Kevin Saunderson answers our questions about the early days of Detroit Techno, the Belleville Three, Inner City, staying true to the underground and he sets the record straight of the Reese bass.
1980’s midwest USA. It’s the winter of discontent in Detroit. Factories are being closed down, there’s a great migration of citizens like they’re back in the dust-bowl and the city is broke. Yet there’s something germinating in the outskirts of this industrial wasteland. In a leafy suburb on the outskirts of town there is a trio of kids plugged into sinewave broadcasting directly from the future. The sound they’re creating will eventually be called Techno and at the centre of the sound are the so-called Belleville Three: Jaun Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson.
Within that holy trinity of Techno’s originators Kevin Saunderson occupies a place like the middle child, with Atkins as the mature principle and Derrick May as its rambunctious adolescent. Saunderson was the quiet savant, taking influences from both and channeling it into his own distinctive voice.
A groundbreaking artist and DJ, Kevin Saunderson laid much of the early foundations for what we would know as Techno today and even lent his voice to genres like Drum & Bass and Jungle. Establishing Techno as a dance floor phenomenon he was quickly DJing outside of Detroit at the likes of Paradise Garage, bringing the sound of Techno to the masses.
Shortly after establishing his career as a solo artist and DJ, Saunderson would expand his musical purview way beyond its initial underground franchises by the time the late eighties rolled along.
With the help of Paris Grey, Kevin Saunderson created Inner City and with their tracks Good Life and Paradise from 1989 they brought the new phenomenon of Techno to the radio waves and the mainstream. Following it up with Praise in 1992, they set the tone for groups like Technotronic and 2Unlimited to follow, while Kevin Saunderson continued to establish a solo career through his various aliases like E-Dancer, K.S experience and Reese, often facilitated by his own KMS record label.
It’s in the guise of Reese that his music lives beyond Techno today as the original sample that informed Drum and Bass and Jungle’s heavy basslines. Today the synthesised bass sound has lived a life of its own beyond Techno and even continues to inform Saunderson’s own music.
Even while flirting with the charts as Inner City, he continued to stay tied to his roots as an underground DJ and tastemaker, proliferating the original spirit of Techno and Detroit in his soulful approach to electronic music. Working alongside his son Dantiez (E-Dancer / Inner City) today, he’s passing on the torch to the next generation while still playing a significant role in upholding the genre’s original spirit. His NTS radio show draws parallels in Techno over the years while as a DJ Kevin Saunderson remains a draw on any billing.
He arrives on the billing at Jaeger for a Soul Sessions Oslo, MUD and Frædag collaboration, giving us a unique opportunity to interview the legend. Over an email he talks about those early days in Detroit; Inner City’s popularity; his eternal pursuit of Soul in Techno; and he sets the record straight on the origins of the Reese Bass.
Hello Mr. Saunderson. What are you listening to right now?
I listen differently than I play. In the car it’s what I grew up on, classic disco, Parliament and that psychedelic side, Prince, the B-52s. Art of Noise, Moments in Love, that one I’d never have played out but I’ve always loved it. What I play out is a different thing entirely.
How and where did you hear and find this kind of music in Detroit at the start?
Radio, mostly, and then hunting. Mojo would play something and you’d go looking for it. Early on my bag had Planet Rock, Kraftwerk, Parliament-Funkadelic, Supernature by Cerrone, Eddy Grant’s Time Warp, Hugh Masekela’s Don’t Go Lose It Baby. There was no scene to plug into, so you built your own collection and that became the Sound. I pulled a lot of those classics back out recently, a few ended up on Bandcamp. They still hold up.
Electrifying Mojo was a true tastemaker with such a strong individual taste, but still eclectic. Can you explain why Electrifying Mojo was so unique and just what kind of impact it had on you coming up?
Mojo had no format. He’d play Kraftwerk, then Parliament, then Prince, then the B-52s, and never explain himself. He wasn’t crossing genres to be clever, he just didn’t accept that the lines were real. If you grew up on that you never learned to think in categories. Everything I’ve done since comes from that.
Detroit as a city is often cited as an influence for Techno and whether it’s the legacy of Motown; the industrial nature of the motor city; or the desolation of the city after the recession, there’s all these different ideas about how the city influenced the sound. What in your opinion was the city’s biggest influence on you and the rest of the Belleville Three?
People always reach for the ruins, the empty factories. That wasn’t it for me. What Detroit gave us was isolation. We were out in Belleville, thirty miles from the city, three kids with no scene around us, so we built one in our heads. We weren’t copying anybody because there was nobody to copy. Detroit taught us that you make your own world.
You and Derrick May used to make regular trips to Chicago to drop off records and indulge in their club culture. You also spent some time in New York at Paradise Garage. What was it about Detroit that set it apart from these places?
Chicago had the clubs. New York had Paradise Garage and Larry Levan, and that was an education, watching a room get taken somewhere. But those cities had audiences already. Detroit didn’t. We were making records for a scene that didn’t exist yet. That’s why it came out sounding like the future rather than the present.
You were one of the first to put vocals on what was predominantly instrumental music and bridge that gap between the dance floor and the radio with Inner City. What made you go into that direction with the group?
