V.A. Saturday

In 1991 Network Records compiled a twelve track compilation titled Retro Techno/ Emotions Electric, a definitive round up of the early Detroit techno classics that set a fire underneath dance music which is still smouldering. The key figures- Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson and Juan Atkins, known as the Belleville Three- are all represented, a trio who invented techno in a Detroit suburb, who met as teenagers and using some turntables, a synthesiser and a multi- track tape recorder. The Belleville Three weren't operating entirely in a vacuum although hearing their music it seems so otherworldly and futuristic that it seemed that way. They were avid listeners of a local radio show hosted by DJ Charles 'Electrifying Mojo' Johnson who played Parliament, Funkadelic, Prince, The B- 52s, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode. 

Retro Techno had liner notes which included an interview with the three techno creators where the famous Derrick May quote about techno being 'George Clinton and Kraftwerk caught in an elevator with only a sequencer to keep them company'. There is a short piece by Liverpudlian DJ and journalist John McCready and a discography. And then there is the music which was and still is the sound of the future- here's one from each of the Three, Model 500 (Juan Atkins), Kevin Saunderson and Rhythim Is Rhythim (Derrick May). 

No UFOs (D- Mix)

The Groove That Won't Stop

Strings Of Life (Unreleased Mix)

ACR: MIF

Manchester International Festival opened on Friday night with a free performance by A Certain Ratio in a brand new outdoor space, Festival Square. The new arts centre, Factory International, has been under construction for several years (on the site of the old Granada TV studios) and has run wildly over budget. As a result they've had to go for naming rights sponsorship so what should have been Factory International is now The Aviva Factory International (and we could discuss whether Manchester needs to get over its constant referencing of the past, Factory Records, the black and yellow Hacienda stripes and all of that). As Tony Wilson probably never actually said, 'This is Manchester. We do things differently here'. Well, maybe... 

The outdoor space, Festival Square, sensibly has a roof, is open at both sides and overlooks the River Irwell to the left and into the new arts centre to the right (a vast building with a warehouse size space and auditorium and is currently hosting what looks like a fantastic installation by Yayoi Kusama). Festival Square looks and feels like a good space, the sound was good, it's small enough to feel fairly intimate and opened in the pouring rain on Friday night, the decision to build an outdoor gig venue with a roof paying off already. The free gigs at festival Square include The Orielles next Sunday which I also intend to go to. Dave Haslam is heavily involved in the festival and he asked ACR to play. 

ACR play a blinder, a band about to celebrate forty five years of making music, who have been re- energised in recent years with the signing of a deal with Mute, new albums and EPs and the recruitment of a new young singer Ellen Beth Abdi and new young bassist Viv Griffin. They take the stage at 9pm with Martin on drums, drummer Don on bass and Jez centre stage on vox and whistle. Don published the setlist on Twitter (below), the group playing a mix of old and new songs, the new ones firmly established along side the older songs. By the time they get to Flight, their 1980 single and post- punk classic, they're red hot and their back catalogue sounds like one continuous piece, a group with several signature sounds, ever moving forwards and better than ever. 

The final four songs are ACR at their best, the wayward jazz funk of Mickey Way, the Mancunian ecstasy pop of Won't Stop Loving You (dedicated to Denise), the punk- funk noir of Shack Up and their latin percussion and drumfest of Si Firmir O Grido, everyone banging something, whistles being blown and Don and Martin swapping places at the drum stool and then back again. The gig was being filmed, a cameraman bobbing about on stage- hopefully the footage will surface sooner or later. 

The Big E

Afterwards Dave Haslam took over on stage, a DJ set of dance music old and new, joined periodically by a pair of very glamourous dancers and an MC. Dave's set included Strings Of Life, a Manc classic going back to the Hacienda days. Dave built the tension, a breakdown and everyone waiting for the piano riff to come in like a dam bursting. Later on he played something much more modern, something I know I've got but can't remember exactly what it was now, stretching it out and extending the electronic pleasure. Somehow, a largish crowd of middle aged and younger people, dancing as the rain fell only a few feet away, with dancers in drag on the stage, seemed a typically, brilliantly Mancunian way to start a hometown festival. 

Strings Of Life (Piano Mix)

Icon

Some re-worked Detroit techno for you on this Wednesday in May in lockdown. Around 2015 Vince Watson was invited to re- work Derrick May's Icon, a Rhythim Is Rhythim  track from 1996. It came out in 2017 backed with another re-working on the B-side, an updated version of Derrick's co- write with Carl Craig, Kao- Tic Harmony. Vince treats both tracks respectfully, rebuilding them without taking away the original feeling or energy. Some added drums, some strings maybe. Retro Techno/Detroit Definitive- Emotions Electric was the title of a 1991 compilation of the early Detroit techno and it fits this just as well. Dance music for the heart and the head as well as the feet.

