PART FOUR*: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE DISCO-NTINUUM, A RE-NARRATION, A RETROACTIVE RECONSTRUCTION; AN ANNOTATED SURVEY OF DANCE MUSIC 1972-1994

*DISCO APOLOGIA IS A LIVING DOCUMENT THAT IS CURRENTLY IN FIVE PARTS, WITH A PLANNED APPENDIX. PARTS I, II, AND IV ARE MY OFFERING TO DWELLER6, MEANT TO BE RELEASED IN TANDEM WITH THE FESTIVAL. THE WORKING TITLES OF THE THE PARTS ARE AS FOLLOWS; PART I: DISCO APOLOGIA, A DEFENSIVE GROUNDWORK, A TECHNO KATEGORIA, PART II :BLACK RHYTHM TECHNOLOGIES, FOCUSING ON THE SECULAR BRANCH AS THE PRIMARY HOME OF DANCE MUSIC, PART III: STRAVINSKY, CAKE WALK MUSIC AND RAGTIME. THE EARLY REVERBERATIONS IN THE SECULAR BRANCH; THE ATONAL MYTH IN ORIGINS OF TECHNO; ESTABLISHING NETWORKS FOR TRAFFICKING BLACK RHYTHM TECHNOLOGIES, PART IV: A JOURNEY THROUGH RHYTHM, A RE-NARRATION, A RETROACTIVE RECONSTRUCTION; AN ANNOTATED SURVEY, PART V: RETURN FROM SPACE;EUROPE;THE WEST, AND A PLANNED APPENDIX: THE DIVA’S ADDRESS.

"IT'S A QUESTION OF RESPECT, HOUSE STILL HAS IT'S HEART IN 70'S DISCO, WE DON'T HAVE ANY OF THAT RESPECT FOR THE PAST, IT'S STRICTLY FUTURE MUSIC. WE HAVE A MUCH GREATER APTITUDE FOR EXPERIMENTATION."

-Derrick May1 quote from Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit, liner notes

LISTEN TO PART IV ANNOTATIONS PLAYLIST ON TIDAL

LISTEN TO COMPLETE PART IV ANNOTATIONS PLAYLIST ON YOUTUBE, INCLUDES TRACKS NOT LISTED ON TIDAL

The connecting thread looping through Disco to House to Techno was severed early on, in the mythologizing of Techno. Right at the start, with the naming of the compilation, and in the liner notes of Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit, Stuart Cosgrove describes Techno as,

"NOT SIMPLY DANCE MUSIC BUT A SERIES OF SOUND EXPERIMENTS THAT OFTEN DEFY THE LOGIC OF MORE UNCOMPLICATED DANCE SOUNDS LIKE CHICAGO HOUSE."

Already in 1988, House is being positioned as the smooth brain, commercial chaser to a more radical and pioneering sound. Members of the House's track "Share This House," is described as "obviously commercial," and infected by the "Chicago Jack virus," indicating that if it wasn't for George Clinton's feature on the song, the track would not have qualified for inclusion. The liner notes claim that Derrick May's "Nude Photo" and "Strings" was so instrumental to the Chicago House scene that it inseminated the birth of Acid House.

All of these claims are contradicted in the record; the 12" singles, the oral accounts, and the mouths of the Belleville Three themselves. However the history is left askew by Cosgrove's description, and Juan Atkins' insistence on naming, condemning our now to a future cross-wired with confusion, and never-ending debates.

Throughout interviews, Juan Atkins maintains a distance to Disco and House music, at times outright disavowing them, repeatedly citing Funk and Kraftwerk as his primary influences. If dance music’s evolution, from Disco to the genesis of Techno, is closely listened to, it sounds disingenuous to claim that Techno was born out of an elevated void, with only Kraftwerk and George Clinton as daddies.2 However, once you consider the racist-homophobic backlash to Disco, and the stigmatization of the HIV/AIDs epidemic in the early 80s, it becomes more clear why the ‘godfather’ of Techno had an interest in distancing himself from his queer lineage (the Bellville 3 are all straight and cis). Derrick May puts it bluntly,

"JUAN DIDN’T CARE FOR CHICAGO – HE THOUGHT THE WHOLE CHICAGO HOUSE MUSIC SCENE WAS GAY. HE WAS NOT WITH IT AT ALL."3

But, all of the named originators of Techno were actively listening to, socializing with, and mentored by (gay) House music djs, who were influenced by and playing Disco. Everyone listened to Disco. Including Kraftwerk and George Clinton. Atkins says the first Kraftwerk song he heard was "Man-Machine" in the late ‘70s4. This song in and of itself is a product of the Disco genre, having been mixed by Leonard 'Colonel Disco' Jackson, to sound more danceable, in response to the reception of Trans Europe Express. Disco was a highly influential genre that had a global presence, impossible to escape.

In the telling of history, there is a desire to conscript the narrative to 'romantic' binary roles of heroes and enemies, or the directional left and right, black and white, them and us, or then and now. The con-sequential re-construction of scene and dialogue creates mythology around certain events and people. It overemphasizes single instances as pivotal thrusts, consigning the future to a predetermined end. How did it come to be that Techno is something to think of as the acoustic horizon of a new expanse?

