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 We are coming up on the 15th anniversary of James' death (the masked guy) on September 3rd (1969-2002) so I thought I would post a thread. Its very rare that you find electronic music that stays fresh even 15 years later. James talked about hiding away and not listening to any other music or to be influenced by any other art while making albums. I think this helped their music not feel dated at all and still fresh. Im going to copypasta some cool stuff from other places but before let me post a youtube link so you can decide to read further or leave this man to the depths... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JujXfF3t_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUJtlVKHAj0 <early work if you like that put this on and continue reading... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cAmyE0RRXY ===================== from http://www.spannered.org/music/774/ Stinson, who was 32, had been ill for some time, even instructing record labels with whom he had deals to go ahead and release his music should he not live. Prior to his death he had been working as a truck driver, a job he said he enjoyed because of the time it gave him to think. As a youth growing up on Detroit's East Side, James Stinson first encountered electro music through Cybotron's Alleys Of Your Mind and became a regular listener to radio DJ The Electrifyin' Mojo. In 1989 he founded Drexciya (he claimed the idea came to him in a dream) with Gerald Donald, although it was several years before any Drexciya music was released. (The duo's first actual records were released under the names Glass Domain and LAM in the early 90s.) Drexciya's releases proper began in 1993 with Deep Sea Dweller on Shockwave, which also established the mythological underwater theme which would characterise all their subsequent releases in the '90s through the UR, Warp, Rephlex, S.I.D., Submerge and Tresor labels. 1997's double CD 'best of ' collection, The Quest was heralded as Drexciya's 'farewell release', but 1999's all-new Neptune's Lair LP on Tresor proved that talk of the group's demise had been premature. By shunning the usual means of promotion – interviews, publicity photos, live performances etc. – and working on a strictly need-to-know basis, Drexciya inadvertently cultivated a mystique that only added to their appeal and they became renowned as one of the classic 'faceless techno' acts. Yet this approach allowed Drexciya a level of artistic freedom – not to mention career longevity – that many would envy. Instead of media overload, Drexciya created a fantasy world of slaves-turned-fishmen and underwater landscapes around their music, building on Stinson's fascination with the oceans and African-American history and his vivid imagination. Recently, however, his gaze seems to have turned outerwards: the last Drexciya release proper before his death was the Grava 4 LP earlier this year on Clone, named after a star Drexciya had 'adopted'. Although a jazz and hip-hop listener, Stinson also deliberately isolated himself from other electronic music, especially when recording, for the simple reason that he didn't want to be unduly influenced by other peoples' ideas. He was a notorious perfectionist too, and earlier this year told Detroit Free Press writer Tim Pratt, "I'll never reach the point where I can say this is the best I can do." Yet his music was hugely influential. Futuristic, dark, textured and compelling, Drexciya were one of the keys to the resurgence of electro music in the '90s and one of the bedrocks of the Detroit electrobass style. Although Drexciyan releases throughout the '90s had been few and far between, the last couple of years had witnessed an unprecedented level of activity. Stinson had finally begun to give occasional interviews, speaking of his concept of seven 'storms' – seven albums created in the same year to be released on different labels around the world. The first was Drexciya's Harnessed The Storm album, the second and third were solo releases under the pseudonyms Transllusion and The Other People Place. More material is known to be forthcoming on Tresor and Kombination Research and Rephlex recently released the second Transllusion LP, L.I.F.E. It's as if he was just hitting his stride when he died. ======================= "...it came out of me and out of my partner from our soul, we dug it out of there, the one take, in the way it is, it’s a masterpiece, it’s a work of art and the energy that’s captured and whatever energy that’s projected, capture it, see what you feel. Cause everyone’s gonna interpret it differently, like a picture has a million and one stories or whatever, that’s basically what it is.” -James Stinson speaking about the Storm Series Before his death Gerald and he created 7 albums to be released on 7 different labels around the world under different names... 1. Drexciya - Harnessed The Storm 2. Transllusion - The Opening of the Cerebral Gate 3. The Other People Place - Lifestyles of the Laptop Cafe 4. Abstract Thoughts - Hypothetical Situations 5. Lab Rat X.L. - Mice or Cyborg 6. Transllusion - L.I.F.E. 7. Shifted Phases - The Cosmic Memoirs of the late Great Rupert J. Rosinthrope Its actually become quite the mystery... ============ from http://drexciyaresearchlab.blogspot.com/2017/04/drexciyas-storm-series-update.html Anyone who's interested in Drexciya's seven album Storm Series and the puzzle that eight albums were actually released between 2001 and 2002 will be interested in a new nugget of information that has come to light from Serge of Clone Records. Previously there has been no known way to tell which album is the odd one out and James Stinson never identified all of the Storm Series albums when interviewed (he only confirmed Harnessed The Storm, The Other People Place,The Opening of the Cerebral Gate and Abstract Thought). In 2005 when I looked in depth at all eight of the albums I speculated that Grava 4 was the odd one out but did find that it very much followed on conceptually and was closely related to the Storm Series. In this spirit then, if you do follow his line of thought there are further mysteries to consider. If you go by the 'Dimensional Release List' to identify the seven albums in the Storm Series, which I have always taken to be a general list of upcoming releases (it appears to be only the latest update with more to follow and it lists the first