Of the Belleville Three, the cadre of
early Detroit producers who tested the limits of spirit within
electronic dance music and changed the integrity of the form
forever, Derrick May's reputation as an originator remained
intact despite more than a decade of recording inactivity.
While Juan Atkins is rightly looked at as the godfather of
techno, with a recording career beginning in the electro scene
of the early '80s and encompassing some of the most inspired
tracks in the history of dance music; and Kevin Saunderson
is the Detroit producer with the biggest mainstream success
through his work with vocalist Paris Grey as Inner City, May's
position as an auteur eroded slightly during the 1990s due
to a largely inexplicable lack of activity. As far as influence
counts as part of the equation, however, May recorded the
techno tracks which top dance producers point to as the most
original and influential. The classic Derrick May sound is
a clever balance between streamlined percussion-heavy cascades
of sound with string samples and a warmth gained from time
spent in Chicago, enraptured by the grooves of essential DJs
like Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles. May's Transmat Records
label was the home of his best material, cuts like "Nude
Photo," "Strings of Life," "Kaos"
and "It Is What It Is," most produced from 1987
to 1989 as Rhythim Is Rhythim. And though his release schedule
all but halted during the 1990s, he continued DJing around
the world and honed Transmat into one of the most respected
techno labels in the world.
Derrick May was born in Detroit in 1963,
a single child raised largely by his mother. At the age of
13, he began attending school in the suburb of Belleville;
there he met Juan Atkins and the two began trading mix-tapes,
Atkins providing May's entry into the world of Parliament,
Kraftwerk and Gary Numan. When his mother moved to Chicago,
May stayed in Detroit with another friend, Kevin Saunderson,
to finish school. By 1981, Atkins had taught May and Saunderson
the essence of DJing as well, and the trio formed Deep Space
Soundworks, a collective existing to present their favorite
music at parties and clubs. May and Atkins also began working
with a local DJ named the Electrifyin' Mojo — the man
who first introduced Atkins to Kraftwerk and early synth-pop
— by creating elaborate megamixes for use on Mojo's
radio show.
After high-school graduation May attended university
on a football scholarship. He soon tired of the academic life
though, and returned to Detroit, where he worked in an arcade.
During his frequent trips to Chicago to visit his mother,
he had gotten hooked up with Chicago's familial house scene,
then in its infancy. May was fascinated by the warmth and
community feeling engendered at spots like the Power Plant
and the Music Box, where DJs Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy
used elaborate turntable set-ups and reel-to-reel machines
to create mastermixes which re-invoked the spirit of disco
even while pushing music forward. May brought Saunderson to
the clubs several times as well, and stayed in Chicago for
up to a year. When he again returned to Detroit, the need
for a club to call his own caused May and the Deep Space family
to found the Music Institute. It soon became the hub of Detroit's
ever-growing underground musical family, a place where May,
Atkins and Saunderson DJed along with cohorts Eddie "Flashin"
Fowlkes and Blake Baxter. The club invigorated a badly fractured
sense of community for many residents, and changed the lives
of second-wave technocrats like Carl Craig, Stacey Pullen,
Kenny Larkin and Richie Hawtin.
Though May owned a Roland TR.909 synthesizer, he
had done little actual recording by the early '80s. When Juan
Atkins hit the big time in 1981 with the local success of
his group Cybotron, it influenced May to begin recording seriously.
He debuted on wax with "Let's Go" (the third release
on Atkins' Metroplex Records) and then founded his own Transmat
label, a Metroplex subsidiary named after Atkins' track "Night
Drive (Time, Space, Transmat)." May introduced Rhythim
Is Rhythim, his most important guise, with the Transmat single
"Nude Photo." The producer soon followed up with
more future classics of the genre: "Freestyle,"
"Strings of Life," "It Is What It Is"
and "Kaos."
Of those first singles, "Strings of Life"
hit Britain in an especially big way during the country's
1987.88 house explosion, and May became one of the first American
techno artists to tour England. He was also recruited heavily
as a remixer, for pop bands — eager to gain credit in
clubland — as well as straight dance acts. A series
of setbacks around the turn of the decade appeared to sour
May's fortunes, though. The fertile British rave scene, which
had grown in strength from 1986 to 1990, was overwhelmed by
music growing ever more frenetic in order to compete with
increasing drug intake. Quite soon, most of the successes
in British dance music were native hardcore or rave-pop groups
(Altern-8, Sunscreem, the Prodigy) while much of clubland
forgot its American inspirations in favor of chart-bound novelty
tracks.
In 1991, May looked ready to return in a big way; at one point,
he considered forming a Kraftwerk-styled techno super-group
named Intelex with Atkins and Saunderson. Though negotiations
to sign with Trevor Horn's ZTT Records looked promising, the
deal eventually fell through, and May later declined several
invitations by major labels. In fact, he quit making music
for the most part by late 1991 (despite consistent rumors
to the contrary), though he did work with ambient pioneer
Steve Hillage on tracks for the debut album of Hillage's System
7 project. May continued to DJ around the world, and maintained
his standing in the eyes of many top-flight producers. His
Transmat label continued to find a home for many of the finest
techno singles ever compiled, including tracks by Stacey Pullen's
Silent Phase, Juan Atkins' Model 500, Joey Beltram, K-Alexi,
Carl Craig's Psyche and Kenny Larkin's Dark Comedy. Finally,
in 1995, Sony Japan compiled his most innovative tracks onto
the single-disc retrospective Innovator, and May contributed
a song to the soundtrack for Sony's video game Ghost in the
Shell
