet E CommunicationsPlanet E CommunicationsPlanet E Communications is an independent electronic music recording label that started in 1991 in Detroit, Michigan. The label is the brainchild of DJ/Producer Carl Craig. Evolving from Craig’s desire to have creative independence from the major label industry, Planet E would manage, in a short...
- Plus 8Plus 8Plus 8 is a Canadian techno record label, based in Windsor, Ontario and founded in 1990 by DJs Richie Hawtin and John Acquaviva. Initial releases were by the pair themselves and their friends using aliases such as States of Mind and Cybersonik, along with other Detroit-based musicians such as...
- Red PlanetRed PlanetRed Planet is a nickname for the planet Mars, due to its surface color. It may also refer to:* Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein* Red Planet , an 1994 animated adaptation of the novel...
- TransmatTransmatTransmat is the record label of techno music pioneer Derrick May, started in 1986. For years the label "released the tracks that would fuel the Techno boom" .....
- Underground ResistanceUnderground ResistanceUnderground Resistance is a musical collective from Detroit, Michigan, in the United States of America. They are the most militantly political example of modern Detroit Techno, with a grungy, four-track musical aesthetic and a strictly anti-mainstream business strategy...
- Interface Records(Metroplex sub label)
Other notable Detroit techno styled producers and acts
- Dave AngelDave AngelDavid Angelico Nicholas Gooden , better known as Dave Angel, is an English techno musician.-Early years:Angel was born in Chelsea, London in 1966. He is the son of a London-based jazz musician, and the elder brother of rapper Monie Love...
- Aril BrikhaAril BrikhaAril Brikha is one of the world leading Assyrian Techno musicians, he is nominated for the Best Dance album in the Swedish National radio Gold Gala award in his adopted country of Sweden.-History:...
- Surgeon (musician)Surgeon (musician)Surgeon is the pseudonym of Anthony Child, an English electronic musician and DJ. Child releases music on his own labels Counterbalance and Dynamic Tension. Established imprints, such as Tresor, Soma, and Harthouse, have also released Surgeon's original material and remixes...
- XDB
See also
- Electrofunk
- List of electronic music genres
- Music of Detroit, Michigan