Let's talk about Derrick May

^^ tightie-whities

The thing that is most interesting to me is how different my perspective on the big picture of dance music is after all these years.

Myopia is both the beauty and problem with living in Detroit.

Two weeks ago in Ghent, I had the rare opportunity to see Derrick May DJ in a club with a capacity of no more than 150 ppl. AMAZING SET: solid, tight, funky, unrelenting. For at least the last half of the three-and-a-half hours, the bass (in the style of Oscar G & Ralph Falcon, i.e. Murk-style) never let up. As the minute hand crept closer to 5:00, I sensed tension building and I was right: on the basis of past sets (and the plethora of mp3's of past Derrick May live sets that until recently were available on MixesDB.com), one might have expected him to do a mostly techno set. Guess again: it was all DEEP HOUSE, few if any vocals, and with the tiny club you could imagine what it must have been like to have one of these guys do a loft party back in the day. In any case, getting toward five o'clock, things got to a point where he would cut to the sort of techno record that the crowd was jonesin' for, then cut back to the other record with the BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM Miami-style bass, then back to four bars of the techno record, then BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, back and forth, and then suddenly, right at 5, he segged to "Killa Bite" by Ben Sims [you get the picture? Techno + Deep House averages out to Tech-House!], and the room just exploded! It was the climax/release that everyone was waiting for. Brilliant.

Skip the records. 20 years ago you would have been wasting your time if you bought Grateful Dead records, because the real goods were the live sets. It's the same with Derrick May -- the real joy is when he's on the decks. RESPECT.

To understand what the man is capable of, track down a copy of "The Mayday Mix". 11 years on, it's still the best DJ set on CD that I've ever heard. On other boards I've seen discussions where knowledgeable readers absolutely could not determine whether he was using 1 or 2 copies of Green Velvet's "The Preacher Man"; whether the record that samples "Let No Man Put Asunder" is "What Has Been Joined by G.O.D.", or is it "Car Crash Mixer"; how he managed to do what he does with "ONLY" three turntables. And he plays Jeff Mills' "Alarms" and Phuture's "Spank Spank" on top of each other as though they were intended to be part of the same recording. Phenomenal.

If this were a just world, people would be trading mp3s of Derrick May sets the way that they used to trade bootleg tapes of Dead shows.

<3 mayday mix, one of the best ever

Anyone hear his mix on 6 music a few weeks ago? Just listening now, about 15 mins through, very very good.

i'm the only one who finds mayday mix irritatingly choppy?

Yeah it never really clicked with me even though the choppiness and relentlessness is one of his signatures. In my experience, it goes over way better in a live setting as j.w. attests above.

Saw that Innovator got re-pressed recently. Maybe they'll do Relics next.

Gonna have to really read this thread at some point.

i like the choppiness of it! There's so much live-ness to it

yeah and on second thought it does sorta take into account the way people actually dance or move vis-a-vis BOOM BOOM BOOM mills style techno which doesn't really let up long enough for a breath or a change of form, i have to say i appreciated that when i was working out to mayday mix earlier today

What the fuck is up with Innovator!?! Half the tracks on here are like a minute or less in length (the first disc is only 45 minutes long! he could have included real tracks), with different mixes and all. And this is to say nothing of the megalomaniacal delusions of grandeur featured in the liner notes. Ah well, I guess that's just Derrick May?

he's always loved doing that...check out the Transmat Relics compilation from many years before Innovator.

Has someone compiled the full Relics and Innovator tracks on a handy torrent yet?

ah come on, innovator is excellent. i think it works so well as a, um, narrative, that including full tracks would've stifled its impact. compare innovator to the more recent juan atkins metroplex 2-disc for example, or even the kevin saunderson faces and phases thing, yeah unimpeachably wonderful music obviously but all those full tracks get tiresome in the long run. and if you really want to be completist, buy the vinyls! they've pretty much all been repressed by now

i love those short interludes on the relics album and innovator, they really give those albums a sense of being an actual piece of art as opposed to just a victory lap career retrospective

i don't know maybe i'm slightly biased; i spent much of last winter walking to and from work at night through south london with innovator on the discman -- i've never experienced a marriage of sound and environment quite like that before, just perfect, and i can totally sympathise with all those people who talk about driving through detroit late at night listening to rhythm is rhythm and truly understanding his music. it's music that somehow seems completely tied to this feeling of night time in the city, sodium streetlamps illuminating the rainfall on dirty pavements, all that corny cliched rubbish that's been written about a thousand times already

btw i saw derrick may dj a couple of months back and he took the room and shook it like a snowglobe. so much energy that night

that wasn't the sound of a train wreck shacking the room? is he capable of matching beats? i bought some japanese mix disc he did and it was the most awful display of 'mixing' i've ever heard. i don't think he can actually beat match. if someone can point out a mix of his that includes a good blend from one track to another, i'd love to hear it.