A corrective impulse would be to reach back through the Disco-ntinuum for the initial conception of the now. However, each moment we hopscotch to get back to the original instance, more branches emerge, reaching towards many more moments, going in different directions. All moving towards an inconceivable no-where; the primordial moment is a completely unattainable wholeness. The prior unity is a divine ideal, obscured by the cut5, the defining division that catalyzes our becoming. Our now makes grasping a 'then' impossible, and we always remain vulnerable to illusions of singularity in the break.

In a December 1988 interview with Music Technology magazine, Juan Atkins claims to have birthed the entire House music genre altogether, sometime after his 1985 release "No UFOs", by lending out his TR-909 drum machine to Chicago music producers and Djs, Frankie Knuckles and Chip E. The lore about Juan Atkins’ TR-909 is repeated in discourse about the origins of House to this day. His tale effectively slid back the record to place Techno at an earlier point in time, and House as a derivative follower. In a later interview in 2012, after the youthful arrogance and grandiosity has mostly blown away, he sounds more level-headed and honest,

"I MEAN CHICAGO IS ONLY A FOUR HOUR DRIVE FROM DETROIT, SO WE HAD A LOT FRIENDS THERE AND IT'S LIKE, A FRIENDLY RIVALRY BETWEEN DETROIT AND CHICAGO, BUT IT MADE FOR SOME GREAT MUSIC, IN BOTH CITIES. COMPETITION YOU KNOW. IT WAS HEALTHY COMPETITION."5

Derrick May is occasionally upfront in interviews about his early Chicago House influences, particularly Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles, and how his experiences at The Music Box influenced him to make music and open The Music Institute dance club. The third of the Belleville Three, Kevin Saunderson, is the most explicit in acknowledging his House and Disco influences. In his April 2025 NTS episode feature, he definitively pinpoints his music origins to Disco, and he narrates his music evolution through experiences at Paradise Garage and The Loft.

Other early Techno progenitors from Detroit corroborate these versions of the past. Former Members of the House member Jeff Mills puts it matter-of-factly,

"ITS PROBABLY SAFE TO SAY THAT [TECHNO, ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC] WASN’T STARTED BY ONE PERSON, OR ONE GROUP. AT THAT TIME IN THE LATE 70S, THE WORLD WAS VERY MUCH IN A DANCE MUSIC MINDSET BECAUSE OF DISCO. IT HAD EXPLODED, IT WAS EVERYWHERE ON EVERY CONTINENT, IN EVERY CITY."

When asked what he was playing when he first started djing in the 80s, he says

"IT WAS MOSTLY HOUSE, RAP, HIP-HOP AT THE TIME."6

Detroit DJ Mike 'Agent X' Clark, an early collaborator with Members of the House and their subsequent Underground Resistance collective, stated,

"THE WORD TECHNO AND THE WORD HOUSE ORIGINALLY DIDN’T HAVE TO MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE OF MEANING, IT JUST WAS IN THE CITY OF DETROIT WE CALLED IT TECHNO, AND IN THE CITY OF CHICAGO THEY CALLED IT HOUSE."7

The nebulous origin of Techno and House is endemic to the genres because of the rhizomorphic-fractal 'call-and-response' nature of how the music is made. Farley Jackmaster Funk explains:

"HOUSE MUSIC STARTED THIS WAY: LONG TIME AGO IN 1982, I WAS DJING AT A CLUB CALLED PLAYGROUND AND WHAT HAPPENED WAS THERE WAS THIS KID NAMED LEONARD REMIX ROY. HE WAS A DJ AT A RIVAL CLUB CALLED THE RINK...SO HE CAME DOWN ONE NIGHT, AND HE WAS LISTENING TO ME PLAY MUSIC, AND HE JUST SAID 'I GOT SOMETHING THAT'S GOING TO TAKE ALL THE PEOPLE OUT OF YOUR CLUB AND INTO MY CLUB. ITS CALLED HOUSE MUSIC'…SINCE I WAS THE BIGGER CAT, YOU KNOW, A LOT OF TIME THE SMALLER GUY COMES UP WITH THE IDEA, AND THE BIGGER CAT SNATCHES IT, I TOOK THE NAME FROM HIM…AND WENT TO RADIO WITH IT... EVERY RECORD THAT I PLAYED WAS HOUSE MUSIC, WHETHER IT WAS DISCO, WHETHER IT WAS FUNK, WHATEVER IT WAS, BECAUSE I SAID THIS IS THE TYPE OF MUSIC THAT I AM PLAYING. THAT'S WHY IT’S FUNNY WHEN PEOPLE ALWAYS WANT TO GIVE A DEFINITION OF WHAT HOUSE MUSIC IS, THERE IS NO DEFINITION FOR HOUSE MUSIC…

