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Convextion - Ebulience (Convextion 2, Matrix, 1997)
Unrelenting haunted space cruiser techno of the highest order. The soothing B-side on a Detroit vibe is equally great. Top record.
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Mix: Convextion - Live @ Bleep43 (2010)
An hour of Detroit techno and electro performed live. So lush, so soulful. Download on Resident Advisor.
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Mind of a Machine
Carl Craig - Mind of a Machine (Landcruising, Blanco Y Negro, 1995)
Andy Battaglia for The AV Club: There’s a lot of post-human fantasy in the mechanical sound of techno, but at the same time, a strong humanistic drive, a soulful sound for a very social music. Do you think about it in those terms?
Carl Craig: What I’ve done is, I’ve tried to put as much of myself and my spirit in as possible. And in Detroit, whether or not you want to abandon all the roots of Motown and jazz and whatever else, it’s still there in our spirits. We hear that stuff all the time. We’ve heard it from the time we were born all the way up. Parliament-Funkadelic, Prince, all that stuff was major here. And the way those guys used synthesizers was human. The robot funk of George Clinton was played by a real drummer playing like a drum machine. So we took those influences and put it into our music with the pure idea of keeping the funk there and developing something new. You can use the 808, and what is produced around it can inevitably make it feel more human than just an 808 machine by itself. The human aspect that comes from Detroit techno comes from the idea of trying to actually get an 808 to not sound like a typical 808. Lots of tweaks and tricks can get the sound to be more organic, but the idea was not to program it like a drummer, or to replace a drummer. It’s programming it to make it an instrument in its own right.
