Written for Clash magazine, December 2005 issue

“You don’t have to make techno with an 808, a 909 or a 303 - techno is about your ideas, not the gear you use. ‘Papa Was A Rolling Stone’, to me, was techno; Stevie Wonder’s ‘Too High’ was techno.” Carl Craig, one of electronic music’s true mavericks, is getting into his stride. Speaking on the phone from his home in Detroit, the techno innovator is reflecting on his 16-year career, and on the genre he has arguably done more than any other to progress.

“Techno is about the mentality you approach a track with, and the energy that goes into the music,” he says, “and my music takes me wherever I want to go. So if I make music that’s influenced by Europe, America, hip hop, jazz or whatever, that’s great. I feel very strongly about the scene that I started out in, but it was always necessary for me to grow as an artist, and if that’s led to me operating somewhat outside the Detroit scene, then that’s what it’s done.”

Of all of the producers who made up Detroit’s ‘second wave’ – picking up the baton from Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson at the start of the 90s – Carl Craig has spread his wings the widest. Over 16 years, and under countless pseudonyms, the chameleonic 36-year-old has flirted with house (as Paperclip People), experimental techno (as 69) and freestyle jazz (as Innerzone Orchestra and The Detroit Experiement) while still managing to stay true to his hometown roots. He explains: “I’ve always kept one foot in and one foot out of the Detroit techno scene. Derrick [May], Kevin [Saunderson], Kenny [Larkin] and Stacey [Pullen] are all my boys, but I’ve always tried to make a career outside of the city. From day one my philosophy was that I’d just make music for me, and it doesn’t make any difference if it’s techno or jazz or anything else. I just knew I didn’t want to be pigeonholed, so it was necessary to diversify.”

His latest DJ mix CD, for London’s Fabric series, exemplifies this philosophy perfectly. It includes his own take on classic, string-fuelled techno alongside anthemic New York garage from Blaze and Kerri Chandler, twisted broken beats from Just One, stripped-down Chicago-style house from DJ Yoav B – even the minimal crunk anthem ‘Wait (The Whisper Song)’ by the Ying Yang Twins. And in case you were in any doubt as to whether this was recorded live as opposed to surgically spliced together in Pro Tools, Craig’s own voice crops up intermittently – cackling maniacally, or urging himself to “bring the beat back”. He explains: “When I did it I wanted to have enough action going on to give it a human feel. I think it’s good to try something a little bit different than your usual techno mix CD. A lot of people do it really robotically, and a lot of people do it really fantastically, like Richie Hawtin and his new DE9 project, where he does the 5.1 surround thing. In a way I would have loved to go a lot further technologically with this but there wasn’t enough time. And in reality, when I DJ I don’t do a lot of crazy things, so the Fabric mix is more true to what I actually do in a club environment. But you know, I am a record producer and I like doing interesting things in the studio, so on the next one maybe there will be more of that kind of thing.”

While Craig and the technology-obsessed Hawtin may seem poles apart, they do have one thing in common – they both use Final Scratch, which allows a DJ to control and mix digital music files stored on their laptop via a pair of conventional turntables and a mixer. “I think Final Scratch is amazing,” he admits, “especially because I did a gig in Brazil recently using vinyl for the first time in a while, and of course my records didn’t show up. Then when I played in Madrid a week later they showed up late, and I was biting my nails thinking the baggage people had stolen my records. That’s one of the major problems of traveling with records - the fear that they won’t show up - but with Final Scratch it’s always there in your laptop. I’ve been using it for the past year and I’ve never had a problem with it. The only issue is how it sounds in comparison to vinyl. I use 16-bit, 44.1kHz [CD quality] AIFF files, but I’ve had long discussions with Richie Hawtin and Francois K about it. You know Francois really wants to go as high-quality as possible, but Richie’s view - which I agree with - is that there isn’t going to be that much difference in the impact of digital files recorded at higher bit rates or sample frequencies in a club. The sound systems aren’t good enough to really appreciate it yet.”

Craig’s busy DJ schedule has meant that production work has taken a back seat for a while, but his latest, as-yet untitled album project is due to see the light of day in 2006 on his own Planet E label. “I’ve spent the last few months preparing for it, getting the studio together and organising the guys I want to have play on it. It’s not going to be like Innerzone Orchestra or Detroit Experiment, but it will involve some of the guys I took out on tour last year to do the Tres Demented shows. The mentality is basically voodoo drumming with electronics on top. It could go avant-garde and crazy, but there will still be this African, Haitian, Caribbean, religious kind of drumming going on. And of course the root of it is what I do musically, so it will still be very electronic.”

