Richard Brophy covers recent and forthcoming releases from LIES, R Zone, Terrence Dixon, Rodhad and more in his latest Separate Mind primer.
Last month’s Separate Mind column focused on the enduring influence of a specific location. As this month’s releases show, great electronic music no longer needs to have come from one inspirational home; it merely has to be going in a compelling direction.
It no longer spawns myths or is home to the institutions that originally earned its status, but Detroit still has so much to be proud of. More than any other city, its influence on electronic music continues to loom large. Impervious to trends and fads and often incorporated into new variants and sounds, the fact that 2013 marks the 30th year since Cybotron released Clear – a milestone that this writer intends to cover in greater deal soon – shows that above others, Detroit electronic music has longevity.
Whatever you think about the notion of the hard-core continuum, there is no doubt that the electro sound pioneered by Detroit artists Cybotron, Drexciya and Aux 88 has proved to have longevity; earlier this month, this writer witnessed arguably the greatest protagonist of this music form, Gerald Donald, perform an hour’s worth of sparkling yet robotic Arpanet tracks to a rammed Dublin warehouse, while a few weeks earlier, the latest Versalife record Rate of Change appeared on Frustrated Funk.
Anonymity’s not what it used to be. During electronic music’s formative years, the phrase ‘faceless techno bollocks’ became a stock in trade (and later still a T-Shirt slogan) for cowboy-boot wearing, Bon Jovi-loving rock critics to dismiss a new music form that they could not comprehend. In that period, it was also the ultimate back-handed compliment for techno artists – the logic being that if a rockist used facelessness as a means to deride you, it was a sign that you were doing something right.
Autumn leaves get squishy underfoot, there’s a noticeable chill in the smoggy air and darkness falls by six o’clock. Set against this fitting backdrop comes the release of the main contender for 2012’s album of the year, Luxury Problems by Andy Stott.
Welcome to Separate Mind, a new monthly column on Juno Plus that aims to cover techno music in its many hues and shades. In an era when every minor development, each tone or tweak to a kick drum is compartmentalised into a new micro-genre, Separate Mind takes the opposite approach. This column will keep its coverage as open-ended as possible, lending support to releases on the basis of whether or not the music deserves it and not because it fits into a narrative arrived at by consensus among so-called influencers.