> Also, can anybody recommend any currently-available Detroit > compilations? - I'm pretty familiar with some of the recent Transmat stuff, > but want to dig deeper.
I'd say these ten CD's provide an overview to Detroit and are maybe the ten best discs out of the Motor City. These discs are all incredible and have little to no filler tracks. Derrick May: Innovator 2CD (Transmat) Model 500: Classics (R&S) Kevin Saunderson: Faces and Phases 2CD (Planet E) John Beltran: Earth & Nightfall (R&S) Underground Resistance: Revolution For Change (Network) The Martian: LBK-6251876 (Red Planet) Carl Craig: Landcruising (Blanco Y Negro) Drexciya: The Quest (Submerge) Moodymann: A Silent Introduction (Planet E) Theo Parrish: Sound Signature (Sound Signature) They should all be fairly easy to find with the exception of the Underground Resistance album. You could approximate that release with any of these CD's: X-101: Sonic Destroyer (Tresor) Origins of a Sound (Submerge) Depth Charge 1 (Submerge) DJ Rolando: The Aztec Mystic Mix (Underground Resistance) But these are all either later UR or mainly different material from the "Revolution For Change" full-length. Still awesome, but different (no "Punisher"). Having these CD's other than "Revolution" is like having a good English translation of Baudelaire: it's different and excellent, but it's not the original. I don't think there are any purely Detroit comps that have zero filler. The best Detroit comps are Retrotechno, Panic In Detroit, Virtual Sex, Relics and Origins of a Sound. Four of those are very, very out of print, and even these comps aren't top to bottom awesome (but very, very close). Just for the record, I can't think of any compilation that doesn't have at least one track I don't like. Intergalactic Beats and the Philosophy of Sound and Machine are my two favorite comps, but the former has the Hani track and the latter the Twelve Days of Night, neither of which I care for. But just maybe the compilation assemblers were like the monks drawing the Book of Kells: that they always included one flaw so as to leave perfection for God alone. Or maybe not. Matt
