Monday, March 03, 2008

High Tech Soul Trailer USA

“Imagine a city designed for four million people that less than one-million people occupy now.”
- Jeff Mills

Review located here:
http://www.realdetroitweekly.com/article_1290.shtml

Oh this is interesting - a historically-oriented DVD about Techno music! Right up both my alleys! I purchased it the instant I saw it.

Interesting DVD, with surprisingly little Techno music on the soundtrack. As the review states:

“Techno music was created in Detroit in the mid- to late-‘80s and is credited to Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson,” Barbara Deyo of Touch Salon and Bold Face Media states at the beginning of the film. Bredow continues from there, laying down the historical facts exploring the creation of techno music by going directly to the pioneers of the revolution themselves....

As a class, DJs seem to be somewhat laconic, and project a tough urban coolness that is somewhat off-putting. So, the most voluble person on the DVD is actually an academic, a white, sort-of George-Will-lookalike Wayne State University English professor named Jerry Herron, whose gripping and soaring rhetoric has to substitute for the more-subdued testaments of the DJs themselves. It is fascinating hearing about growing up in the empty heart of once-populous Detroit, and also hearing how these (mostly black) DJs are serious celebrities in Europe and elsewhere overseas, but are ignored at home, and even confused with drug dealers at times. And also hearing about how they have personality frictions with other folks (Moby kind of creeps them out a bit).

One fun DVD!

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