Because I came up on Motown and disco as much as anything electronic. Instrumental techno was where the music was, but I wanted something you could sing. Paris had that voice. It wasn’t a strategy to get on radio, I just wanted to make records that felt like songs.
Did you know that Good Life was going to be such a timeless hit when you and Paris sat down to create it and why do you think tracks like that and Big Fun stood the test of time?
You never know. Nobody sits down and makes something timeless on purpose. We were just making records we liked. But I think it’s the feeling in them. Good Life is hopeful, and that doesn’t age. A track built around a sound will date when the sound does. A track built around a feeling doesn’t.
Good Life has just been re-issued on KMS. Much like the track, the label has been going strong all these years. What’s the key to its longevity and your longstanding role as a label head?
I never treated the label as a business first. It’s a home for music I believe in, and that hasn’t changed in forty years. The key is I’ve never chased a trend. If I’d signed whatever was hot in ’95 or 2005, the catalogue would look ridiculous now. You stay yourself and the rest follows.
These days when a DJ/producer starts flirting with the charts they tend to migrate into the pop world and stay there. Why were you never fully lured over to the mainstream?
Because the underground is where I’m from and where I still go. Charts were something that happened to Inner City, not something I aimed at. The minute you start making records for radio you stop making records for the floor, and the floor is the only place I’ve ever really understood.
Inner City has had something of a resurgence lately starting with the 2020 LP, We all move Together and then a couple of remix LPs. What brought you back to the project?
Dantiez (Saunderson), mostly. He pushed it. And the timing was right, people wanted something with soul in it again. We All Move Together came out of that, and once we started it felt natural rather than nostalgic.
Your son, Dantiez is also working with you as E-Dancer. What does he bring to those projects and how has he influenced your own creative process?
A different ear. He hears things I’d walk past, and he’s not precious about how it used to be done. He’ll challenge me on arrangements, which nobody else does. That’s made me sharper.
Does the father-son relationship ever get in the way of the creative relationship?
Sometimes. You’re not just two producers, you’re father and son, and that’s always in the room. But we’ve worked it out. In the studio he’s a collaborator, not my kid. It took a minute to get there.
As a DJ that has been doing this for as long as the artform has existed, what keeps you engaged and excited about it?
The records. There’s always something new that surprises me, and I still get that feeling when I find one, same as I did in 1985. And the floor is different every night. You can play the same city twice and it’s a completely different room. That never gets old.
With your Origins NTS residency you draw parallels through Techno over the years. What remains the essence of the genre for you?
Soul. That’s the core of it. You can strip techno down to a kick and a hi-hat, but if there’s no feeling in it, it’s just a machine running. Origins is me showing where things connect, the Detroit stuff, the Chicago stuff, what came out of Europe. Different eras, same thread. It’s about emotion made with machines, and that’s been true from day one.
For me, a key component to Techno is the discovery of new, interesting sounds. And that brings Reese Bass to mind. You essentially invented a synth bass sound that completely lived its own life afterwards and in a completely different genre for that matter. It’s been a staple of Drum and Bass and Jungle, but what is the story behind that bass sound and its life beyond Techno?
It came from a Casio CZ-2000. Not the 5000, which gets misquoted all the time. I started out just playing a bassline, and then I kept tweaking the oscillators, pushing them against each other. It kept morphing into something heavier. And when it arrived I knew straight away. I was like, wow, that’s special. You don’t always know, but that one I knew. That was Just Want Another Chance in ’88. Then years later I’m hearing it in jungle records, completely transformed. That’s the thing about putting something into the world. It stops being yours.
Is that inquisitive musical nature of yours still at the heart of what you do, and what has always encouraged it?
It’s the whole job. The day I stop looking for new sounds is the day I should stop. I’ve always been more interested in what I haven’t heard than what I have.
What in today’s technology inspires you, and why is the relatively old technology of the 909 still so central to techno’s sound?
New tools are incredible. I can do things now I couldn’t have imagined in my basement in Belleville. But the 909 stays because it’s got character. That kick and that clap sound like a decision somebody made, not a sample of something real. It’s a machine that sounds like itself. You can’t design that.
What are your thoughts on the style of techno coming out of Europe today, and how does it compare to the original spirit of techno?
Europe took it and ran, and I’ve got no problem with that. We put it out there, it was always going to become something else. Some of it’s incredible. Some of it’s harder and faster than anything we were doing, and that’s fine, that’s evolution. What I notice is when the soul goes missing.
Techno from Detroit always had funk in it, always had feeling, because we came up on Motown and Parliament and Mojo playing everything side by side. When it gets purely functional, purely about intensity, that’s when it stops sounding like what we started. But there are plenty of young producers in Europe who’ve got it. It’s not a geography thing. It’s whether the feeling is in there.
Thank you for taking the time to talk to us Mr. Saunderson. One last thing… Can you play us out with a song?
Let’s go with Strings of Life, Rhythim is Rhythim. Derrick’s record. That’s Detroit right there. No drums for the longest time, just those piano stabs, and it still moves a room forty years later. That’s the soul I was talking about. It’s got everything in it.