"I INVESTED IN A TR-808 DRUM MACHINE AND I STARTED PLAYING THE OLD PHILLY SONGS…WE LET TWO MIXES BLEND TOGETHER FOR TWO MINUTES, 6 MINUTES TOGETHER…AS OPPOSED TO THE FRANKIE KNUCKLES DJS. THEY BRING RECORDS IN AND THE BEAT WILL HIT 1 2 3 4 TIMES AND THE RECORDS OUT, AND YOU HEAR THE NEXT RECORD COME IN...SO WHAT CAME UP WITH HOUSE MUSIC IS THAT I TOOK A TR-808 DRUM MACHINE AND PUT 4/4 IN IT AND PLAYED THE OLD PHILLY SOUND IN IT [WHICH] HAD A REAL HEAVY KICK DRUM TO IT. AND [THE TR-808] MADE IT SOUND TOTALLY DIFFERENT BECAUSE IF YOU CHANGE THE DRUM BEAT TO THE SAME MUSIC, ITS GOING TO GIVE IT A DIFFERENT FEEL, AND THAT'S HOW WE CAME OVER TO 4/4, AND THAT'S WHY IT’S SYNONYMOUS WITH EVERY HOUSE RECORD YOU HEAR NOW, BECAUSE OF THAT IN THE CORE….ALL THE PEOPLE USED TO COME TO MY CLUB AND HEAR WHAT I PLAYED AND THEY DO THEY THING. AND I USED TO DO LIKEWISE…I USED TO GO TO THE WAREHOUSE WHERE FRANKIE PLAYED, I USED TO GO WHERE EVERYBODY PLAYED BECAUSE WE ALWAYS WANTED TO COME ONE STEP AHEAD OF THE MIX...SO WE ALL BIT PIECES AND PUZZLES OF EVERYBODY. EVERYBODY KNEW WHAT EVERYBODY WAS DOING…"8

" NO ONE KNOWS THE ORIGINAL BEAT…AND BY [THE] TIME [WHAT WE TAKE AS] THE BEAT…DIE[S], IT MAY BE A NEW ONE ALTOGETHER... AND THOSE PEOPLE WHO WILL BE THERE AT THAT TIME, THEY WILL THINK THAT THEY ARE DANCING THE REAL THING BECAUSE THEY WILL NOT KNOW THE ORIGINAL BEAT AS BEFORE... AND WHATEVER HAPPENS, IN THE FUTURE IT WILL ALSO CHANGE. EVEN IN OUR TIME IT IS NOT THE ORIGINAL BEAT. "
-Master Drummer Ibrahim Abdulai (Chernoff, African Sensibility)

The casting of Techno as the alien of the Black dance/secular branch of music, outlines the connected branches as normative and unchallenging. It’s not that Techno should not be specified by name, Techno wouldn't be called Juke which wouldn't be called Bass which wouldn't be called Bounce which wouldn't be called by any other name than its own. Tracing the tributaries of the African American secular music branch (Maultsby), the Detroit pulse is an extremely unique and important one. It is problematized when it is isolated from its lineage and its core-responding capillaries.

Divorce the conception of singu-linearity from the reality of spectrums. Continuums are swarms of instants, irregularly dispersed in space, they appear as flat planes only with a single-point perspective. it is not a sequential journey to travel through the beat-continuum, it is an odyssey through rhizomorphic wormholes through time, piercing traversing planes.

LIKE THE SWEET SOUND OF HIP MUSIC, THERE'LL ALWAYS BE SOMETHING

NEW
TO KEEP THE TABLES TURNING

HATE THIS SIMPLE SONG, BUT THERE'LL NEVER BE AN ENDING

AND THE BEAT GOES ON

The Whispers, The Beat Goes On

A Fantastic Voyage

Following the bravery of Jazz musicians like Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis, the more ensemblematically sensitive and commercially self aware Funk and Disco artists tentatively pushed boundaries at first, electrifying a bass or using a synth as an expressive sound; an electric flourish; a distant call from the future or deep space. A turning point came in 1977 when songs like “I Feel Love” by Donna Summers and artists like Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra proved that an electrically dominant sound could be commercially successful. By the end of the decade, Funk and Disco fully embraced all manner of electrically powered instruments.

The djs and musicians played Disco and Funk songs, at higher speeds; bringing forward the high hats and transmuting Funk’s heavily syncopated 2s to a danceable 4/4 at 120bpm. The kick drum transiting at high speeds across the space time weave, it swings out so far it trips over the threshold, the final feint of the fugitive beat, successfully escaping to the future: into the past of the next beat continuum. The future is freedom from the past, a new frontier, deep space. Everyone sensed the passage into the uncharted, Funk’s lyrical metaphors of space travel narrating the voyage. Disco’s ‘dance!’ directives fuels the rhythmotor (Eshun) to spin faster and faster. Funk’s astro-ethos paired with Disco’s punctuation was an epiphany of space’s relation to time. To get to the future, you have to go far out at fast speeds.

Speed wasn’t a new rhythm tool whatsoever, but in previous eras of music, human endurance, agility, and memory were limitations to faster tempos. Disco djs, armed with hours of music records, discovered that maintaining a high bpm could hold an audience into a stasis of dancing, a trance of movement, inducing heightened pleasure. With the evolution of recording technology and record deck techniques, songs could be seamed together and the rhythm breaks of songs could be looped ad infinitum, creating endless beat streams, at velocities unable to be maintained at length in prior eras of music.

