- Carhartt WIP and Tresor team up for an EP that highlights the past, present and future of the unique, enduring Detroit-Berlin connection.
- Plenty of ink, physical and digital, has been spilled over three whole decades (and counting) about the relationship between Detroit and Berlin. Each metropolis understands isolationism, becoming outposts, relying on ingenuity over fads, and using vulnerability for strength—that's where the music came from. Germany gave birth to Kraftwerk, the synth pop model for mechanized arrangements. Detroit heard the call, partially from the American radio personality The Electrifying Mojo, whose counter-cultural radio DJ sets beginning in 1977 planted that seed firmly in The Belleville Three's mind—and so Detroit built a genre, techno, erecting soundscapes in honour to Kraftwerk and many other formative acts. 030313, a six-track compilation EP Tresor put together in conjunction with Carhartt WIP—the streetwear division of the American workwear brand Carhartt, whose roots are deep in Detroit—pulls from the energy found on Tresor II (Berlin Detroit - A Techno Alliance), an original document of the ongoing German-American musical exchange from 1993. It updates that exchange, making it a 21st-century conversation and showing that the connection is as strong as ever.
Side A stays in Detroit, opening with "I.D.L.E," a lost Model 500 track that feels timeless. Juan Atkins crafted this noodly, temperamental funk moment with a slippery atmosphere, computerised chatter and a final 41 seconds that resembles a space station touching down. Detroit group Ectomorph follows with a bleepy percolating bassline on "Searching (Live At Globus)," maintaining the pressure and invoking the disorienting feeling of an overactive smoke machine. It's a vivid extract from their live set at the Globus room in Tresor in 2022, when, according to liner notes, BMG and Erika composed nine songs in an intense week-long session in the club—and Erika had to play on borrowed equipment after her case was lost on a flight. Closing out the side, AMX, or The AM, delivers "Your Body," an electro-meets-techno approach with a stunted chord progression à la Inner City's "Good Life," where synths descend into an abyss. As soon as the chords hit and the directives "move, shake your body, work, shake your body, groove, shake you body" land, it's game over.
Side B gets darker in the bass bins—it's the Berlin side. Here, starting with Berlin-based Detroiter DJ Stingray 313's industrial-tinged cruncher "Dynamic Instability," we have a bass cadet pushing aluminium-plated doom that almost sounds like a video game. JakoJako's "Metal Goat" presents dubby, heady techno that dazzles and pushes the tempo into hallucinogenic pastures. Erik Jabari's "Screamore", an anthemic main-floor banger, designed for when the wheels start falling off, features the kind of dark elements you'd find in old Bad Company drum & bass tracks. 030313 is a telling and expansive EP that leaves your heart wanting that soulful swinging Detroit business in four-on-the-floor form, but also reminds you that this formula and this music went a different way overseas. Both came to the fold from a shared love of mechanised arrangements allowing humans to be free.
Tracklist01. Model 500 - I.D.L.E.
02. Ectomorph - Searching (Live at Globus)
03. AMX - Your Body
04. DJ Stingray 313 - Dynamic Instability
05. JakoJako - Metal Goat
06. Erik Jabari - Screamore