The Detroit techno & electro pioneers

The first wave – The Belleville Three

Juan Atkins

• Aliases: Audio Tech, Channel One, Frequency, Infiniti, Juan Harvell, Model 600, One, Output, Red Parrot, Triple XXX;
• Groups: Borderland, Channel One, Cybotron, Kreem, Model 500, One On One, Peaches & Cream, Ski, The Belleville Three, Visions, X-Ray

“The 1982 electro track “Clear“, recorded by Atkins and Rick Davis as Cybotron, is often considered the first ‘proto-techno’ track. Continuing to experiment by fusing the extra-terrestrial funk of ParliamentFunkadelic with the futuristic rhythms and hard math of Kraftwerk and the progressive dance theorems proposed by Giorgio Moroder, the Model 500 12″s on his own label Metroplex laid the blueprint for Detroit techno.

Along with the tracks made by two schoolmates from the grade below, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, Detroit techno quickly made its way across the atlantic and immediately sparked the emerging rave culture and soon after the entire global dance community.

Moving through the later 1980s as Model 500, Atkins continued as one of the most prolific and sought after producers of electronic music throughout the 1990s.” (Source: Discogs)

Kevin Saunderson

• Aliases: E-Dancer, Esser’ay, K.S. Experience, Keynotes, Reese, Tronikhouse
• In Groups: 2 The Hard Way, 3 Down, Inner City, Intercity, Kaos, Kreem, Reese & Santonio, The Bad Boys, The Belleville Three, The Reese Project, Tranzistor

Kevin Maurice Saunderson was born in Brooklyn, New York. He spent the early years of his life in Brooklyn before moving at around age 10 to Belleville, Michigan, a rural town 30 miles from Detroit.

Saunderson first met Derrick May when the two were fourteen and both were attending the same school. May had decided not to pay Saunderson after losing a bet and, one day at school, Saunderson punched May in the face, knocking him out cold and giving him a concussion. After the altercation, the two became best friends.

During high school, Saunderson and Belleville High School classmate Juan Atkins became fans of DJ Charles “The Electrifying Mojo” Johnson. Atkins and May soon became serious about mixing others’ music and creating their own, but Saunderson pursued other goals first, studying telecommunications and playing American football at Eastern Michigan University. Atkins had begun recording with Cybotron in 1981, but it was not until 1987 that May followed suit and made a record. Initially concentrating on becoming a DJ, Saunderson was inspired to create his own music after watching the six-month-long process as Atkins and May completed “Let’s Go.”

Derrick May

While May’s musical influence on other producers and DJs cannot be doubted, due to an article published by DJ Mag in November 2020, this blog piece does not cover his legacy. May was accused of sexual misconduct (dating back 2 decades) committed against four women. (A number that later increased to seven.) Several publications covered this topic thoroughly: The Guardian, Selector, MixMag, Resident Advisor, Dancing Astronaut, VICE, Pitchfork, and EDM.

The second wave

The Underground Resistance Collective

There were two major collectives of American artists who are the most closely associated with the birth of Detroit techno as a genre, and one of them is the movement of the musical collective ‘Underground Resistance‘. UR was founded by Jeff Mills and Mike Banks in 1989, later joined by Robert Hood. (Source: Wikipedia)

Their style was reflecting “a synthesis of the type of dance music they have encountered in Chicago, combined with the mechanical sounds of groups like the above already mentioned Kraftwerk, with elements of political and social commentary on the economic recession of the post-Reagan era, “producing uncompromising music geared toward promoting awareness and facilitating political change. UR wanted to establish a means of identification beyond traditional lines of race and ethnicity.” (Source: Wikipedia)

Jeff Mills

• Aliases: H-Bomb, Millsart, Purpose Maker, Servo Unique, The Wizard (2)
• In Groups: Final Cut, H&M, Members Of The House, Spiral Deluxe, Subzero, The Beneficiaries, The Paradox (7), Underground Resistance, X-101, X-102, X-103

Jeff was definitely a key figure to the Detroit scene as it was known that he would often drive as far as Toronto or Chicago in order to purchase newly released music for his sets that took place in empty, suburban warehouses around Detroit.

He also had a nightly radio show called The Wizard at WDRQ (hence his alias), where he would highlight local techno artists, giving light to the first wave of artists, the so called Belleville Three: Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May.  These three individuals were high-school friends who started producing electronic music in their basements. Just like Mills, the Belleville trio, too, “often made trips to Chicago to investigate the house music scene which was a natural progression from the disco music genre.”