Transllusion 12” as well), you will see that the second Transllusion album, L.I.F.E., which came out on Rephlex in 2002, is missing from it. This implies that this album is the odd one out and should be seen as separate from the Storm Series. However, if you look at the label artwork for this album and its accompanying 12”, Third Eye, you will find it states, 'Transmitted by Dimensional Waves' and gives the ridedimensionalwaves email address as well. In fact the only album of the eight that does not have a variation of this text is Grava 4. Be warned, once you start looking more closely at any of these albums you will start to find things like this! Also in the artwork for L.I.F.E., you will discover seven brains/cells? (below), might these be random or have a deeper meaning to the Storm Series (dimensional brain waves?). I do agree that it is quite odd that L.I.F.E. is not included in the list, as that record must have been fully completed with titles and artwork etc, unlike Lab Rat XL (which is listed) which had to be released without titles or artwork as James Stinson had died before he could complete this. If Grava 4 is really the final album in the Storm Series (which is where I would place it), it would certainly wrap things up quicker so to speak and mean that the Storm contained its own conclusion. There is even a certain symmetry to this with the first and last albums being by Drexciya. The odd album, L.I.F.E., could then be read as some kind of personal sign-off from James Stinson perhaps? However, as interesting as this is, the whole point of the chaotic nature of the Storm Series in my view was to prepare yourself and discover the Drexciya Home Universe of Grava 4 and it does appear to follow on from the already space located Shifted Phases album. Grava 4 also includes the intriguing text, 'Earth scientist discovered the home planet of Drexciya on 2-14-2002. Within moments Dr. Blowfin was given the orders to initiate the seven dimensional cloaking-spheres to hide the other three planets from earths view.' If you take the 'seven dimensional cloaking spheres' to be the seven albums produced under the name Dimensional Waves, this text very much connects Grava 4 to the Storm Series, but is it looking back at the previous seven albums or is it the seventh and final album of the series itself? You could read the text either way and obviously I made the decision to read it the first way, which might have been a mistake. To me there has always really been eight albums in the series and if I am correct I think Stinson might have thought about them in the same way too. For this reason he may well have told Serge that Grava 4 was part of the series, but meant this in a general way, but whether he actually said it was one of the seven we can only guess or accept what Serge has said as fact. Having thought about this new information and still always only speaking for myself, I still prefer my original order and understanding of the series but accept that it comes with a caveat now. With any great work of art each viewer will find what they want to find and the Storm Series was designed to work very much in this way. I don't know how this will affect other people's opinions and beliefs about the Storm Series but I thought it was important to share this information and point out its pros and cons as I see them. I'd love to hear people's opinions about this, including that it's just great music at the end of the day and to simply enjoy it. ================== Grav 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_95VNffKgU James was so prolific there was a release in april of 2017 of unheard material. ======== from... http://www.factmag.com/2017/04/25/unheard-material-drexciyas-james-stinson-released/ Recorded at the same time as Lifestyles Of The Laptop Café. Clone’s Aqualung Series has scored quite the classic techno coup. The sublabel is to release a never-heard-before six-track EP by Drexciya’s James Stinson, under the name Jack Peoples, in June. The EP is titled Laptop Café, and was in the works while Stinson’s revered Lifestyles Of The Laptop Café – itself reissued by Warp in February following a fan petition – was being recorded. According to Clone, the lost originals were discovered on a DAT. =========== Jst0rm fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Sep 1, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 19:24
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 08:23 |
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thanks for the thread. I didn't know a bunch of this stuff
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Sep 6, 2017 20:22
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cheers. There is very little electronic music that I think people will look back on in 300 years and this is some of what that is.
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Sep 7, 2017 07:20
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Thanks for the info. I've always listened to Drexciya but never looked into their history... As far as albums by Drexciya under different names, thanks a ton, the only albums I knew about were The Other People Place and ARPAnet.
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Oct 30, 2017 10:58
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God Of Paradise posted:Thanks for the info. I've always listened to Drexciya but never looked into their history... As far as albums by Drexciya under different names, thanks a ton, the only albums I knew about were The Other People Place and ARPAnet. i didn't read the full op but the elecktroids project on warp is also all but confirmed to be drexciya e: the extremely early stuff james did as clarence also deserves a shout Radio Spiricom fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Oct 30, 2017 |
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Oct 30, 2017 15:44
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God Of Paradise posted:Thanks for the info. I've always listened to Drexciya but never looked into their history...
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Nov 13, 2017 09:19
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 08:23 |
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Black Sea is still one of the hardest hitting techno tracks of all time. Incredible.
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Nov 19, 2017 00:29
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