It wasn’t until I went to a Paradise Garage Reunion party around 2018 that I understood the power of Disco. The party is held annually, and the year I went for the first time, it was happening at the Elsewhere venue in Brooklyn. That venue has one of the few sound systems in NYC that can hold that kind of power. The bass was so encompassing, as each down beat fiercely embraced the sonic body and then released us for a millisecond of freefall on the upstroke, an effect at once comforting and exhilarating. Hearing the complexity and orchestral grandiosity of that music on a sound system like that was the pinnacle of dance experiences for me. Moreover, I was stunned and in awe of the enthusiasm of the original Paradise Garage ensemble members. I will never forget hearing “Clouds” by Chaka Khan for the first time with them, the way they all belted that song, they knew every note, inflection, and drop. That song is permanently engraved into my heart from that experience. A Larry Levan mix from 1979 illuminates Disco’s power, and his mastery of a steady groove that you can trust will not let you go.

A similar dialectic tension existed between Disco and Funk as with what happened between House and Techno. Funk’s masculine psychedelic sexual intensity contrasted against Disco’s fierce and freshly awakened feminine. Again, the relationship between genres can be better understood as a spectrum, or a continuum. When I talk to my family members about the music of the 70s and their experience with it, they speak about their annoyance with the repetitive overly joyous sound of Disco. The common sentiment expressed is that Funk bands 'sold out' to create Disco tracks. That is not untrue. Danceable Disco had more commercial viability than Funk, Rock, and other genres of the time because the consumer base included club and radio djs, along with the average collector. The recording industry quickly capitalized on this by the mid 70s, labeling any song with an up-tempo as Disco, and signing artists that created music within the genre, i.e. Evelyn Champagne King with RCA, Taste of Honey with Capitol, and First Choice with Warner

My brother-in-law said Kool and the Gang sold out after 1979, with the album Ladies Night, their most successful record due to the inclusion of the classic Disco single of the same name. I played Sylvester's "Stars" for him once, and he told me I better not follow up with Village People. But at the same time, he is a huge fan of Phyllis Hyman.

I remember my father telling me the reason why he loved Parliament-Funkadelic is because they remained committed to the Funk sound throughout the Disco era. However he owned several quintessential Disco albums, like Heatwave's Central Heating, and Rufus' Street Player.

My mom spoke about the exhaustion she would feel with Disco's repetitive drill; she said she just couldn't get her back into it, it just wasn't funky enough. But if I got into the weeds of the music with my family, they would all concede—good music is good music.

The defining characteristic distinguishing Funk music is the overemphasized second beat, magnetizing the bass, which pulls on the joints of the body, dragging a hip, a shoulder, or knee along the irregular pulse. Many Funk bands attempted crossovers into the Disco genre, creating songs or albums that could translate on the dance floor.

All along the decade, the tempos edged faster and faster. More subtly, Funk bands towards the end of the ‘70s equalized the dragging two-beat for the quintessential 4-to-the-floor sound of Disco.

Some artists innovated a syncopated tempo that could swing between the Disco and Funk polarity within one song.

The Funk band Brick named their disco hit "Dazz" as a portmanteau of Disco and Jazz. Parliament-Funkadelic spoke to the Disco ensemble with titles like "Aqua Boogie (A Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop)" and "Undisco Kidd".

The Disco genre motorized the entire music making ensemble of the 70s into the future, spawning the Hi-NRG subgenre, which encapsulated electronic production and high-stepping bpms. Toward the end of the decade and into the 80s, Disco mutated, its reflective glitter becoming back-lit pixilation. It shed hints of its former self, trading older instruments for keyboards, synths, and drum machines.

Re-visitation, Revival, and Resistance

Some nostalgic strains of Disco persisted. Brothers Johnshon's "Stomp" and Loletta Halloway's "Love Sensation", both released in 1980, defied electric automation, opting for traditional instrumentation. In 1983 The Trammps, the soul band of the iconic “Disco Inferno” song, cried out, “What Happened to the Music”? The Disco ensemble held a visitation, recalling the sounds from its global heyday.

In 1981, the first few cases of what would come to be known as HIV/AIDS were reported. Later that year, Arthur Russell released the single “#5(Go Bang!)” under the alias Dinosaur L. Recorded and performed in 1979, the project was a jazzy, experimental elegy for Disco. The lyrics self-reflectively reminisce of ensembles passed. Expressions of the song’s mournful longing are obscured by the title of the track, grief fronting as a groovy line,

I WANNA SEE ALL MY FRIENDS AT ONCE

I’D DO ANYTHING TO GET A CHANCE TO GO BANG[BACK]!

I WANNA GO BANG[BACK]! "

Russell couldn’t have known, then, the lyric was a call from his future. The song had poignancy from the start, an instant favorite of Larry Levan and The Loft’s ensemble. It remained relevant throughout the ‘80s, re-releasing twice in 1986 and 1988, which coincided with crucial years of the HIV/AIDs epidemic. The song’s cavernous discotheque resonated the emotional timber of loss, healing mourners with dance.

By the mid 80s, this Disco revival resistance had given way to the current of the electric age. However, Disco's established 4-to-the-floor bass line gripped dance music for the foreseeable future.

