Early notes from the underground

While Underground Resistance is viewed as one of the most important and seminal record labels to emerge from the Detroit techno scene, there are a couple of smaller Detroit labels from around that time that had close ties with UR that have gone a little under the radar since. Both Vibe Records and Shockwave Records were run by T.G. Williams and while much of the material (I’m not going to pretend to have heard all the releases on either label) mightn’t be 100% classic stuff I still think they are worthy of a mention on here. These 2 labels certainly played their part in the emerging 2nd wave from the Motor City featuring early work (in some cases debuts) of the likes of Robert Hood, Drexciya, Mike Clark and Jeff Mills.

Bar the odd foray into hip-house the labels (unsurprisingly) mined a similar path to early UR, a mix of uplifting vocal house alongside rave and acid sounds. As I said they ain’t all must haves but personally I’ve been banging the acid cut off this release from Tomahawk since I picked it up last year and Deep Sea Dweller by Drexciya was a bold and at times brilliant debut, laying out their musical intentions from the get go, with a mix of aggressive techno and trippy, other worldly electro.  While some of the Members Of The House and Mike Clark material hasn’t aged too well, you’ll still find the likes of Living For The Night by Yolanda more fondly remembered, maybe purely because it appeared on UR and not Vibe or Shockwave.  I don’t profess to know what happened to Shockwave (it carried a little longer after Vibe) but my guess is that part of it was that messrs Banks and Mills – who played major roles in a lot of the releases – focused their attentions on their own UR. Or maybe it was down to Willams, who ran the label.

Either way, if you aren’t too aware of either label – just 2 releases, the Drexciya 12 and this Members of the House 12 were re-issued on UR –  you could find shit you might wanna get your hands on. I’ll finish this up with a track from each label, the first one I believe is one of the first instances of Jeff Mills on wax (credited as The Wizard) and a killer cut from Mike Clark.