Nine iconic Detroit techno records

Detroit techno almost always gets told in date order. Put it in family order instead and it changes shape.

The starting point is a high school. At Belleville High School Juan Atkins made friends with two boys who shared his interest in this new kind of electronic music, and their names were Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. Nine records here. Three generations, three apiece.

First degree, the Belleville three

Cybotron, Enter. Atkins formed Cybotron with Rick Davis in 1980 and the record landed in 1983. According to the Detroit Historical Society the music came out of a shared interest in futurism.

Model 500, Deep Space. The two parted ways in 1985, at which point Atkins started making music under the name Model 500 and soon started a label of his own called Metroplex, which is the hinge everything else in this list swings on.

e-Dancer, Heavenly. Kevin Saunderson put this out on his own KMS in 1998, under a name that isn’t the one that got him into the charts.

Listen while you read

The prefix that gives it away

Derrick May founded Transmat in 1986. The catalogue prefix on his records reads MS, and those aren’t the initials of anything to do with him.

It stands for Metroplex Subsidiary. A tribute to his friend and mentor, printed on the spine of every copy, and we took years to notice it was there.

Second degree, the ones who came through Transmat

Carl Craig, Landcruising. Craig found electronic music through Street Beat, which was May’s radio programme. He was introduced to May, became his protégé, and his early records went out on Transmat.

Kenny Larkin, Azimuth. From 1994, and Larkin is one of the names Transmat lists among its own, working there under the alias Dark Comedy rather than under the name on this sleeve.

Silent Phase, The Theory Of. From 1995. Silent Phase is Stacey Pullen, who sits in that same list of Transmat names, one more producer who reached a record of his own through somebody else’s label.

There’s a fourth name on Transmat’s roll that doesn’t appear above. James Pennington, who records as Suburban Knight, and whose work is nearly all in short formats.

Third degree, the ones in balaclavas

Underground Resistance started in November 1989. Jeff Mills and Mike Banks founded it, and when they appeared in public they turned up with their faces covered, which was a decision about where the attention should go.

Underground Resistance, Interstellar Fugitives. From 1998, and it’s a collective record built by a shifting cast instead of a single author, which is the way that label has always preferred to work.

Robert Hood, Minimal Nation. Hood was inside Underground Resistance carrying the title of Minister of Information, and this record from 1994 is the one where he works out how much of a track he can remove and still have a track left standing. It takes away.

Drexciya, Neptune’s Lair. From 1999. Once Mills and Hood had gone, Banks ran the label on his own and put this out.

Three labels, one junction

Metroplex, Transmat and KMS weren’t merely in the same city, they sat at the junction of Riopelle Street and Gratiot Avenue one beside the other, on a stretch of six-lane road that picked up the nickname Techno Boulevard and kept it. Three doors. One corner.

How to read the list

Take the nine titles and remove the first name. No Atkins means no Metroplex, no Metroplex means no MS prefix, and without Transmat three of these nine records go with it.

Now run it again on Underground Resistance. Another three fall.

Three are left standing, and two boys from that high school made all of them.