I moved back to Chicago after my undergraduate years in Southern Indiana at Indiana University, and my roommate and partner in all things philosophical Scott moved to Detroit where he discovered the Detroit warehouse party scene that I had been traveling to since 1991, especially for Richie Hawtin's Packard Plant parties. I even wrote a Cheesy article about going up there for the techno scene for the student newspaper. Hopefully that thing has not been archived somewhere. I was quite proud of how "underground" I was. We left Bloomington, Indiana in 1995 with our totally useless degrees in Religious Studies and Philosophy. Scott had a moment of no return seeing DJ Bone blowing minds at an abandoned building with stolen electricity "somewhere in Detroit," and then visiting Submerge to spend what very little money he had on Underground Resistance records, which explains the heavy presence of UR on this mix. Thankfully, the first time that he went shopping, Mike Banks was there to help him spend his money right. For me, it was DJ Hyperactive showing me what to buy at a record store on the Southside of Chicago that I can't remember the name of right now, but it wasn't Gramophone, which is on the Northside and where fellow IU grad Miles Maeda worked. I first heard Jeff Mills, Robert Hood, Juan Atkins, and German techno, mostly Tresor records, from Hyperactive. I once went to a party when I was an undergraduate at IU where Miles Maeda was spinning, and he was playing a lot of Detroit stuff too. I specifically remember hearing Derrick May, Juan Atkins, and Aux 88 for the first time at that IU party, and this taught me that whatever beef there supposedly was between Detroit and Chicago, it wasn't very deep. In terms of Chicago house music, my hero was Derrick Carter. I would buy his mix tapes at Gramophone, and then spend the rest of my life trying to find those record. Thirty year later, I've been able to discover quite a few. 1. Convextion, Miranda: This one tickles the brain into a remembrance of forgotten dimensions of the body. This was one of the first records that an anonymous member of the UR crew handed to Scott when he politely asked for some help one day at Submerge back in 96. 2. Thomas Barrett, Re-synthesized: Pure UR madness. It builds and builds without a breakdown or a break of any kind. We're just marching the f— forward into the post-industrial collapse of the the lost future. Get in line or get lost. 3. Psychofuk, Pyschofuk: I really don't know what this is, other than it was one of the records given to Scott at Submerge. Oddly it's on Strictly Rhythm, which is a New York label that isn't associated with this sort of synthesized psychosis. Whatever "Psychofuk" is, it is properly named because it has the correct affect that "Hi-Tek" funk should on one's nuero-biology. These esoteric esoteric sounds call the far near. 4. Basic Channel, Phylps Track 11/11: Scott and I had a Hyperactive mixtape with it on it, and we use to call it the "Train Song," until Scott asked Carlos Soulffront what it was when we heard him put it on at a 90Detroit party. German Dub Techno was the perfect combination of groovy and electronic. A synthesizer manipulates and amplifies electricity. Human bodies are run on electro-chemical grooves. German Dub Tech Scientists were able to put electricity into these enchanted kinds of body grooves because of their past experiments with "Electric Body Music" and Dub Reggae. They then ran the whole tincture through an echo chamber, and this is what came out. Play it loudly on a good sound system. 5. Sender Berlin, Sendersuchlauf: Trust the Germans with their electronic dub machines. They understand post industrial collapse and the weird, wonderful noises that it makes. They loop these sounds and run them through strange filters, and then they slam a four on the floor bass apocalypse down, which really ties the room together. You'll love it. 6. Juan Atkins, Session 1: The Originator! Germany and Detroit have had an uncanny connection from the begging of this electronic music thing. Kraftwerk and Can got electronic noises moving towards body movement in the 70's. And then the Electrifying Mojo introduced Detroiters to both German synth music and Italio-disco in the late 70s / early 80s. Juan Atkins had no idea how his music was being regarded in Europe in the early 80s, but it was regarded and highly so. Germans have enthusiastically followed Detroit's techno output ever since. Juan took a class in high school about "Futurism," and then he bought the proper machinery to create the Future's soundtrack. 