Mike Banks

Michael Anthony Banks, better known as “Mad” Mike Banks, is an American record producer. As mentioned earlier, he is the co-founder, along with Jeff Mills, of the record label Underground Resistance and was a key player in the “second generation” of Detroit techno. (Source: Discogs)

Banks is a former studio musician (bass/guitar), having played with Parliament/Funkadelic among others. He worked in the second half of the 1980s with the collective Members of the House, releasing several 12″ singles. Banks and Mills, along with Robert Hood produced most of the label’s early releases. After Hood and Mills‘s departure from UR, Banks headed the label himself, releasing material from acts such as Drexciya and Sean Deason in addition to his own productions.

He is also co-founder and co-owner of Submerge Distribution with Christa Robinson since 1992. Submerge, along with Underground Resistance, is an independent record label that distributes Detroit-based techno worldwide.

Among Banks’s early influences were Juan Atkins and Marshall Jefferson; his later work shows his increasing interest in acid house and industrial. Banks has hewn strictly to an ethic of the underground and refuses to be photographed in public as part of this ethic. His releases often deal with elements of political and social commentary, which have made him a controversial figure within the Detroit electronic music scene. Banks quit playing live shows in the late 1990s due to continuing problems with bringing electronic equipment through customs agencies but began doing live shows again in the mid-2000s.

After Hood‘s and Mills’s departure from Underground Resistance, Banks headed the label himself, releasing material from acts such as Drexciya and Sean Deason in addition to his own productions. (Source: Wikipedia)

Robert Hood

• Aliases: Dr. Kevorkian, Hood Scientific, Inner Sanctum, Monobox, The Mathematic Assassins, The Vision;
• Groups: Floorplan, H&M, Missing Channel, Underground Resistance, X-101, X-102, X-103

Robert Artis Hood is known to be committed to minimal Detroit techno with an emphasis on soul and experimentation over flash and popularity. Hood started Hardwax in 1991 (Robert Hood’s first label prior to forming M-Plant) and he owns and operates the M-Plant imprint (including the two sub-labels Drama and Duet) through which he has released the bulk of his solo material. Next to his own labels, he also released on labels such as Metroplex, the Austrian Cheap label and Jeff Mills‘ Axis label.

Hood was a founding member, along with Jeff Mills and Mike Banks, of the Underground Resistance label, whose influential releases throughout the early and mid-’90s helped change the face of modern Detroit techno and sparked a creative renaissance. Infusing elements of acid and industrial into a potent blend of Chicago house and Detroit techno, UR‘s aesthetic project and militant business philosophy were (and remain) singular commitments in underground techno.

Hood left Detroit (and UR) with Jeff Mills in 1992, setting up a shop in New York and recording a series of 12″ EPs. Through the mid-’90s, Hood focused on his solo work, setting up M-Plant in 1994 and releasing singles such as “Internal Empire”, “Music Data” and “Moveable Parts”.

Although his desire to remain underground has been replaced by an urge to reach a wider audience, Hood remains fiercely critical of artistic and economic movements destructive to inner-city communities and has combined his musical enterprises with outreach and social activist ends. His debut album “Point Blank” took Hood‘s hypnotic minimalism to entirely new depths and territories, whilst his latest album “Wire To Wire” takes his productions onto new levels of musicality and sophistication within the world of electronic music. (Source: Discogs)

The collective that included two labels (Underground Resistance and Somewhere In Detroit) was supported by Milton Baldwin, aka DJ Skurge, or James Pennington, aka Suburban Knight, two crucial figures on the outskirts of Detroit techno since the mid-’80s. Pennington became a mentor for Mike Banks and the Underground Resistance crew with the rise of Detroit’s second wave in the early ’90s.

Electro pioneers

Drexciya

“For long time, Drexciya was considered a mysterious electro unit from Detroit, Michigan that combined a faceless, underground, anti-mainstream media stance with mythological, sci-fi narratives, to help heighten the dramatic effect of their music.

In this respect they were similar to artists within and close to the Detroit collective Underground Resistance. After the tragic passing of one half of the duo, James Stinson was identified posthumously in 2002. Officially, he is the only identified member of Drexciya, but it was considered an open secret that his partner was Gerald Donald, who is until today active in the scene.” (Source: Last.fm)

“The duo’s name referred to a myth comparable to Plato‘s myth of Atlantis, which the group revealed in the sleeve notes to their 1997 album “The Quest”. “Drexciya“ was an underwater reign populated by the unborn children of pregnant African women thrown off of slave ships that had adapted to breathe underwater in their mother’s wombs.” (Source: Last.fm)

The beginning of 2019, the Drexciyan mythology was expanded upon in ‘The Book of Drexciya Vol 1.’ – an anthology in the form of a graphic novel that told further the story through original imagery drawn by Abdullah Haqq.

