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GENESiS OF A MOVEMENT STAMPED "UNDERGROUND"...

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While the 1960s were "revolutionary" in many ways, the 1970s sounded the death knell for the "Glorious Thirty!" The world is preparing to enter a new era...

Oil shocks, crises, conflicts, revolutions, wars, catastrophes, scandals and other events of all kinds punctuate, as usual, the forward march of societies. On both sides of the Atlantic, growth and decline give rise to fierce struggles orchestrated around the inordinate interests of the major economic powers. Revealing a disenchanted, unequal and breathless world, the social climate is not really in the best of shape! Will it ever be? On both sides, despite the neo-liberal promises, the many inventions and advances or the boom in new technologies at the beginning of the 1980s, the legacy of a post-industrial urban environment brings to light the gloom, the difficulties and the justified fears of those left behind by a new form of galloping, voracious and dehumanizing globalization...

As a desolate testimony to this sulphurous atmosphere, the city of Detroit in the United States (famous for its tragic destiny, although its citizens are struggling to raise it from the ashes...) known as the former capital of the decaying automobile industry, "The Motor City" or "Motown" has sadly become the epitome of economic decline. A symbol of urban decay, Detroit has fallen into disrepair to the point of filing for bankruptcy in 2013. Its population has been cut in half. Crime has reached record levels! The deserted and abandoned downtown has given it the appearance of a post-apocalyptic landscape... Whether because they had no other choice or because they had their roots there, the people of Detroit, although left to their own devices, did not all give up and, in resisting, faced the situation with dignity. Respect to them! Through their determination, bravery and resourcefulness, they will have been able to put into practice the notion of resilience beyond the general indifference, cruelty and injustices that prevail in such delicate situations. Without letting themselves be totally overwhelmed by the harmful atmosphere of their environment, some of the local natives will have succeeded where many probably did not expect them! In the sense that, although at first glance the music industry was never intended to fill the void left by the vertiginous fall of the automobile industry, this did not prevent Detroit from becoming a cradle and breeding ground for successful musical styles. As is often the case, art and culture have served as catalysts... On the one hand, because creativity and innovation have stimulating virtues that generate a new breath of fresh air, a new impetus. On the other hand, by serving as a springboard and allowing us to extricate ourselves as much as possible from the current slump, because musical and artistic expression also promotes opportunities to build, unite and share... A source of motivation and inspiration, it is by developing federative synergies and by putting in place various alternatives in many fields that the valiant "survivors of the Motownian apocalypse" will have been able to demonstrate the potential of a humanity which, pushed to its limits, still finds the strength to do things well!

As an incubator of musical currents (soul, punk, techno), the socio-economic climate of Detroit, just like that of a city like Manchester in Great Britain at the time, or the situation in Berlin before the reunification of the two Germanies in 1989, will no doubt have also served as a "detonator!" That's an understatement! For, in such a hostile context, however industrialized it may be, marked by decline, it is not uncommon to find real "artistic breeding grounds ready to hatch, not to say explode!" Thus, if we look closely, by having provided a fertile substratum for the various forms of artistic expression, the breeding ground for the societal revolutions of the late 20th century will have at least favoured the beginnings of a form of saving cultural emancipation. A freedom that has not been denied to those who have been able to grasp the forward march of progress, to fly on their own wings and to draw the contours of a manifest affinity for synthetic sounds...

In Detroit, Michigan, young teenagers (known as "The Belleville Three!") didn't expect to become icons of a musical trend in the making, but in the mid-80's they experimented with electronic sounds that were about to integrate contemporary musical standards... At that time, pop music was using the synthesizer, disco was showing signs of running out of breath, while Chicago House was, like TECHNO, in full gestation. Dedicated above all to making people dance, electronic music was produced, with a certain audacity it is true, for DJs and their increasingly popular "mix sets", at the very moment when personal computers made it possible, thanks to the "home studio" process, to compose almost in autarky! Thus translating a form of embodiment of the spirit of resistance, of resilience in the face of adversity, by showing tenacity and ingenuity, by choosing to overcome precariousness, ostracisms and obstacles, these precursors of a musical genre that is now global in scope have paved the way, over the last few decades, to the expansion of a phenomenon of unsuspected magnitude.

Considered afterwards as pioneers, Juan Atkins (Metroplex, 1985), Derrick May (Transmat, 1986) & Kevin Saunderson (KMS, 1987) gradually acquired the honorary title of "founding fathers" of a new genre of electronic music. In the aftermath, artists such as Eddie Fowlkes, James Pennington (aka "Suburban Knight"), Blake Baxter and many others will all together form the ranks of the main contributors to the "1st Wave TECHNO" that inspired many generations across the Atlantic... Indeed, even if they are now recognized as precursors of talent, it is rather outside the United States that they have forged their reputation... No one is a prophet in his own country, they say! Against the backdrop of the end of the Cold War reign, these budding artists first made their breakthrough on the European continent. Germany, England, Belgium, France, Holland even became almost a land of welcome for these new "apostles" of instrumental melodies strangely inspired by the rise of an emerging technological and electronic culture. Subjected to numerous influences, from funk to soul through new wave, but also under the impulse of the German band Kraftwerk, or even the style of the Belgian band Front 242 among others, and by the fleeting appearance, still coming from Belgium, of Electro Body Music and New Beat, the Detroit natives managed to mix and export from there the borders a sound of a new genre: the so-called "U N D E R G R O U N D" TECHNO... A repetitive, mechanical, "high-tech" sound punctuated by percussive rhythms, hard, iterative and swirling basses... A "twilight" sound revealing a movement with a strong character advocating freedom, self-management and resistance, Indignation and rejection of commercial, conformist and star-system values...

🔵 2 B CONTiNUED...