CARL CRAIG

Crack spoke to Detroit techno royalty as he prepares to release his superb three-disc Masterpiece compilation.  

When Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson – the Belleville Three, named after the Michigan town 30 miles from Detroit they hailed from – began combining the lugubrious elasticity of funk records with the stiff synthetic workouts of Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra at parties, it’s unlikely they envisaged that what they were doing – which was, in effect, laying down the foundations for what was to become known as techno – would change the face of music forever.

One of the early adopters of the sound, and part of the so called ‘second generation’ of Detroit techno producers, was Carl Craig. Craig would, in his own way, go on to redefine the genre, to imbue its machinistic future-looking-ferocity with a sense of melodiousness, invention and innovation. This summer sees Craig playing Croatia’s mammoth Electric Elephant festival (alongside pretty much every top DJ in the world right now, including the likes of Michael Mayer, Prosumer, and Ivan Smagghe), as well as the release of his installment of the Ministry of Sound’s Masterpiece series of mix CDs. Ahead of this, Crack was lucky enough to have a catch-up with the Detroit native.

If, reader, you’re ever unlucky enough to encounter one of those deluded souls who insists that techno is faceless, monotonous, tune-free robotic abstraction peddled by severe-looking bald Europeans clad in parkas, send them in the direction of Carl Craig. Explain to them how, over the course of his lengthy career, he’s been able to flit between the sweaty, basement-dwelling, filter-manipulating thump of his material as 69, the ghost-in-the-techno-machine dwellings of his More Songs About Food and Revolutionary Art LP and the percussive workouts of his 12”s as Tres Demented. Play them seminal records like Paperclip People’s ludicrously great Throw, the proto-D’n’B of Innerzone Orchestra’s Bug in the Bassbin, or the Motor-City motorik of the title track of his Landcruising album. Take them out for a spin with his DJ KiCKS and Fabric 26 mixes in the CD changer. In short, introduce them to an artist whose name is indelibly stamped on the face of electronic music history.

The current project in Carl Craig’s world is something proposed by the unlikely source of Ministry Of Sound. The superclub/label’s Masterpiece series – having been previously manned by the likes of Andrew Weatherall, Fabio & Grooverider, Francois K, and Gilles Peterson – allows the chosen DJ to curate an extensive three CD mix. Craig has put together a disc of the stuff that’s inspired him over the years entitled Inspiration (including The Temptations, David Lynch and Muddy Waters – though he admits that “the disc would be a lot different if I could have got half the tracks I wanted on there, but it’s the way labels go…” before correcting himself and reassuring us that, “the team managed to clear some great ones for your aural pleasure”), a more club-ready collection of current tracks he likes to play out called Aspiration (featuring Huxley, Loco Dice and Tom Trago), and, intriguingly, a third disc entirely comprised of specially composed-for-the-project modular synth jams: Meditation.

Despite their prestigious past, MoS isn’t a label, or indeed a club, you’d necessarily associate an artist like Carl Craig with in 2013. What was the genesis of the mix? “They approached me a few years back and we’ve been trying to figure out a good time, which is now”, he says. “As an artist, the concept really interests me. To have freedom over three discs to pretty much do what I want is a great creative exercise.” Craig also found it allowed him to go back over his own collection, to spend “whole time just listening to the tracks and seeing how they make me feel, where to put what, what goes better with what. Like a chef making a fine dinner.” There’s a pleasing secrecy about the mix thus far: no one – presumably outside Craig himself and the label representatives – has been made privy to the tracklist. No one’s heard the new tracks. There’s something refreshing about that. Something very not of its time. But that’s Carl Craig: techno’s temporal marauder.

Let’s take a step back and reconvene with our unconverted friend from earlier: if that lot didn’t work, if he wasn’t swayed by then, treat him to a dusty slab of Carl Craig’s remixes – a body of work that spans 25 years and several hundred tracks. What is it that links the likes of the sub-aqueous thud of his 1991 rework of Ultramarine’s Hooter, the sen- suous, sinuous crawl of his version of Last Call by Brazilian Girls, his Grammy-nominated clanking, crawling, juddering take on Junior Boys’ Like a Child, the huge-beyond-any-rational-sense-of-comprehension edit of Falling Up by Theo Parrish and the seminal remix of Inner City’s already-seminal Big Fun? For Craig, it’s as simple, and as complex, as the desire “to always look ahead – trying to find that new sound that no one has heard yet, a way to make you hear music that you haven’t done before and that will survive the test of time.” Having consumed all this lot – and that’s without mentioning his mesmerising versions of tracks by the likes of Rhythm & Sound, Delia & Gavin, Morgan Geist and Throbbing Gristle – your pal will hopefully have had his misconceptions irrevocably altered for the better. If not … just ditch him.

It must be difficult, we wonder, to manage the juggling act between spending such a vast amount of time in studio spaces, or in clubs, and still keep abreast of goings on in the world in which you’re a pivotal part. What, for example, is his stance on the wobbling tidal wave of EDM that’s lurched and splattered its way across the States in recent years? The answer is quietly inconclusive, with the man himself com- menting that, “it’s here! America has definitely put its body back into dance music.” Whether this is something he’s taken a vast amount of interest in – outside of meaning he’s working even harder (“I am playing a lot more in the US than I used to, and some are really great shows”) – is up for debate. Who knows, Flux Pavillion might turn up on the Masterpiece compilation.

We ended by discussing the aforementioned summer date. “Festivals are great! Clubs are great too. In clubs you have a more intimate atmosphere and connection with everyone on the dancefloor, but festivals are huge and everyone is outside and going for it. I guess you do have to go big at festivals sometimes. But when you get the connection, it’s there.” We left him with one final question, hoping for a solid answer, ending up charmed by the sly refusal to play along. What, then, Carl Craig, are the records you never leave home without? “The good ones”, comes the reply. With that, he was gone.

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Carl Craig plays at Electric Elephant in Croatia (July 11th-15th), Circo Loco in the Arena, Birmingham (August 10th) and Festival Number 6, Portmeirion (September 13th-15th). Masterpiece is released via Ministry of Sound on June 24th.