7. Suburban Knight: Echolocation: What an eerie UR banger. Thomas Nagel wrote a famous essay about how we can't really know what it's like to be a bat because we know the world visually rather than through echolocation. Thankfully, James Pennington was able to disclose the "what-its-like-ness" of bat-ness with this track. 8. I think this track is called "One Sparkle" by Fumiya Tanaka: I remember it being on a Tresor compilation of some kind, but I can't find it right now. It sounds like a Jeff Mills track to me. The Japanese loved Detroit techno too, and I love this track's hauntological, driving vibe. There's some sort of deformed signal that might be a ship lost at sea in a storm ringing its warped, liquid-metal bell for help. But when you get there, its a massive 1950's fly saucer, and it ripples with the aquiferous music of the raging sea, as if it and the sea had always sung like that to each other, so no emergency after all, I guess. 9. Luke Slater (Planetary Assault Systems), Dungeon: I have no idea why Luke Slater called this track "Dungeon," but those are not the vibes that it gives to me, unless we're talking about the famous Tesor club in Berlin that in many ways resembled a dungeon because it was in the basement of what had been a fallout shelter in East Berlin. But Slater is an Englishman from Reading who definitely spun in some pretty dank place, including Tresor. This track sounds like some very esoteric alien creed with those staccato, metallic xylophone loops. And then there are those Kraftwerk Autobahn rushes employing the doppler effect to its proper ends. 10. Sender Berlin, Tragerfrequenz: Yes, twice. I'm just now realizing that I don't really know anything about Sender Berlin, except that they're German and on Tresor's record label, which is how I first heard them. This one is like an accidentally overheard, alien chant. When alien's get together for spell casting, it sounds like bouncing fuzz. 11. Octave One, Eniac: The track is named after the world's first electronic, general-purpose digital computer. The Burden Brothers of Octave One are a perfect example of Underground Resistance's combining of funk, jazz, soul, and technology. This track sounds like the sort of trains of the future that we were promised but never materialized. Detroit is famous for having a monorail that runs around its downtown, which very few people ever ride because it really doesn't go anywhere useful. It was a particularly odd sight in the 90s before any of the revitalization efforts began in the downtown area. It just continually ran around a decrepit city scape providing a haunting contrast between the Detroit of the past and its seemingly cancelled future. 12. Daniel Bell: Science Fiction. This was a short but very cool phase in Daniel Bell's career in which he made bleep and boop techno. I love the 1960 Sci-fi vibes. Bell takes us to a clandestine laboratory of officially banned but secretly performed experiments with this one. Someone is trying to revivify something awful, and it's working. Just keep turning those knobs and let's see what happens. 13: DHS, House of God (Surgeon remix): I heard Hyperactive playing this one a lot. I had, like most people who grew up on sample-based, electronic music, heard the original and loved it. The "Industrial" music on "Waxtrax," sometimes called "Electric Body Music," and the Italo disco that a lot of Chicago DeeJay's played around the time "House" officially became a thing, were much more influential on House than is sometimes admitted. 14. Joey Beltram, Ten Four: Some say that Joey Beltram's "Energy Flash" was the first true techno track. Who can make the final call about such arbitrary things? This track sounds like a cult of clapping monks getting swept up in the enthusiasm of their daily worship service to electrical storms. 15. Jeff Mills, Alarm: The "Wizard" is definitely one of the best to ever do it. This specific warped alarm sound used to make the warehouse dancers giddy with joy. And the shaking tiny metal things got everyone feeling as ecstatic as the Hare Krishna's jumping around with their finger cymbals. I got to see him again a few months ago. He's still the Wizard, but sounds systems aren't what they used to be. https://www.martinessig.com I mix the mixtapes that I post here but..., Baddass vibes mixed by James Reeves of Midnight Radio: jamesreeves.co for the intro and outro music of most episodes.