Icon (Remixed and Reconstructed)

Situation

There's an interesting read here about one of the most sampled sounds, a laugh that found its way onto records by (but not only) Derrick May, Deee Lite, Snoop Dogg, Roni Size, S'Express and the Macarena. To summarise, when Yazoo were recording the B-side to what would become a number one single (Only You), Vince Clarke and Daniel Miller caught Alison Moyet off-guard with a load of reverb piled onto her vocal mic. She laughed. Clarke and Miller decided to keep the laugh on the song, and it works really well, opening the song up after its electro-pop introduction but before her vocal, trampling all over a man who done wronged her.

Situation

Situation became one of those songs which got picked up in the USA and became an underground club song. It then got re-purposed by the next wave of artists. In Detroit Derrick May under his Rhythm Is Rhythim name layered it all over Nude Photo, one of the tracks that would invent techno. From there it was used in countless tracks, from hip hop to Eurobeat.

I'll save you the bother of searching for Nude Photo if you're at work, which might prick the interest of the boys down in the I.T. Dept.

Nude Photo

While I'm in this techno/house groove we should have something from Detroit and one of the originators of the whole thing. Derrick May was one of the Belleville Three (the other two being Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson). The sound they cooked up in Belleville in the mid-to late 80s was partly a result of isolation (Belleville was pretty racially segregated at the time and the three stuck together). Belleville was a rural suburb of Detroit and many of the residents worked in the car factories, well paid jobs. The black population of Belleville were a black middle class, with the disposable income to buy records and equipment. May, Atkins and Saunderson listened to Kraftwerk, George Clinton, Prince, Yellow Magic Orchestra, The B-52s. Eventually Atkins bought a synth and then taught the other two to dj. They began to play records in the clubs of Detroit and then ventured further, discovering Chicago's house scene. Suitably inspired by the scenes in Chicago's warehouses and clubs, and the largely black and gay crowd losing it on the dancefloor, they returned home to fuse Chicago's house music with Kraftwerk's mechanical sounds, with the stated intention of creating the music of the future.

Nude Photo

The second release under the mis-spelt Rhythim Is Rhythim name was Strings Of Life, one of the key records of the UK's Second Summer Of Love. Nude Photo, co-written with Thomas Barnett, preceded it. Barnett describes driving home after a disappointing session writing with Derrick, with the idea of the 'three Roland drum machines strategically placed on the floor of Derrick's living room' and how he wanted to make them join together in an 'extra-terrestrial-midi-rain dance'. The track was created the following day. The sampled laughter comes from Yazoo. The rest comes from Derrick and Thomas.

Various Artists

I was having a conversation online recently about the wonders of the Various Artists compilation album, which at certain times has been a real work of art. There are others I could go on about at some length but these are the three that immediately come to mind, all released within a few years of each other (and all tied together as well).

I've written before about Creation Records 1991 dance/house compilation Keeping The Faith but it is a perfect example, a well put together round up of similar minded artists and tracks defining a moment in time. From the opening minutes where Fluke take off on a Pan Am to Philly through to Hypnotone, a pair of Primal Scream remixes, Weatherall's definitive remix of My Bloody Valentine, Love Corporation, J.B.C., Sheer Taft, Danny Rampling's The Sound Of Shoom and World Unite here isn't a duff track and it is full of great moments. The Tears For Fears sample in J.B.C.'s cover of We Love You sums up how far Creation Records have shifted in 1991- 'dj's the man you love the most'. World Unite by World Unite is a majestic ambient house dub excursion- bubbling synths, up vocals with an eye on the dancefloor. The only thing I know about World Unite is that it was written by Potter and Stacey. And I love it still.

World Unite

In the mid-to-late 80s Creation excelled at budget compilations, often a way to keep the wolf from the door and keep the cash coming in. At a knock down price of £1.99 1988's Doing It For The Kids was an essential purchase- The Jasmine Minks, Felt, Primal Scream (early indie version), The Weather Prophets (their song Well Done Sonny is below), The House Of Love, The Jazz Butcher, Biff Bang Pow!, My Bloody Valentine, Momus, The Times, Nikki Sudden, Pacific, Heidi Berry, Emily, Razorcuts. It is almost the complete picture of post-Smiths indie. And completely untouched by what was already brewing that would lead to Keeping The Faith. A snapshot of a time.

