Artist

Derrick May

1987-present·Detroit, Belleville

Derrick May moved from Detroit to Belleville as a teenager and fell in with Juan Atkins, whose younger brother rolled up in a Cadillac blasting Parliament — an image that reportedly left a mark on May before he and Atkins had even become close. May and Kevin Saunderson became inseparable after Saunderson knocked him unconscious over a welched bet, an origin story the Belleville Three still tell decades later. Atkins taught May to DJ, and May cut his teeth playing high school parties under the name Deep Space Soundworks. He later became a regular at Ken Collier's apartment, where Collier — one of the first DJs in Detroit to mix two records together on beat — sold extra records from his personal stash and let May and Atkins watch him work. Under the alias Rhythim Is Rhythim, May released "Strings of Life" in 1987, threading baroque, orchestral string arrangements through techno's machine-built framework and giving the genre one of its most emotionally direct anthems.

At a glance

Active
1987–present
From
Detroit, Michigan, USA
Listening guide track
“Strings Of Life”

Listen

In the Detroit Techno listening guide: “Strings Of Life”

Spotify

In the issues

  • Detroit Techno
    Principal · 1981-1995

    Detroit Techno is a music scene from Detroit/Belleville, Michigan, USA, 1981–1995. Its principal artists include Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. This issue covers 10 essential albums and 14 dated events.

Places

  • Buy-Rite Music
    Detroit · 1980s-1990s · Detroit Techno

    Record store owned by Derrick May's mother where the young producer worked, providing access to imported records and becoming a hub for Detroit's early electronic music community.

  • Cheeks
    Detroit · 1980s · Detroit Techno

    Detroit club where Juan Atkins and Derrick May played as Deep Space Soundworks, testing their eclectic electronic sets on local party crowds in the early 1980s.

Voices

Quotations from the issues, each matched word for word against the source it links to.

“I was sitting with a bunch of white kids. One of the teachers said, "You should be sitting back there."”
Derrick May, Detroit techno producer, Belleville Three. Source · Detroit Techno

Terms

Acid house
A style of house music characterized by squelching, resonant basslines produced using the Roland TB-303 synthesizer.