walking upstream…
Derrick May
photo: thatchickoverthere · cc by-sa 4.0 ↗Derrick May
Derrick May is the Belleville, Michigan-raised producer whose handful of recordings as Rhythim Is Rhythim - above all 1987's "Strings of Life" - fused the icy sequencer discipline of European electronic music with the gospel-chord changes and physical low end of Detroit funk, a synthesis he called "Hi-Tek Soul" or, more bluntly, "George Clinton meeting Kraftwerk in an elevator." One of the three Belleville High School friends (with Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson) credited with inventing Detroit techno, May ran his music through his own Transmat label and carried the sound to Chicago, London, and Berlin as an in-demand DJ, becoming techno's most vocal evangelist even as his own productions grew sparse after the early 1990s.
the sound in question
1987
Strings of LifeDerrick May
walk the tributaries ↓
Kraftwerk1970s · Electronic / Krautrock / Synth-pop
May has recalled sitting up in 1983 listening to Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe Express" among the records Detroit DJ Electrifying Mojo played on his Midnight Funk Association show, and he describes his own sound as literally "George Clinton meeting Kraftwerk in an elevator" - Kraftwerk supplying the icy, tightly sequenced half of that equation that survives in the relentless, gridded rhythm section under Rhythim Is Rhythim's most melodic work.
listen: upstream & heresource: Red Bull Music Academy Daily - "Theater of the Mind ↗
1977
Trans-Europe ExpressKraftwerk
1987
Strings of LifeDerrick May
listen forSet the layered, robotic sequencer pulse of "Trans-Europe Express" against the looping string-machine ostinato driving "Strings of Life" - both ride an unwavering mechanical grid, May's version just detours that precision through gospel chord changes.
George Clinton1970s · Funk / Psychedelic soul / R&B
May has recalled first hearing Parliament-Funkadelic blasted through a friend's older brother's stereo as a revelation - "out comes this big thing of smoke... it's, 'We love to funk you Funkenstein'" - and Clinton's cosmic P-Funk sensibility, kept constantly in rotation on Electrifying Mojo's radio show, became the warm, physical counterweight to Kraftwerk's machine logic in May's self-described "Hi-Tek Soul."
listen: upstream & here
1976
Dr. FunkensteinGeorge Clinton
1987
Nude PhotoDerrick May
listen forHear the vocal-hook call-and-response and burbling low end of Parliament's "Dr. Funkenstein" next to the chattering bassline and looped vocal snippets driving Rhythim Is Rhythim's "Nude Photo" - the same body-first funk logic, just run through drum machines instead of a live band.
Juan Atkins1980s · Detroit techno / Techno / Electro
Atkins was May's Belleville High School classmate and the friend who pulled him into synthesizers and drum machines in the first place - May has described their bond starting over a mixtape Atkins made of Giorgio Moroder and Tangerine Dream, and following him into production from there. The spare, machine-first electro discipline Atkins forged as Model 500 is the chassis May built his sparest techno cuts on.
listen: upstream & heresource: Red Bull Music Academy Daily - interview with Derrick May on Juan Atkins, Mojo, Funkadelic, and Italo disco ↗
1985
No UFO'sJuan Atkins
1988
It Is What It IsDerrick May
listen forCompare the bare 808-clap-and-clipped-arpeggio skeleton of Model 500's "No UFO's" to Rhythim Is Rhythim's "It Is What It Is" - the same stripped, four-on-the-floor machine architecture, with May dressing it in more melodic filigree.