walking upstream…
Derrick May
photo: thatchickoverthere · cc by-sa 4.0 ↗Derrick May
Derrick May grew up in Belleville, Michigan, tight with schoolmates Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson - the trio journalists would later brand the Belleville Three. Atkins made records first; May, still learning, promoted them door to door until he had taught himself enough to make his own. He released "Nude Photo" and "Strings of Life" in 1987 on his own label, Transmat, recording as Rhythim Is Rhythim. The catalogue stayed small by choice - May rationed his own output for the rest of his career, spending more time behind decks in Chicago, London, and Berlin than in a studio. What made those handful of records land was less a formula than a temperament: strings first, drums last, built the way he heard music - as mood before rhythm.
the sound in question
1987
Strings of LifeDerrick May
walk the tributaries ↓
Juan Atkins1980s · Detroit techno / Techno / Electro
May first got Atkins's attention by liking a mixtape of Giorgio Moroder and Tangerine Dream - Atkins was stunned, and May recalled: "He said, 'You like that music?' I became his protege from that day on." The friendship became an apprenticeship on Atkins's terms. Once Atkins started cutting records as Cybotron, May wasn't allowed near the gear: "Juan wouldn't let me touch the keyboard... I had to teach myself," he told Red Bull Music Academy - a year of daily practice before "Nude Photo" became his own first record.
listen: upstream & here
1985
No UFO'sJuan Atkins
1988
It Is What It IsDerrick May
listen forModel 500's "No UFO's" strips electro to a bare pulse: one clipped arpeggio, a dry handclap, almost no melodic filler. Rhythim Is Rhythim's "It Is What It Is" runs the same stripped four-on-the-floor chassis, just dressed with more melodic clutter over the frame Atkins built first - the audible proof that May's self-taught year kept the architecture even as he changed the furniture on top of it.
Electrifying Mojo1980s · Radio / Eclectic
Mojo, born Charles Johnson, ran a free-form Detroit radio show that mixed Kraftwerk, Parliament-Funkadelic, and new wave with no format at all - the sound of everything at once that Atkins and May grew up on. When Atkins pressed his first record, "Alleys of Your Mind," May staked out the radio station for hours until Mojo agreed to meet them in person. "He played the record and that changed our lives," May said of that meeting. "I think without that encounter we would not have done what we did."
listen: upstream & heresource: Red Bull Music Academy — Derrick May lecture, 2010 (tracking down Electrifying Mojo) ↗
1981
No known recordingElectrifying Mojo
1987
Strings of LifeDerrick May
listen forThere's no Mojo recording to hold against anything - his instrument was the broadcast itself, splicing genres format radio never let touch. What survives is the range: "Strings of Life" opens on a classical-sounding string vamp before a stark drum-machine pulse enters underneath it, the same collision of European melody and Black dance-floor rhythm Mojo used to run back to back on his overnight show.
Ron Hardy1980s · House / Disco
May ranked Hardy, the DJ at Chicago's Music Box, above the more famous Frankie Knuckles in his own reckoning: "Frankie... lifted me off the ground, he set me up for life, but it was Ronnie that moved me to the ultimate level of knowing I could do this shit." Proof came when May handed his still-unreleased "Nude Photo" to a friend to carry to Chicago. "Ron Hardy played your records four times in a row!" the friend called to report - the moment, May said, that convinced him his own records actually worked.
listen: upstream & heresource: Red Bull Music Academy Daily — 2004 DJHistory interview with Derrick May (Atkins, Mojo, Ron Hardy, Frankie Knuckles) ↗
No known recordingRon Hardy
1987
Nude PhotoDerrick May
listen for"Nude Photo" has no counterpart on Hardy's side - his art lived only in the room, gone the moment the needle lifted. What's audible instead is the record surviving several hypnotic, looping minutes built to be worked by a DJ rather than consumed as a verse-and-chorus song, exactly the extended, repeat-friendly shape a Music Box night demanded, and exactly what convinced Hardy to play it four times running.