“The majority of Drexciya‘s releases were in the style of dance-floor oriented electro, punctuated with elements of Detroit Techno, with occasional excursions into some other genres (industrial or ambient).” (Source: Last.fm)

Gerald Donald until today releases under several aliases (Heinrich Mueller, Arpanet) and is active in different formations such as Dopplereffekt (which has several different members, amongst them his wife, To Nhan Le Thi.

When Gerald Donald was asked about his involvement in the Drexciya project in an interview, he only replied:

“Well, I will not directly indicate my involvement in any project. I will leave this question open to the observer’s interpretation. The most important thing has always been the music and concept itself. I adhere to this philosophy. People spend way too much time engaging personalities rather than the music that’s accompanying that personality. Thus, a proportionally inverse relationship is established, and in most cases, the personality acquires the larger value.”

– GERALD DONALD

Dj Stingray

Sherard Ingram, aka DJ Stingray, is the founder of Urban Tribe and is an associate of mythical Detroit electro duo Drexciya. Urban Tribe was started in 1991 by Ingram, with productions released on compilations from Retroactive and Planet E, and a debut album released on Mo Wax in 1998. (Source: Discogs)

As a DJ and producer, Ingram specializes in futuristic electro, preferring fast tempos and inventive beat patterns to more accessible, club-friendly rhythms. When asked to describe his style of electronic music, he prefers to classify it as techno. Taught how to DJ by Kenny Dixon, Jr. (Moodymann) in the mid-80s, he gradually developed and perfected his dense, high-speed mixing style, DJing at biker bars such as The Outcast in Detroit. Slipping bits of techno tracks in with Miami booty bass and West Coast electro and hip-hop. (Source: Wikipedia)

In the late 80s, while working in the record shop Buy Rite Music, he met the late James Stinson of Drexciya and eventually became friends. Shortly thereafter, Stinson asked Ingram to be the opening DJ for Drexciya‘s tour. This is when the name DJ Stingray was given to Ingram.

“Did I feel like a stingray? Never. But I wasn’t going to argue with James Stinson. I felt it and I understood what he wanted, because I understood the Drexciya legacy. I was Stingray from that day on.”

– Sherard Ingram

This is also when he started to use his signature balaclava, which at first was supposed to be the same Underground Resistance mask used by the rest of the crew. Ingram quickly switched it out for a SWAT mask since it was more comfortable.

Unfortunately, the tour never happened due to founding member James Stinson’s untimely death. When Ingram was asked by Hyponik about his impression of Stinson, he said: 

“James was a no-nonsense, hard-working man who was always pushing the envelope and had a vision and meaning behind his music. The brief time we spent working together had a strong influence on me and opened doors creatively and on a professional level.”

– Sherard Ingram

“Tons of the music we sold was made right down the street; we were the epicenter of a lot that was happening during the most formative and busiest years for Detroit electronic music.”

Michael Himes (Record Time’s founder)

“Between 1992 and 2005, he worked at the well renowned store, Record Time (Roseville, Mich.) alongside Rick Wade and others where a separate space within the shop was dedicated solely to House, Techno and Hip-hop 12-inch singles.” (Source: The NY Times)

“According to Alan Oldham, a.k.a. DJ T-1000, a Detroit-born DJ, the store was doing a lot of mail orders, too and Hucakby was dealing with foreign buyers and fans as well — he was an ambassador and tastemaker all over the world, particularly influenced the club scenes in London and Berlin. He was a library of house and techno knowledge, always eager to share.” (Source: The NY Times)

“People would come to the store and Huckaby already had records in a bag, their name on the bag. They wouldn’t even listen to the records. They’d pick up the bag and head to the register. If Huck pulled it, they bought it.”

– Rick Wade, co-worker and close friend of Huckaby

From the mid-90s onwards, he toured extensively around the world, spending much of his busy schedule setting up lecturing camps around the globe offering basic and advanced synthesis, sound design, and production skills in software such as Native Instruments (Reaktor, Maschine) and Ableton. An influential figure for young, aspiring producers and DJs, Huckaby led production workshops at YouthVille Detroit and beyond, with innumerable DJs and electronic artists counting him as a mentor. One of Huckaby’s YouthVille students, Kyle Hall, has gone on to an international DJ career as well. (Source: The NY Times)

“He’d even give me rides home afterward. He was like an uncle figure, a real kind dude.”

