Communications System by DJ Stingray follows on from other high-quality, electro-leaning releases on Barba from Heinrich Dressel and Marco Bernardi. However, this a broad reference term and no one makes or plays music like Sherard Ingram. On the decks, the Detroit DJ has a supernatural touch, playing records at the wrong speed, seamlessly merging improbable sounds and textures and cutting between tempos and rhythmic structures. Ingram applies the same approach to his productions and Communications System shows again that he inhabits his own sonic universe.
Sitting down to review a new compilation on Soul Jazz conjures up feelings of nostalgia for me. It’s a label that contributed to my own musical education over the years in a time when compilations were the best conduit to uncovering new avenues to explore. Many open-minded collectors and DJs born in the 1980s will probably have indulged in at least one of Soul Jazz’s releases, with the 100% Dynamite series leading to more personal examinations of Tenor Saw, Prince Buster, or Sister Nancy. That late-‘90s period of musical discovery was fuelled, in part, by hopeful punts on compilations, with one, maybe two recognisable names. Soul Jazz also played their own unwitting part in one of my most bittersweet memories; whilst I was in Milan DJing during an ill-fated visit to stay with an Italian girlfriend who dumped me midway through the week, I gifted some local dub obsessives my freshly bought copy of Studio One Dub.
Richard Brophy profiles current transmutations in the world of electro with The Exaltics, DJ Stingray, VC-118A, Ultradyne and more under the spotlight.
The Athens label will issue Cognition next month.
The Detroit electro icon features alongside the newcomer as the London collective revive their label Bleep43 Recordings.
In its original form, Killekill was a party that embraced all sorts of electronic music, and the label has opted for the same approach. It doesn’t seem to bother the former Shitkatapult employee Nico Deuster who runs Killekill that the imprint’s first steps have displayed an almost schizophrenic disregard for the kind of micro-genres that defines electronic music.
Long time Drexciya affiliate Sherard Ingram will release his second album under the DJ Stingray moniker, F.T.N.W.O, next month on Belgian imprint WéMè Records.
Detroit legend DJ Stingray will be releasing a 12″ single through Unknown To The Unknown soon, and we have the premiere of one EP’s three tracks.
“In The Dark is a reality, a small example of how music music and cultural activity thrives in Detroit,” says Still Music label boss Jerome Derradji in his sleeve notes for the imprint’s first compilation. “Every day and night, through the hands, ears and mouths of essential creators, the future of Detroit’s music is being shaped. All we can do is listen and dance in the darkness of a sweaty club.”
Despite being billed as “Drexciyan DJ Stingray” in the early stages of his career, Sherard Ingram never formally collaborated with the duo that lent him his prefix. Having known Drexciya’s James Stinson and Gerald Donald from his time working in a Detroit record store he was recruited by the pair as an official tour DJ, but it was the formation of that relationship that gave Ingram an outlet to create music as DJ Stingray. As mentor/apprentice relationships go, it’s an unconventional one, and one that Ingram seems to have been left to develop on his own terms. Arguably, he has brought his own political angle to the sound of sub-aquatic techno with his productions, which has earned him his own place in the Drexciyan mythos, but this collaboration with Donald (aka Heinrich Mueller) is still long overdue.
Certain events leave an indelible mark, and for this writer, one of those moments was in June, 2002 when Warp’s Magic Bus tour came to my hometown.
DJ Stingray is Sherard Ingram, one of the Detroit music scene’s mainstays for the past quarter of a century. He is a member of Urban Tribe (along with Kenny Dixon Jr, Carl Craig and Anthony ‘Shake’ Shakir), whose legendary 1998 album The Collapse Of Modern Culture is now regarded as a defining moment for Detroit techno. Some twelve years later all four are back in different shapes and forms on Program 1 – 12. Deep house, abstract techno, energetic disco, warm downtempo and even shades of dubstep are explored with a touch of real class. We are delighted to present this featured chart from Stingray, which contains a mix of electro (a mainstay in his DJs sets), techno and dubstep. Or, in the words of Ingram himself: “tools for use in the war against the undead.”