I've heard his DJ sets were pretty bad, too. I believe the name "Derrick Meh" was cited.

that wasn't the sound of a train wreck shacking the room? is he capable of matching beats? i bought some japanese mix disc he did and it was the most awful display of 'mixing' i've ever heard. i don't think he can actually beat match. if someone can point out a mix of his that includes a good blend from one track to another, i'd love to hear it.

― brotherlovesdub, Monday, August 2, 2010 4:21 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the mayday mix? fwiw dudes beatmatching is super easy esp w techno of the style he plays & im sure hes figured it out by now

pretty sure he was replying to me there

yeah i guess derrick may is known for his less than perfect beat matching skills, as is jeff mills, but with both djs i think it kind of adds to the manic energy. that style of djing is not about long blends at all, it's about counterpoint and flair, and yeah there's plenty of great djs out there who can balance perfect mixing with adventurous equing styles and tricks (claude young for instance) but somehow i think we've been spoilt by this kind of post-hawtin long transition stye of mixing in recent years and it was refreshing to hear that old kinda hip hop style of djing. plus he played some really good music that night -- i'm not the kind who walks out of the club as soon as i hear some kick drums galloping

i saw shake play this year as well and again, mixing wasn't perfect, there were no super long blends or transitions, just tons of energy, enthusiasm, flair, and most importantly, amazing records

actually i guess he was also talking mayday mix, sorry

odd. every time i've heard him dj his mixing has been impeccable. inspirational even.

i meant 'mayday mix' as an example of good mixing.

my favourite track on mayday mix is club mcm. so good

im a big fan of 'get down get horny' personallment

o_O "I don't think he can actually beatmatch" ...Now I've heard everything! (Yes, I've heard the "Mayday Mix")

mayday mix is about 10000x better mixing than 99% of djs i see imo

Seeing him play in Minneapolis was kind of a Road to Damascus moment for me.

I went from being sort of interested in house and techno to not having enough room to walk around in my room because of all the vinyl.

Maybe he just has off nights? He's only human.

that wasn't the sound of a train wreck shacking the room? is he capable of matching beats? i bought some japanese mix disc he did and it was the most awful display of 'mixing' i've ever heard. i don't think he can actually beat match. if someone can point out a mix of his that includes a good blend from one track to another, i'd love to hear it.

― brotherlovesdub, Monday, August 2, 2010 10:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Why dont you just get traktor, load up a bunch of mp3s click sync and yo wont need to listen to another dj every again

I downloaded the Mayday mix I dissed to give it another try. If it still sucks, guess I'll have to fire up Traktor.

The Mayday mix is great. I love a DJ who plays around with the beat and mixes things up. Yes, he doesn't do smooth seamless mixing, but I don't think that's what he's going for. To me, the way he messes with expectations and toys with the listener/dancer is much more exciting.

Search that RA "Cosmic Twins" mix(May and François K) from a few months back if still in doubt.

BTW I mix pretty much exclusively with Ableton and it's STILL possible to trainwreck - trust me. But that's for another thread...

I like the Cosmic Twins mix, actually.

GF just told me derrick may sounds like "chocolate rain"

all i can say is "haha"

I was just loooking at my copy of Innovator. Has anyone collected those tracks in original full length mixes that I could torrent or d/l?

sometimes i think: this dude perfected music

Do his melodies move you? Is there something about how he programs beats? Does the textures he gets from his synths make you swoon.

^^^Emphatic yes to all

he did use a lot of basic synth sounds
but there are those flange-d out chord blasts that are like aggressive painting strokes, somehow sounding primal and stately simultaneously.

there is no music better than "it is what it is" or "nude photo"

Except Icons (Montage Mix)

no

was that youtube clip of May and Carl Craig performing Strings live posted on this thread? If not, go look it up.

What's the story with the unreleased May LP on wire's "100 records that set the world on fire" list? google is failing me.

tbh may records are all about the breakdowns

also strings has no bassline

do you think derrick may has copies of his records that actually stay on time

this is the perfect time of year for mayday

just my $0.02

Emporors new clothes music.

I've been attempting to hear the 'soul' in his music for 20 years to no avail, all I hear is tedious joyless keyboard demos forged by a great self-promoter with a deft knack for pushing a genre creation myth to people who desperately want dance music to be more than the sum of its parts.

that's because you're a cloth eared dunce

OTM