The ill-ec-tro-nic: Timeless

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Timeless

Derrick May's importance to the history of electronic music hardly needs hitting home again and it's just a shame that he hasn't been in the studio more often over the last fifteen years. As if his own production and DJ skills weren't of significant enough greatness, he is also responsible for setting up the seminal Transmat imprint, one of the most important labels in the early days of Techno.

Browsing through Transmat's back catalogue is like getting a lesson in Techno in itself and this is perhaps best seen on two of the unmixed compilations to bear the iconic logo.
Twenty years on since techno was born and there aren't that many labels out there capable of putting out a compilation of such high quality as 'Relics' which was released back in 1992 (actually on Buzz records but as an approved Transmat product) and even then many of the tracks were several years old. Virtually all of the full length tracks on Relics are considered to be stone cold classics and these are neatly woven together using orchestral 'intervals' from Carl Craig. Relics came out on both LP and CD and despite my love of wax, the CD version had the benefits of extra tracks including the amazing version of Wiggan (Wiggin) featured below.

Time:Space came out in 1999 and despite not being quite as close to perfection as Relics was (few compilations are!) it's still a superb release. This time, the compilation featured tracks from largely European producers although they had clearly all been influenced by the Detroit sound.

There's also a Time:Space 2 but as this was only released in Japan I haven't heard the full contents and can only hope it gets a wider release at some stage in the future.