DETROIT IN EFFECT
Haws @ Jacob’s Basement
Fri 18 Oct
Frozen, paranoid, derelict, lawless; the straight-up lampooning of the city of Detroit by its own residents is just another hand in its downfall for some. For Detroit musicians though (and there have been a lot), channelling all that grit and murk and misery is just a matter of more strings in the mix; everything from the murder rate, the drastic class gap, that time the city was almost levelled by a nuclear meltdown. All of it becomes just more angst in the sampler, and none of the city’s many musical exports was more angsty than the utterly unique Detroit techno. Just like the adding of chocolate to milk, electro was added to house in Detroit to make something richer, sweeter, and with groovier bass modulation. Renowned for its frenetic sequencing, edgy melodies, and tasty new sounds, Detroit techno artists pulled straight in from the city’s turbulent persona when it came to producing, picturing how the city would look in a world of tomorrow, or its place as a new cybernetic Black nation under the sea. Detroit In Effect (sometimes D.I.E.) wallowed in the Motor City of the day, lapping up the edge and paranoia of the time and scene on tracks like R U Married (“Are you married? (No!) Are you occupied? (Oh, no!) You got kids? (No!) How ‘bout HIV? (Oh, no!)”) for his own place in the DT masters club.
With a turntable and a backlog of his peers and influences, D.I.E. headlines the Haws birthday celebrations at Jacob’s for a rigorous demonstration of that Detroit genome: the vocal licks, the Drexciya and Aux 88 deep cuts, the takes that started it all. DJ Aloka will be the one most likely to play just before; a South Wales local lad, Aloka is already established in the UK circuit and premiered some pacing tracks with DJ magazine earlier this year. Pi-Singer is one of Haws’ promising regulars and finds himself in their deepest mixes, while Tywi is a pacey electro DJ to underline the event’s major themes.
words JASON MACHLAB
Tickets: £11.50. Info: [email protected]