Ensemble in Freeform

After the Disco Sucks conspiracy, and correspondent Disco Demolition assassination, the recording industry figured out best ways to restructure in order to capitalize on (Black) music. The music industry cut its losses with Disco and rebranded it as 'Dance.' The industry enforced control on radio stations introducing "progressive" genre stations to constrict the proliferation of transgressive sounds to single channels. Ultimately, the industry would use the radio to control record releases and circulation, limiting repeat play across stations. This imposed genre restriction by station, which meant the end of freeform djing on the radio because it was a style of djing that cycled through any genre of the dj's choice. Freeform djing was the most popular radio dj style of the ‘70s, and a key component to Disco music’s prominence.

In the early ‘80s, Radio stations weren't heavily policing freeform djs yet, even if they were restricted to certain hours of the day. Adjacent to the radio, pre-recorded mixes, sometimes called Disco medleys, were released by small record labels, and hoards of bedroom remixers, armed with reel-to-reel recording equipment. It was this kind of record that was stolen from Chicago dj, Jesse Saunders, which prompted him to bootleg it from heart on a TR-808, producing “On & On” in 1984, the so-called ‘first’ House music record. The original “On & On” mix was by Mach, released in 1980.

These pre-recorded mixes serve as the best example of what djing sounded like on the radio and in the clubs in the late 70's and early 80's. Juan Atkins described the shift in radio that influenced the rise of House,

"CHICAGO IS A BIGGER CITY THAN DETROIT, AND THE RADIO WAS A LOT MORE PROGRESSIVE THAN DETROIT RADIO. THEY HAD MIXES ON THE RADIO WHERE WE NEVER HAD MIXES ON THE RADIO TIL '85/'86. WELL THEY HAD MIXES ON THE RADIO '81...WHEN THE DISCO THING DIED OUT, MIXES WERE GONE, RADIO CHANGED FORMATS AND THERE WAS NO MIXING. BUT CHICAGO KEPT WITH THE MIXING AND IT JUST CONTINUED, THEY NEVER STOPPED MIXING ON THE RADIO. SO THERE WAS LIKE A GAP, WHERE...A LOT OF THINGS HAPPENED IN CHICAGO THAT JUST DIDN’T HAPPEN IN DETROIT AS FAR AS THE MASS PEOPLE BEING AWARE OF THAT TYPE OF MUSIC. EVEN BEFORE HOUSE MUSIC, A LOT OF THE MIXES ON THE RADIO WOULD PLAY A LOT OF ITALIAN IMPORTS, BECAUSE THE ITALIANS CONTINUED WITH THAT DISCO FLAVOR WHERE DISCO DIED EVERYWHERE ELSE."9

After the coordinated demise of Disco and the freeform radio dj, a brief lag of music production occurred in the recording industry. However, at the level of culture, new record labels and artists propagated as the proliferation of electronic machines cheapened music production. Popularity of the cassette tape, and the advent of the compact disc forced record press plants to find new markets to stay in business. They soon discovered they could exploit burgeoning underground talent, who were eager to create new sounds and deliver to the club's turntables as quickly as possible. Many more 12" singles found their way to the market.

Within the small window of time after 1979 and before the industry caught up, music makers, dancing ensembles, and djs experienced a creation-burst event. For a brief moment, constrictions of music styles relaxed and experimentation flourished, as children of the Disco era foraged for new sounds. Post-Punk bands picked up on new technology, in the forms of drones and drum machines, and experimented with the Disco sound, perhaps attracted to Disco's newly minted stigmatized status. Because of the mainstream’s rejection, Disco now had counter-culture appeal. A new kind of Diva arrived, dressed in a pantsuit, understated and cosmopolitan, her voice light and sultry. Funk bands inherited Disco’s preoccupation with dancing, and scratching emcees diffused fragments of Disco throughout the atmosphere. Everywhere on the planet that Disco touched returned a mutant form to the dance floor; Liaisons Dangereuses from West Germany, Cabaret Voltaire from Sheffield, Freeez from London, ESG from the Bronx, and Alexander Robotnick from Italy.

B-boy Sonicasthetics

Juan Atkins' project Cybotron, in collaboration with Richard “Rik” Davis, is often cited as the origin point of the entire electronic dance music genre. However, The debut LP doesn't sound like quintessential Techno, the way that we hear it today (four-on-the-floor bassline and drum machines). Cybobtron was still structured around the rock band format (lead singer, guitars, drums, bass), with correspondent song structure (verse, chorus, bridge). Electric guitar instrumentation figured heavily, and most of the tracks' bpm are slower than what would be considered dance music in the post-disco era. And it was right in line with music circulating at the time of its release. Jonzun crew, Newcleus, and Quadrant Six sound nearly indistinguishable from the Cybotron project, and they were as popular, or more.

When Atkins heard Afrika Bambaata & the Soul Sonic Force on a trip to New York to promote Cybotron’s single “Clear,” he was so disappointed by his tardiness to the assembly of Electro-Funk ensemble, that he turned to making House music.10 The artists of Cybotron’s cohort are understood today as proto-Hip-Hop, Electro-Funk, or even Space Disco, but they are not explicitly cited as proto-music forms to Techno. What makes Cybotron stand apart from these bands is in name and claim only.