Over the past year, Craig has also been using Planet E to reissue hard-to-find music from his vast back catalogue – including his ludicrously rare percussive rework of The Goodmen’s ‘Give It Up’ (‘Good Girls’) and his debut 1989 release as Psyche (‘Elements’) – helping trainspotters everywhere plug the gaps in their collections without resorting to inflated second-hand prices. He explains: “I still have a plethora of material that’s there and can be made available. I see Planet E Classics as a label to document not only my own music but other important music that came out of Detroit.”

And he is philosophical about the collectors-item status of his early releases – particularly the ultra-rare releases on his pre-Planet E label, Retroactive, which regularly change hands for three-figure sums on eBay. “That’s just how it goes, you know. They sell at a retail price of what the market is at the time, and if they increase in value that has nothing to do with us.” But why not repress them, if the demand is there? “It’s like baseball cards, you know - just because there’s a Joe DiMaggio card that’s worth x amount of dollars, doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to sell a million Joe DiMaggio cards. And I think that’s one of the reasons Roland will never re-release the original TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines, because the market for that in relation to the market for them releasing a new drum machine that does new shit is so small - most people want new stuff.”

Over its 10-year lifespan, Planet E has also been responsible for the debuts of many producers, including Recloose and Common Factor. Recently, however, the label has focused exclusively on Craig’s own material. “I made a personal decision that I should concentrate on my own problems rather than other people’s problems,” he explains. “In fact sometimes the better the artists are, the harder it can be to keep grips on everything. I feel that a lot of the guys who did things with me did some fantastic stuff, but we all have to grow, so it was best for them to move on in another direction and for me to move on in my own direction. Recloose is doing his thing with Peacefrog, and Jason Hogans is doing his thing with Third Ear, and Kenny Dixon Jr [Moodymann] has been leading the way for a number of years with his own releases, so I’m happy to see everyone doing well. When it’s time to work with some other artists’ material I’ll release it, but right now it’s best for me to concentrate on my own stuff.”

The conversation wanders, and we discuss every from films (“Sin City was the last movie that really blew me away – I was a big fan of the original comics”) and books (“I’ve been reading Chuck Palahniuk recently. I always try to seek out weird stuff”) to Iggy Pop and modern architecture – Craig owns a Mies van der Rohe-designed home in Detroit. But when we move on to politics – and specifically the Bush administration - he springs into life. I mention that I have American friends who are ashamed of what their government is doing, but Craig immediately retorts. “I’m not going to apologise about shit that those bastards do. I’m not even embarrassed by it - why should I be? I didn’t do shit. The reality is that we have a bunch of stupid people here and they made the wrong decision, and we’re starting to pay for it. And I hope all the right-wing, religious, fucked-up fools out here really suffer for it. I mean, the police going beserk down in New Orleans, all the craziness that resulted after we got hit by Hurricane Katrina… I hope they pay the price because there’s no reason why things should have got into that state. And I blame Tony Blair and Junichiro Koizumi, and all these motherfuckers who got together to form the ‘coalition of the willing’... it’s just ‘legal’ terrorism what these guys are doing, they’re fucking up shit for their own pocket. They’re trying to push the values of these extreme right-wing Christians over in Europe now, and the idea of that makes me sick. People here are so afraid of their own bodies now, because they’re told to cover up, or that it’s sinful to do this, or sinful to do that… so when I get out of America it’s like a breath of fresh air.”

All of this begs the question, why not follow the numerous other electronic musicians who have left North America for the more liberal climate of Europe? “I don’t speak any other language but English, so if I moved to Spain I wouldn’t be able to understand if they were planning mass genocide,” he jokes. “I could be over there thinking everything’s cool, and they could be saying ‘kill all niggers’ for all I know! If I was going to go anywhere, I’d love to go to Italy - I think the food is fantastic - but they’ve got their own damn problems with Silvio Berlusconi. At least I understand the stupidity that happens here in the US, so I might as well stay here instead of trying to get into someone else’s fucked-up situation.”

© Tom Churchill 2005