– Kyle Hall

Larkin was born in 1968 and raised in Detroit, but did not participate in the early years of Detroit techno because he was serving in the military. Upon his return, he began producing, influenced by Juan Atkins and Derrick May, as well as the Chicago house music scene. His early single releases, “We Shall Overcome” and “Integration”, were issued on Plus 8, a label overseen by Richie Hawtin and John Acquaviva; later releases appeared on Buzz and Warp as well as other labels. His records have seen more success in continental Europe than in the U.S. (Source: Wikipedia)

In 2021, he reissued via his own Art of Dance imprint his Metaphor album. Originally released in 1995, Metaphor is described as an extension of Larkin’s “techno soul agenda,” imbuing Detroit techno with futuristic synthesizers. (Source: The Vinyl Factory)

Alan Oldham

Alan Oldham – the Detroit’s Renaissance Man, a true Motor City original.

“Jeff Mills is quintessential. He’s the gold-plated standard of what we all want to be. I had known Jeff since high school. One day he told me that he had hooked up with this guy and combined his studio with him. And that they were making some new shit. That guy was Mike Banks. I ended up working for them for a while too. I was doing PR for UR. I got to see how Jeff was able to formulate things, how he came up with concepts and ideas. He was always trying to reach above himself.”

– ALAN OLDHAM (IN AN INTERVIEW FOR RESIDENT ADVISOR)

From his beginnings as a member of Underground Resistance (replacing Jeff Mills), to seminal releases on Tresor Berlin, BPitch Control, Third Ear, Suspected, Elypsia Records (under his Detroit Rocket Science alias), his own Pure Sonik and Generator Records label (and many others), to his legendary artwork for such labels as Transmat, Djax-Up-Beats, New Religion, Houndstooth, Dark Entries, and more, Oldham does it all.

Under his stage name of DJ T-1000, Oldham has crisscrossed the globe rocking dancefloors from Amsterdam to London to Rome to Tokyo to Shanghai to Mexico City to his native Detroit and back to his current home in Berlin, where he holds down residencies at Tresor Berlin and Suicide Circus.

As an illustrator who started out in the indie comics scene of the mid-1980s, Oldham leveled up to canvases and has had successful international gallery shows in Amsterdam, Vienna, Paris, Stettin (Poland), Detroit, and Berlin, with more to come. Over 25 years in the game, and Oldham remains at the forefront of both art and music.” (Source: BPitch)

I doubted whether to feature Carl Craig after I came across this article published by Annabel Ross, an award-winning investigative journalist who wrote numerous articles for Mixmag, Resident Advisor, The Guardian Australia/New Zealand, and NME - just to name a few.

Carl Craig

• Aliases: 69, BFC, C2 (4), C2C4, Carls Davis, Designer Music, Eich, Me, Son, Sche, Free (8), FRS, Im.mortal Music, No Boundaries (2), Paperclip People, Parametric (2), Piece, Psyche, Shop, Tres Demented, Urban Culture
• In Groups: Incogdo, Innerzone Orchestra, The Detroit Experiment, Urban Tribe

Ross wrote the following:

“Carl Craig banned me from reviewing Movement Festival this year, held in Detroit nearly three weeks ago. I wasn’t sure if I was going to go public with this information, but after what happened this past weekend, I felt I had to.

I was supposed to be writing about Movement Festival for Mixmag but a few days ahead of the festival I got a call from my editor. Movement had told him I could no longer review the festival. Craig had given the festival an ultimatum — him or me.

If I was allowed to review the festival, he wouldn’t perform. Craig had a headline slot on Saturday night on the Detroit Love stage he hosted at the festival that day and another slot on Sunday night playing a B2B set with James Murphy.

Craig has been intimately involved with Movement Festival since its inception back in 2000, when it was known as Detroit Electronic Music Festival. He is one of the most celebrated figures in Detroit techno. 
Craig banned me from reviewing Movement because of the two investigations I wrote for Resident Advisor in November 2020 and January 2021 detailing the allegations of sexual assault and sexual harassment against his friend and mentor, Detroit techno pioneer Derrick May.”

– ANNABEL ROSS

This is, of course, a huge dilemma, given Craig‘s legacy.

While it is understandable that when someone hears such news about his long-time friend and mentor of 40 years, it must be shocking and many just want to ignore it, as it sounds almost impossible for them to believe. Even Ross acknowledged this in her article:

“I can understand Craig wanting to support May, especially given the impact he has had on Craig’s career and life trajectory and in trying to defend the Detroit techno legacy they are both integral to, a legacy that has historically been obscured by the rise of an overwhelmingly white electronic music industry. I can understand why fans would want to believe that May is innocent, or to downplay the allegations. Ignorance literally is bliss when it comes to our musical heroes and being able to dance freely to the tracks that have brought us so much joy.”