Techno could not have happened alone in a bedroom studio, with only the radio, and a solemn acceptance of the technological paradigm. Techno was a call in response to the dancing ensembles, who continued to revel in the wreckage of the post-disco era. However, Detroit’s affinity for Funk goes back further than the era of Disco dominance. Parliament-Funkadelic’s mothership was stationed in Detroit from the late ‘60s well into ‘70s. The Electro-Funk strain that flows through Detroit Techno’s pulse is traced directly to P-Funk's interstellar outpost. In the ‘80s, the Detroit ensemble became infatuated with Funk’s defiant and sturdy nephew, Hip-Hop. Jeff Mills radio shows, under his first alias the Wizard, preserve the instant that Electro-funk/proto-Hip-hop infused into the core of Detroit’s dance music sound.

Even still, Disco’s influence cannot be understated. It had already infected Electro-funk, and Hip-hop dj's included Disco into the record repertoire along with funk. Even if scratched as a deconstructive sonic assault, Disco's embrace of the future and its fast rhythmic tempos infiltrated Hip-hop's b-boy sonicaesthetics (Eshun).

Techno could not have happened alone in a bedroom studio, with only the radio, and a solemn acceptance of the technological paradigm. Techno was a call in response to the dancing ensembles, who continued to revel in the wreckage of the post-disco era.

TECHNO EMERGES

Around the same time as the release of “Clear” in 1983, a man in Frankfurt Germany working at a record store labeled a bin with the word 'techno' to place all the electronic music that was beginning to take over the different genres. He soon began a party called TechnoClub at a local venue within a year of labeling that bin. Eventually, he would go on to found Techno Drome International record label in 1987, a year before Detroit's Techno genre defining compilation was released. Andreas Tomalla had the foresight to see what was coming on the horizon. It's possible he came across Cybotron's record Techno City and was inspired to use the word ‘techno’. Or, he could have also come across Man Parrish's 1982 Techno Trax, or Junie Morrison's (former member of the Ohio Players and Parliament-Funkadelic) 1984 Techno Freq. Or saw that Kraftwerk's Techno Pop was due sometime in 1983, according to EMI record’s release schedule for pre-ordering, which Tomalla could have seen while working at the record store. Kraftwerk’s planned Techno Pop album ended up being delayed, but was eventually released in 1986 as Electric Cafe.11

A couple years after the Cybotron project, Juan Atkins released his first solo, self identified 'dance' music track. He explains the pivot from the Electro-funk sound of Cybotron to Jonathan Fleming for The House Music Movement,

"THE MAIN REASON WHY I STARTED DOING [HOUSE] MUSIC, BECAUSE I STARTED WITH THE ELECTRO THING WITH “CLEAR” AND CYBOTRON, BUT THE HIP-HOP/RAP CAME IN REAL STRONG AND IT WAS TOO DOWN TEMPO FOR ME... I LIKE A LOT OF HIP HOP SONGS BUT THEY WERE JUST TOO SLOW FOR ME. I MEAN YOU COULDN’T, YOU KNOW GET IN THE POCKET...SO I STARTED PICKING UP ON A LOT OF THE MUSIC THAT WAS COMING OUT OF CHICAGO, AND ME AND MY FRIENDS DERRICK MAY AND KEVIN SAUNDERSON...WE REALLY GOT MORE SO ON THAT TIP...AND SO WE JUST TOOK LIKE THAT FLAVOR AND PUT THE DETROIT FLAVOR ON TOP OF IT, WHICH WAS LIKE TECHNO. AND THAT WAS HOW I REALLY GOT INTO HOUSE MUSIC, IT WAS JUST MORE OR LESS BECAUSE BEING ON THAT TEMPO…"12

WHAT HAPPENED

After the supposed 'death' of Disco, electronic instruments cloaked the ensemble. Manipulations of bass lines enshrouded a Disco pulse within illegible syncopation. A bass line could be enough to distinguish genres, or at least intention, of whether a song is Funk, Disco, Rock, Hip-hop, or New Wave. But those boundaries were left neglected and unclear in the post-Disco period. The radio and recording industry attempted to capture the post-disco time warp, by dubbing certain radio stations as ‘progressive;’ a term that mainly caught on in Detroit. It is a term that tries to brand the re-sounding pivot in the culture. The music that was embraced on dancefloors spanned all genres and beyond, as long as the tempo was right, and the bass was pulsing.

Ron Hardy's December 1983 set at the Music Box completely disintegrates the boundaries between genres into a time-bending odyssey. Disco's tracks are barely discernable besides the stomping bass line, like the four wheels on a vehicle, driving the dancing ensemble directly into House's terrain. Eddie Kendrick's 1972 “Need a Change of Mind” zooms by at an indiscernible speed, stumbling over lyrics. Italo Disco's Stopp, Kasso, and Gaznevada's drum machines creates a frontier that blurs with Black Disco Classics like First Choice's “Let no Man Put Asunder” and The Trammps “What Happened to the Music” creating a Disco-ncerting, aurally alien landscape. Early inroads to innovate Disco for the electronic post-soul era by Black Gold, Serge Ponsar, Peech Boys, and Curtis Hairston bridge intersections of the groove. Cult classic “White Horse”, from Danish electro-funk-disco duo, Laid Back, stops to deliver their anti-don't-not-do drugs message. Suddenly, Rock musicians from the Rolling Stones, Liquid Liquid, and Skatt Bros hitch a ride on the set for a welcome detour to reckless abandonment. Where are we now? What happened to the music?