Well Done Sonny

The last one is this one, Retro Techno/Detroit Definitive Emotions Electric, a 1991 double album of the futuristic sounds of Detroit, a pulling together of the work of Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May, wall to wall techno classics that still sounds like its ahead of everyone else. From Model 500 at the start of Disc 1 Side 1 through to the massive drums, rhythms and bleeps of  The Groove That Won't Stop, this is better than most 'proper' albums. The closing track is a sublime version one of dance music's set texts, the unreleased mix of Strings Of Life by Rhythim Is Rhythim.

Strings Of Life (Unreleased Mix)

This could become a series I fear. Feel free to chip in with your own suggestions.

Mayday

My ears have been very much attuned to techno recently, especially the futuristic sounds coming out of Detroit between 1987 and 1989. There are lots of discussions and arguments in music about firsts, who made the first record in a particular style, who the inventor or originator was. This record, Nude Photo, made by Derrick May as Rhythim Is Rhythim, is arguably the first techno record and it is sublime, hitting the head and feet equally with its marriage of rhythm and melody, and the shock of otherness. There are arguments that Model 500's No UFOs was first or Cybotron was. Others argue that these were electro rather than techno. It gets like that. And it doesn't really matter I suppose.

We have spent some time this week emptying some cupboards and drawers, de-cluttering, rationalising and in some cases chucking shit out. Why I had kept hold of some things? Why had I saved not one, not two, but five old mobile phones? This was made much easier by listening to Innovator, a 1991 six track vinyl compilation of Derrick May's work, where he invents much of the sound of the modern world.

Annette

It's Friday, so as Drew would have it, let's dance.

One of the many dance records Factory passed up on in the late 80s that Mike Pickering then put out on DeConstruction was his own T-Coy track Carino (posted yesterday). They also passed up Voodoo Ray and Ride On Time. Another was Dream 17 by Annette, mentioned by Drew himself in the comments yesterday. Dream 17 is a massive, forward thinking house record with a superb melodic bassline, the 303 in full effect and a vocal giving it soul. It was actually made by Pickering and Simon Topping plus two others using the Annette alias. Carino, Dream 17 and Voodoo Ray were all compiled on the seminal (oops, I used the seminal word) compilation North- The Sound Of The Dance Underground, which had an equally memorable cover (from Manchester's Central Station Design)- goodbye to the grey and the indie, welcome to technicolour house.

Dream 17

There was also a Derrick May remix. Nearly as good as the original.

Strings

On this Saturday morning in October, for no reason other than it came to mind last night, I present to you.... the greatest techno record ever made.

This is the unreleased mix of String Of Life, as available on the superb Retro Techno/Detroit Definitive: Emotions Electric lp, one of dance music's essential texts. This is not techno with banging repetitive beats (not that there's anything wrong with that, in the right time and place), nor a slightly dated late 80s club anthem. This is electronic music as food for the soul, machine music for a future that never quite materialised. As the subtitle of the album said 'Emotions Electric'- and without vocals too.

Derrick May's borrowed piano loop, some wood block percussion, some twinkly bits, some synth string stabs. The sum of the parts...

Strings Of Life (Unreleased Mix)

Acid Brass And (Man Ray)

One more Man Ray portrait, this time of poet and celebrity fascist Ezra Pound, looking as cool as a cucumber while contemplating a move to Italy and the policies of Mussolini. Possibly. To be fair, Ezra did say he regretted his pro-fascist words and actions later in life. Spending several weeks locked in a cage by US forces at the end of World War Two didn't help his mental state either.

Some unrelated dance music (or dance music inspired music) from Jeremy Deller's acid brass album from ages ago. Here the Williams Fairey Brass Band tackle techno classic Strings Of Life, Derrick May's Rhythim Is Rhythim masterpiece.

Strings Of Life

The Strings Go Eeee Eeee Eeee Eeee

The title's probably the only time I'll compare this record with The Ting Tings Great DJ.

Following the previous post, 27 Forever by A Certain Ratio, here's another dance record where I'm posting a version which is not my favourite mix- possibly not that a good theme for a series I'll admit. Derrick May was one of the Belleville Three, along with Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson, who invented techno or at least the Detroit version of it. Strings Of Life (from 1987) is one of the holy artefacts of dance music, with it's glorious mix of strings, piano and clattering drums. It can lift the lid off a club or a front room, and acquired it's name after May took it to Frankie Knuckles, who played it seven times in a row when dj-ing and then christened it Strings Of Life. This version is obviously mind-alteringly good. To my mind though the best version is the so-called Unreleased Mix which was on the Retro Techno/Detroit Definitive compilation album and does exactly what it says on the tin. I've got it and it's downstairs and I'm a bit lazy at the moment, so I'm posting this version. I know, not good enough service really is it? Imagine what would OFBLOG say.

Strings Of Life (Piano Mix).mp3