– ANNABEL ROSS

However, she goes further:

“But I can tell you that the women who claim to have been abused by May can’t hear “Strings of Life” without being reminded of their trauma. I can’t enjoy his music anymore either, and Carl Craig lost me as a fan after our Twitter spat nearly two years ago, just a fortnight after I’d visited his Party/After Party sound installation at Dia Beacon museum in upstate New York.

It’s not surprising that Craig and Smith would want to support May, a trailblazing Black musical icon whose success paved the way for their own, but to do it so publicly and mockingly is a slap in the face to survivors of abuse everywhere. It’s a damning display of toxic male solidarity in a scene where women, trans and non-binary people are used to coming last.

a sincere apology from May would have gone a long, long way, coupled with genuine contrition and a commitment to seek therapy for his behaviour. But we’ve seen nothing of the sort; just denial, offensive attempts by May to cast the allegations as racism and a defiant campaign to try and resurrect his tanking career.

It is possible to celebrate Detroit techno and at the same time to demand accountability from the figures in the scene who have abused their power. Without it, their legacy is threatened, but that’s not my fault, nor the fault of the women who bravely chose to share their stories. The only people they can blame for that is themselves.”

– ANNABEL ROSS

The reason why I decided not to delete the part already written about Craig is so that people can see what a life trajectory he had and how many artists he has collaborated with, and yet, he decided to act with such a careless and toxic attitude as Ross described in her article. I personally found the Instagram posts and reposts by him and Omar S the most shocking and disappointing. It is truly nothing else but toxic male solidarity. That is the reason why I introduce him at the end of this blog piece.

Born in Detroit in 1969, Craig was first exposed to the Detroit techno scene in the late 80s via a cousin that ran the lighting for Jeff Mills. After early collaborations with his “first wave” mentor Derrick May, Craig struck out on his own in the early 90s. (Source: The Wire UK)

Recording as 69, BFC, Psyche, Paperclip People, Tres Demented, and under his own name — as well as a slew of other aliases and collaborations — Craig developed an instantly recognizable (and oft-imitated, if rarely matched) style, at once lush and economical, bursting and streamlined.

While known principally as a Techno artist, Craig‘s musical journey hasn’t stopped there. The 1992 track ‘Bug in the Bassbin‘, recorded by his Innerzone Orchestra, is widely credited as sparking a revolution in breakbeat-based music, while his Detroit Experiment brought together artists from Detroit’s jazz and hip-hop scenes; more recently, Craig recorded with Wendell Harrison, Phil Ranelin, and other members of Detroit’s fabled jazz label Tribe for an upcoming Techno-jazz fusion project.

He also had a hand in Urban Tribe‘s The Collapse of Modern Culture, a groundbreaking downtempo collaboration between Sherard Ingram (aka DJ Stingray), Kenny Dixon, Jr. (aka Moodymann) and Anthony “Shake” Shakir, and his one-off projects range from participating in Ricardo Villalobos’ improvising laptop collective Narod Niki to performing on industrial designer Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures.

In 2020, before the pandemic hit, Craig had planned a few days downtime after his live set with Moritz von Oswald at New York’s Dia Beacon; the opening celebration of Craig’s sound installation Party/Afterparty, a commission that developed over the course of five years. As Hannah Ongley wrote for Document Journal, “The installation is unnervingly prescient. In Dia’s post-industrial basement level, the darkness glows neon green, and modular synths steadily build up to a euphoric club beat—the sound of collective fervor right before the inevitable comedown.”

When talking to the German ‘Kaput’ magazine, Craig described Detroit the following way:

“I see these buildings every day. For me they represent the history of Detroit, the history of a place once a blooming industrial city – and now no longer is. Such ruins are monoliths, but to me they mean the same as the debris in Rome or Greece: it is all about the process of remembering of what has been a culture. Those fabrics tell us from their former greatness – and now they are just framework. No other city on this planet is like Detroit. It was here where Henry Ford invented the assembly line – and where Berry Gordy took the concept and came up with Motown from there. Gordy wanted to produce and publish music in an ongoing process, just to have enough to offer for the demand out there. And once the car industry changed over from humans to robots, that affected Juan Atkins. You see, both were inspired by the system of Ford. I deeply believe that there is no other place on this planet as Detroit this all could arise. I talk bout the idea to recharge something that cold with soul.”

– Carl Craig