The Jack Virus

By 1981 or ‘82, the term ‘House’ was in colloquial use in Chicago, where the term likely originated and where the Warehouse was located.13 Although Juan Atkins (and Rik Davis) had named the specific genre preoccupied with the future 'techno', sometime around 1980/81, the term ‘Techno’ did not come into colloquial use until sometime after 1988, eventually becoming recognizable to the masses around 1991/92, with the help of some British journalists and record label executives. Up until that point, House music was understood by dj's and dancers as containing the past and the future. Its musical output drew from any point in the field generated by the tension of that polarity. In the early and mid ‘80s, House’s first original tracks were pressed on records, mostly in Chicago, but the creative experimental impulse existed elsewhere. These tracks, usually listed under record labels created by the artist themselves, transgressed boundaries in Disco, Pop, Punk, Funk, Hip-hop, and experimented with vocal and instrumental arrangements. The earliest song that I can find that self identifies itself as House, is Chip E.’s “It’s House”. Released in 1985, the first 1000 records sold out in one day. Chip E. says he first made the track on a TR-808, and eventually progressed to a TR-909, working out of a rented studio called Reel-to-Reel in Villa Park (no mention of Juan Atkins borrowed equipment).14

It was in the landscape of House, Disco’s dance music outgrowth, that Derrick May entered into the Music Box and Juan Atkins created his record "No UFOs”. It was this same landscape that inspired Phuture and Sleezy D to take an old TB-303 to squelch out the first couple Acid tracks. DJ Pierre (member of Phuture) claims that the first recordings were given to Ron Hardy in 1985, who promptly inducted the sound at The Music Box.15 A full year prior to Derrick May’s “Nude Photo” claim. The pressed recordings were released the following year in 1986, making “Nude Photo” no more than a sibling, but definitely not a father.

From the point of the mid 80s, 1985 and after, House music spread like wildfire, spawning itself in every direction. It even caught on in ensembles overseas, carried by imports and touring djs. It's not clear whether the “Jack virus” referenced in the liner notes of Techno! was a shady jab at House’s homosexual associations, or if it was just an acknowledgement of the music’s overwhelming virality. In the context of the HIV/AIDs crisis of the mid to late ‘80s, those words sting a little. But, regardless of their intention, many places were showing signs of infection of the Jack virus by 1987, Chicago being patient zero, but cases showed up elsewhere, as in New York and Detroit.

By 1988, The Acid sound caught a blaze, particularly in the UK, but also elsewhere in Europe. In 1988 Tomalla’s Techno Drome label released “Acid to Body” by 20 (duo Tomalla and Markus Nikolai), demonstrating that the Frankfurt “techno” scene had been following the Chicago House Scene all along. Derrick May re-released “Nude Photo” the same year, which included an “Acid burns” mix, a hat tip or co-creative response to the House music ensemble. Across several cities around the globe, the Jack virus mutation, Acid House, curved upwards to peak pandemic levels.

THE CUT

Around the same time as the Acid House virality, signs of splitting began to be heard. The tension of all time, the past and the future, contained within House, began to strain the system. Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit was the harbinger of the fissure. The evolution and proliferation of House music, its eventual glut and oversaturation, along with the threat of commercialization, necessitated a separation; christening the post-Disco dance music outgrowths with different names. The genres of Acid House, Jungle, Miami Bass, Baltimore Club, New York Ballroom, and New Orleans Bounce were emerging from cultural ensembles alongside the cultural recognition of Detroit Techno in the late 80s and early 90s, all of which carried the dna of Post-Disco's experimental and wayward daughter—House.

As Techno came into prominence, House music eventually meandered from the race towards the acoustic horizon, opting instead to languish and re-call ensembles past. A drag of the dj's index finger decelerates its pace, skipping the bass, affecting a nostalgic syncopation. Over the decades since, House relaxed into sedative reflections, something akin to Jazz, Gospel, or an even more primordial sound, leaving the constriction of the grid and hyperspeeds to Techno. Moving as if underwater, the ensemble floats through time and deep space. Listening from inside the womb, filtered through the fluid of memory. A diva's wail pierces the amniotic sac, her tremors unnerving the apathy in your heart. She calls from the past, but it sounds as if she is screaming in your ear. But, sometimes her voice returns accompanied by a chorus, or with the cadence of her Jazz or Pop era, other times she doesn't return at all. You barely remember her from before, in her glittery disco heyday, but she is mournful in this iteration, or at the least a bit passive. Less concerned with occupying the center of the ball, that rotating orb of projected light. It isn't a resignation of power, it is the peace she finally finds at the end of the world. A well earned and long overdue rest.

CON-GENE-ITAL RESONANT ENSEMBLES

The Techno producers of Detroit may well have modeled their Euro-tour-come-up based on the successes of House music in the UK, or Disco in Italy, and sought out an unclaimed territory to attach themselves to. Berlin was mostly untouched ground, half of it coming from behind the Iron Curtain 1989. Detroit Techno achieved dominance in Berlin, however the ensemble there was not unfamiliar with the sounds of what would eventually be called Techno. Like the rest of Europe, they were extremely inspired by Black music, and closely followed its evolution since its availability through media. The US military radio station, American Force Network, which broadcasted 24 hours a day from 1945 to 1994, included extensive music programming with records from the U.S., packaging and 'selling' Black music as an ideal of Western democracy and liberation. AFN’s network range went well over the Berlin wall. By the late 70s, there was a strong affinity for Disco music, just like everywhere else. Small discotheques and bars operated across West Berlin in the 70s and early 80s. It is easy to imagine German excitement and pride that Kraftwerk was such a huge success.

