Origins of a Sound

If you want to understand Detroit electro, this 1995 compilation is the motherlode. Released by Submerge – the distribution firm closely aligned with Underground Resistance – it’s got all the vital names: Juan Atkins (in his Audiotech guise), Drexciya, Aux 88, UR’s Mad Mike and a couple more, all on the form of their lives. The impassioned instensity of the layered strings on Mad Mike’s “Deep Space Nine” is worth the price of entry alone, but every single track merges deep heartfelt feel for the funk with razor sharp machine understandings, all gliding along as if on invisible rails, their snares and claps bursting out of the air metronomically to maintain regularity.