If i could be there right 20 years ago... I have to praise that we have Detroit around to get our musical mind straight. Sometimes i just weer to far and get bumped of track with music i shouldn't listen to or even touch, So the Detroit scene is where i turn to over and over again to get back on the ground. As i did with this release.
I almost started to cry after listening to this 12". The core of Detroit c.a '88 right here. This music absolutely blew my mind. The A1 is just a monster of a track, Rolando's "Jaguar" slips into my mind. Listen to how it builds and just explodes into something that the institute used to dance to. Again i wished i was there to witness it.. The cuts on the B-side is brilliant Motor City Soul music, smoothest lovely garage house tracks i have heard for long time. Kinda spirals it way back and finish of with the B2 that just climaxed it to me, that is when i felt the tears lurking at the corner of my eye. Rarely does music have such powerful effect, but this music is way lost and forgotten, but with this, Kai Alcé just reminded & purified my mind completely and tells me with 12's like these that THIS is real electronic music. Been listening to alot of new "trendy-house" as i call it, i just don't get it. But this record right here just makes all that stuff like SHIT! TIMELESS.. I want more of this!!!!
Review by KaiAlceFeb 09, 2009(edited about 1 year ago)
The definitive aural document of the long-lost but never forgotten Music Institute of Detroit. While early Detroit Techno will always hold a certain position of universal reverence in the dance music community, it’s social origins in the city of it’s birth seem, to say the least, misunderstood & over-simplified. “Music Institute Vol. 1” provides only a relatively small glimpse into the experience of the then burgeoning Techno scene of Motor City; experience is always superior to abstract remembrance, especially when the majority of those doing the remembering could not be present for this special era in dance music history. And that’s exactly why “Music Institute Vol. 1” is such an invaluable piece for those truly interested in the sound & overarching aesthetic of early Detroit Techno, as it comprises an actual musical document of the time, allowing listeners an authentic & relatively subjective glimpse into the complex origins of the Detroit sound, and more importantly, of it’s communal beginnings---far from it’s hysteric reverence across seas, which, while most sincere, frequently overshadows an interest in Techno’s reception at the point of it’s creation. With “Music Institute Vol. 1,” graciously released by Kai Alce’s NDATL label, we see the inklings of a homegrown devotion to the then new and previously uncharted sound---specifically in it’s vibrancy at the indisputable home for underground dance music of the late 1980’s in Detroit. Listening to these exceptional tracks, none of which have been previously released, we begin to understand in tangible form the sophisticated, raw expressionism of early stalwarts Derrick May, Chez Damier, Alton Miller & other early Detroit legends, and more importantly, how this sound was employed for the service of their own communities & fraternal gatherings, adding a real life to our understandings of that time. Paul Nickerson 2009
you can still buy directly from NDATL for $15
support the artists not the price gougers..