As evidenced by Tomalla’s Techno Drome records, Germany had been following the Disco-ntinuum, aboard the funky train right through the post-Disco, Electro-Funk, House, and Acid house arrivals. Founding memeber of Heatwave, Johnie Wilder, served in the U.S. Army and was based in West Germany. He ultimately decided to stay there after his service, to create the band and begin performing there. Member of Electro-Funk outfit Jonzun Crew recounts receiving pictures from fans of graffitied dedications to his band on the Berlin Wall, prior to its demolition. By the late 80s, Acid House had a hold on the dance scene there. Berliners were primed to receive the “new” dance style coming out of Detroit. The term ‘techno’ may have been congenitally resonant with the ensemble in Germany, because of the time wormhole recognized by Tomalla in Frankfurt.

There are so many poetic parallels that have been drawn between the two cities. Two ensembles working out war trauma on different sides of the world finally met. But on the other hand, the popularity of Techno in Berlin was a marketing strategy conducted by the ambitious first class of Techno djs and producers. They aligned themselves early on in the emerging ensemble that came after the fall of the wall. They collaborated with record stores like Hard Wax, and the in-house label at Tresor club, ensuring their sound circulated within the Berlin ensemble, staking their territory and cementing their legacy in the city. Detroit Techno fathered Berlin nightlife. Quite literally, Blake Baxter has a daughter who is the grandchild of the founder of Tresor, Dimitri Hegemann. Even so, Berlin maintains the memory of its Disco past. This is why Panorama Bar sits above Berghain, like a footnote.

House Codes

The passage of time encircled boundaries around the sound into the camps of House or Techno. However, the original logic of House was meant to inquire in all directions of time and space, to create a musical weave. House wraps a dancing ensemble with a sound vaguely familiar, maintaining the past as plastic material to shape and craft into something else. House goes into the future, but not by virtue of being wholly new, but by a deconstruction and repurposing that engenders a new point of view. A light touch of familiarity, not to anchor the ensemble in the past, but to comfort them with a shared memory. The safety of a tether in order to go far out without losing a sense of place and direction. This original computation for creating House music continues into today through the spawning of Dembow, Amapiano, Drum'n'bass, Gqom, the Deconstructed Club era of 2010's, and so on. These ensembles take a riddim from their ancestry, a popular song, or expand a break beat into an entire genre, layering the future over the past and increasing tempos towards a space yet heard. Deserving of their own names, no one would call them 'House', but they take the machine code, and replace House's Disco encryptions with a sound of their own choosing.

1. The sexual assault and misconduct allegations against Derrick May highlight the importance of detaching mythologies of singular male genius from the retelling of our histories. Further than just condemning individuals, we need to re-mold the methods by which we conceive of our past. In 2020, multiple accounts surfaced, detailing a pattern of sexual assault, aggression, and misconduct against women, dating back to the early 2000s.
2. "it's like George Clinton and Kraftwerk are stuck in an elevator with only a sequencer to keep them company." Techno! New dance Sound of Detroit, liner notes, Roy Cosgrove, 1988
3. Derrick May interview with Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton originally for djhistory.com, 2004,
4. Juan Atkins Interview, DDAYS in Luxembourg, June 2012
5. Moten, Fred, In The Break: The Aesthetics Of The Black Radical Tradition, 2003
6. Ibid. 3
7. 'True Birth of Techno', Jeff Mills interview with Once Upon a Time by Talida, September 2025,
8. In My House Techno Music Show Ep:1 Interview w/ Mike ‘Agent X’ Clark & Underground Resistance, February 2014,
9. Interview by Jonathan Fleming, Doc Martin – The House Music Movement compilation compact disc, Master Dance Tones, 1998
10. Ibid., 8
11. Ibid., 1,8, Garratt, Sheryl, Adventures in Wonderland: A Decade of Club Culture, 1988
12. Kraftwerk interview by Ralf Hütter, The Scotsman Newspaper, March 2004,
13. Ibid., 8
14. “It had to be 80, 81, somewhere around there, I was in a car with a friend of mine going his house out on the southside, and we were at a stop light, and there was a tavern on the corner, and it had a sign in the window that said ‘we play house music’. That was the first time I heard of it. Well, I saw it. And I asked him what it was, and he says ‘that music you play down at that club’[the Warehouse] …and i just said ‘oh, I didn’t realize it had a name,’ and so he said, ‘Well it's the House, that what everyone calls it, it's everyone's nickname for the place.’” Frankie Knuckles interview, Redbull Music Academy, 2011.
15. “If You Only Knew”, Chip E. interview with Jacob Arnold, Gridface blog, February 15, 2010.
16. “Back to the Future” Dj Pierre interview with Ruth Saxelby, Fader Magazine, August 4, 2014