Dance music: Detroit's influence remains strong in Europe

By Rupert Howe

Thursday, 26 April 2007

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As the birthplace of techno in the mid-Eighties, Detroit has a near-mythical status in dance music's history. Yet, ironically, its reputation as a nexus of sonic innovation is based largely on music committed to vinyl almost 20 years ago by a trio of artists whose status is now that of "living legends".

There's no doubting that Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson made some of the most forward-thinking electronic music of their time, using futuristic aliases like Model 500 and Rhythim Is Rhythim. Yet none achieved lasting mainstream success - hip-hop eclipsed black dance music in America while here in the UK, after the brief Acid House explosion of the early-Nineties, Detroit techno became just another subgenre alongside electronica, ambient and the rest.

It's in Europe that Detroit still gets most respect, whether from the idiotic refrain of Dutch DJ Fedde Le Grand's summer hit "Put Your Hands Up For Detroit" (itself sampled from a 1999 track by Detroit artist Matthew Dear) to the high seriousness of Berlin label Tresor, who have acted as unofficial curators of the Detroit underground since 1991.

One of Tresor's success stories was the resurrection of Eddie Fowlkes, a first-generation Detroit producer, and friend of Juan Atkins, whose career was going nowhere until he released his Technosoul album on the label in 1993. Since then he's become a prolific remixer and DJ, as well as offering outspoken reminders of techno's roots in black culture, and his new album Welcome To My World (Submerge) clearly aspires to "classic" Detroit status, exemplified by the subtle and hypnotic funk of lead track "Aug 13".

Fowlkes' "technosoul", though, sounds positively retro next to the work of Sherard Ingram, a far more mysterious figure from the Detroit network sometimes known as DJ Stingray. Ingram has also done the rounds - he was once signed to trip hop label Mo' Wax - but his new album as Urban Tribe, Acceptable Side Effects (Rephlex), is clinical, experimental electro all the more intriguing because it sounds almost totally inhuman.

Ingram's take on Detroit electro fits a cybernetic vision of man and machine which has its roots in Kraftwerk's great albums of the Seventies. Unlike Italian veteran Maurizio Dami, whose pulsing new electro-disco offering as Alexander Robotnick, My La(te)est Album (Hot Elephant Music), is a product of the more carnal late-Seventies/early-Eighties Italo-disco scene, and sounds like it was recorded specifically for the kind of neon-lit nightclubs where the air is heavy with the smell of amyl nitrate.

Coincidentally, one of Robotnick's inspirations also have an album out this month - the evocatively named Italian disco duo, Black Devil. Their 1978 collection Disco Club has long been a favourite among connoisseurs of outré dancefloor sounds and on Black Devil In Dub (Lo Recordings) it's given a delirious semi-instrumental makeover by original member Bernard Fevre, who turns the retro synthesiser effects up to 11, and various modern-day disciples, including celebrated Norwegian party-starter Prins Thomas.

Based in Oslo, Prins Thomas' own brand of discotised techno-house can be heard on Reinterpretations (Eskimo), a collection of remixes and unreleased versions of tracks from his 2005 debut album recorded with fellow Norwegian Hans-Peter Lindstrom and titled simply Lindstrom & Prins Thomas. Reminiscent of a toned-down version of Mylo, their music is a blithe combination of flowing house grooves and jazzy disco textures which thankfully never descends into the merely tasteful.

It's also merely one example of a flourishing Scandinavian dance scene whose geographical isolation from continental Europe (let alone the UK) has allowed various curiosities to evolve, from the complex electronica of Aphex-inspired Finn Alexsi Perälä, whose Project V (Rephlex) has moments of Boards Of Canada-like delicacy, to vibrant Oslo label Smalltown Supersound, who have previously released works by experimental jazz outfit Jaga Jazzist and Sonic Youth.

They're also responsible for a forthcoming mix-CD by Oslo duo G-Ha and Olanski (aka Geir Aspenes and Ola Smith-Simonsen), whose Sunkissed collection is an outwardly paradoxical celebration of warmth from the wintry north, opening with the mantric postrock of Serena-Maneesh before morphing into a sublime disco-house party. Perhaps unsurprisingly, both the aforementioned Lindstrom and Prins Thomas feature; Oslo is a small town, after all. But, like distant cousin Detroit, there's nothing wrong with the way it sounds.