Writing about this next Derrick May tune in early '88 - in the middle of a piece on acid house - I was reminded of Joy Division, indeed describing as one of those "lost Joy Division B-sides". What can I have meant? The compelled-sounding feel of "She's Lost Control"? It certainly doesn't sound like "These Days", the great lost B-side of "Love Will Tear Us Apart".
Listening to it again now, I can't really hear why it made me flash on Joy Division. If anything, it's closer to an incredibly reduced, emaciated take on "Everything's Gone Green".
Hearing postpunk echoes in postfunk sounds outta Detroit... this brings up the strangeness and drifty unfixability of temporality in music. For as much as these records seem "ahead of their time today" (they did in fact blueprint much of '90s techno), at the actual time of writing I said it reminded me of early '80s avant-funk. I even used the phrase "lost future" to describe these vibe-echoes of DAF and Liaisons Dangereuses audible in acid house and the darker side of Detroit (in particular Reese "Just Want Another Chance" and Phuture's "Your Only Friend")
Probably what I should have said is "interrupted future" - with the guitar-y main body of the Eighties representing a deliberate abstention from technology - sequencers, drum machines, MIDI. By main body, I really refer to the alternative rock sphere - the future carried on unfurling in mainstream rock to some extent, as digital took over in studios. And I suppose there were corners of the alternative - industrial and Electronic Body Music - that embraced the latest tech. Still, with indie, the return of guitars, and the wistful casting-backwards-glances to the 1960s dominant, outright futurism dropped away in alternative music sufficiently for me to wield this trope of "the lost future" - referring to something that went into abeyance only five years earlier.
Returning our ears to the May heyday, the thing that gets me in his tunes are those egg-whisk sounds - hi-hats, I think - whose scything rustle creates that distinctive nervous propulsion. Heard at their most sibilantly nagging here:
And to lesser degree here:
Also the melodies with their indefinable alloy of serene euphoria and lonely desolation.
Also the basslines
Okay, the whole thing is consummate - but I do love the egg-whisk sounds.
It's kind of ASMR-y, a delicious itch in the ear.
5 comments:
I do actually get the echo of Joy Division in "Move It" or "It Is What It Is". A soundspace that it huge, empty, a bit cold. Simple melodies wandering lost across an immense desert at night.
Apparently May was a big New Order fan: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/mar/07/forty-years-of-new-order-blue-monday-inspirations
Altho the Kreem track has an NRG vibe to it.
Thanks for posting these tracks, Simon. A good reminder.
Mr. May was (is?) also a wildly inconsistent but incredible DJ, on his best days. His sudden transitions and jumps in volume, style and mood could create a voodoo energy in the room that was quite different than the bland, unrelenting volume of a typical European "purist techno" DJ. I was once privileged to dance to a legendary afterhours set he played after DEMF 2001 at a Detroit gay bar called The Works - 50 people, one strobe light, and Derrick May playing hours of classics. I remember he was playing "Bring Down The Walls" pitched all the way up to +8 just as the sun rose - it was that kind of night.
Unfortunately he's also a bad person and a serial sexual harasser. Such is life.
Yes he does seem to be a creepy dude.
I only ever saw him deejay once, it wasn't as spectacular as what you describe, but an excellent set of obscure early '90s techno (well, obscure to me!) he did in a little club that ran on a Monday night in the Lower East Side in the early 2000s - just a few blocks from where I lived. Because it wasn't the weekend, this night was oriented towards 'lifers': people who didn't have 9 to 5 jobs and weren't looking for the peak-hour release, instead an audience of deejays and people involved in the scene doing labels and running record shops and journalists like myself. So the guest deejays were able to play exactly what they wanted, or do a historical tour through the lesser known. I should imagine he did it for much less than his usual fee, but who knows. He looked like he was enjoying himself.
claude young is definitely the crem de la crem of detroit djs. Always rocking doubles, backspins, scratches, going mad on the crossfader. It's actually not too dissimilar to Randall's double drop mixing, though more hectic as he's dealing with much more minimal and much less song based music. Shame he has retired, but hey, such is life.
Can you recommend a Claude Young mix?
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